the kitten clamor

Oh, okay, okay! By popular demand, more kitten pictures!

The first picture is for those of you who were concerned that the kittens didn't have enough room in their cozy tree trunk hideaway. This is Cathy, one of the animal control officers in town. She's INSIDE the tree stump. In her hand is a silver 4-foot long grabber thingy. She's using that to reach waayyy down in a hollowed out root/shoot at the base of the tree, where the fuzzyfaces were hiding. Multiple rooms and luxury accommodations in that big ol' tree stump!

Three adorable gray kittens were retrieved. They're estimated to be about five weeks old because their eyes haven't changed color yet and they were gentle as can be, even though this is the first time they were handled. Cathy says their eyes change color around six weeks and that's when they'd also be much more spitty and full of attitude if someone tried to hold them for the first time. I know nothing about cats, so I'm just going along with what she says on all of this.

While the kittens were safe in a carrier, we tried to catch the mama cat in a Have-A-Heart trap. She didn't trip the trap the first time she went in, so it was an afternoon of re-baiting, waiting and watching. We had four kids and three kittens on the porch for a little playtime in the late afternoon, which was an awful lot of fun. We kept it short because we didn't want to overdo it, and the kittens were just as precious and curious as you'd imagine. Tried to give them some kitten formula then, because they had been away from their mom for a few hours at that time, but they weren't interested. I think they were too busy finding out about life beyond the tree stump.

The mama cat was caught around dinnertime. We transferred her to the crate with her kittens and she soon settled in to nurse them. Another animal control officer came out this evening to pick the four of them up. Animal Control will work on socializing the kittens, introducing solid food, getting the mom spayed, getting everybody their shots, and evaluating the mama cat to see if she's feral or just a stray who will enjoy some TLC (we're all betting on this because she seems pretty mellow, just cautious).

They'll probably come back here in a few days to live on our small enclosed front porch until the kittens are old enough to be on their own. We're thrilled to have a few families already interested in adopting them and are looking forward to giving them lots of snuggle time until they go to their new families. They're sooooo sweet!