Apparently, our retirement from fostering was wishful thinking!

Randy's last picture with Bobby

Just a couple of weeks before we had to euthanize Randy, our kitten fostering "business" had to be started up again and the guest room became a nursery once more.





I was off from work for Wednesday, Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
 
On Friday, I was coming home from Dollar General just before dusk. As I neared our driveway I saw something running across the road in front of the mayor's house, I thought it was probably a squirrel. However, as I got closer I saw it was a tiny grey tabby kitten - only 6 weeks old or so!

I pulled over and walked toward the driveway and saw a large box on its side next to his garbage can and the kitten was walking from it towards the front porch. Then I saw the other one, a small calico, crying piteously just outside the mayor's door. I saw that Tim (Silverhill's Mayor) was not home and thought "Jeez these kittens are too young to go outside, they are barely a mouthful for any roving predator!"

I scooped them up and put them back in the box that was so conveniently clean and available and put them in the back of the Kia. I then spent just a couple of minutes looking for any other litter-mates that might be around. Not finding any, I pulled up our driveway across the street and carried them inside, yelling "Judy - I've got kittens!" I gave Judy the Reader's Digest condensed version and went back out to search the vicinity for any other kittens or maybe their mother - as I am now thinking these could have been dumped and not belong to Tim at all.

I drove all around the area in the golf cart, peering under bushes and such and asking the evening walkers in the neighborhood if they had seen or knew anything. I spotted one cat that I thought might be the mother, but she was not in nursing condition and these babies were definitely still on the teat, they were so small. It turns out she is a non-feral stray that is taken care of by various neighbors.

Ginger

Marcus

I regret that I didn't take any pictures of them then, but they were in good condition - clean and well-fed so I suspect that someone was just too stupid, lazy and irresponsible to find homes for them and did the cowardly thing by dumping them.

I also suspect that they somehow heard about the "cat lady" who rescues cats and kittens in our area (Judy of course) and made a half-assed attempt to get them to us.


I shudder to think what would have happened to them if I had not made that trip to the store.

New kits on the block

That night was the coldest night up to that point this season and I think it might have even gotten to freezing.

At any rate, I ran back out to get kitten milk and Judy fixed them up in the guest room and the process began yet again. Marcus and Ginger (Judy's names) are growing fast and developing real personalities and have just had their shots and gotten their little operations to get them ready for Forever Homes.

They use ALL the cat furniture

Although they still sleep in the Kitten Room, they have been unleashed upon the rest of the house and are learning how to get along in a MULTI-cat household.

Fearless as most of them are at that age, they keep the activity level high around the house.

The older, mostly-outside cats are tolerating them more now that they are learning some manners.

Reggie loves having youngsters around

 As seems to be the case in the past, the youngest of our permanent residents pretty much adopt the kittens and play with them almost constantly, much to our delight. However, the job is spread around considerably now, with Cee-Cee being the primary "nanny cat" and Jasmine, Reggie, Willow and even Ollie a bit, pitching in at playtime.





Playtime is, as you can imagine, pretty much anytime and all the time. Interestingly, the youngsters adapted to the cat door that opens to the porch VERY quickly. Believe me, they take advantage of the extra running, climbing, sliding and chasing room available to them.

They are quite a handful and won't slow down much for pictures so I shot some video too.

So now we are back up to 14 in residence. With Randy gone, the permanent number is back down to 12 and I will be posting ads on Craig's List in a few days. We are NOT KEEPING THESE TWO.