wcb: and then there were four again...
Clare and Kiri from eat stuff organize weekend cat blogging to provide us with an excuse to bring on the cute...and we're all happy to oblige...
Starting with the three almost month-old kittens because, even if they are pretty much a blur, they are at least predictable. As in, they are supposed to be here. They are each between 550-575 grams as of yesterday and we've had to redesign the kitty containment system in their room to make the board across the doorway higher — it's now two feet and I give them a week tops before the first one gets claws over the top edge in a single leap. Then this barrier will fall, as the puny 1x12 fell before it. With any luck, we'll have the kitten section of the yard fenced in by then. So far, we've been about a day ahead of them. Doesn't bode well for us puny humans.
They are also getting older — not just bigger, older. They are a lot more like tiny cats now than they were just a few day ago: they scatch behind their necks (and lose their balance and topple over about half the time) and spend a good chunk of their waking time playing bap and bite, which seems like a fun game if you're a kitten. Plus they have their little paws under them and are walking steadily and even doing short bursts of running...until their back legs lose traction on the hardwood floor and they end up sprawled indignantly on their bellies.
I took more than 300 pictures of these three furlings this past week. They all look like this one. Well, that's not entirely true...some are blurrier. I need to get them outside in bright light so I can get a decent shot for next week. (Plus, I need to get a tummy picture for Layla...)
But didn't I say something about four?
Meet number four, aka Fluff Fruffle. See, the folks up at the Inn at the Lucky
Mud (where River came from) got adopted by another stray cat. Who
turned out to be pregnant. Or is that redundant? Stray
cat...pregnant...yeah, seems redundant somehow. So their stray brought these little fluff balls up to the front of the Inn one day and I happened to be there. Snagged! This guy is the oldest and biggest, also the darkest and fluffiest, and we both were pretty much instantly smitten.
So we convinced ourselves decided that what we really want is two oldest males — we're also planning on keeping Trubble — on the grounds that every little smidge of body mass or aggression they bring to the table gives them a better chance of making it out here in the wilds. And from the look of those paws, the fluffThing fruffleThing is going to be a big kitty.