It's Raining Cats and Cats

Our cat had a litter of seven kittens just about a month ago. In a few days these little sweeties will be four weeks old. The last kitten was stillborn and so she is caring for six, hungry, little mouths. As you can see, every one of her babies is a ginger tabby but already we can see some distinctive personalities. There's DeSoto, a little boy wanderer, who although was still just crawling really, would set out to the furthest reaches of their box. There's "The Screamer" who, you guessed it, is the noisy one of the bunch and shrieks like a maniac when we pick her up. My daughter has named her favorite "Simon" - I guess she just likes the name. Dinky is the runt and shows promise of a really good, friendly boy. He always answers when I talk to them with an inaudible meow. Another is "Hissy-Spit" due to greeting everyone with a hiss and a spit. We all watched their birth on March 31st beginning at around 3:40 in the morning... Not a convenient time at all for a litter of kittens to debut. We had thought there may be five at the most since she is not a big cat. But when seven babies came along we all were amazed.  Here she is just a few days prior to the big event:

Now they are beginning to play with each other and we caught one cleaning its little face two days ago. They are so much fun to watch and to cuddle. We have already found homes for most of them and we will be keeping one.

I will keep updating their progress, so check in for pictures and notes from the land of the crazy cat lady.