Six

I'm confused. How is it that my little kittens are six years old now?

When cheshcat and I lived in Arizona, we fed the stray cats at our apartment complex. Some of those feral cats eventually warmed up to us enough to let us touch them. Six years ago yesterday, one of those kitties decided that she wanted to come into our apartment. I was in Japan at the time, but cheshcat noticed that this kitty looked like she had swallowed a basketball! Very, very pregnant!

We talked and decided that the best thing to do would be to let the kitty come inside and lock her in the second bathroom. The isolation would keep our beloved Foxy and Totoro safe, in case she was carrying anything, and we could then contact a local shelter to take her so that her babies could be born indoors. We were concerned that she would otherwise give birth in the heat of the Sonoran desert -- still rather intense, even in September -- and that most of the kittens would not survive.

Six years ago today, I received a phone call from cheshcat shortly before I was ready to go to bed in Japan. Looking at the clock, I quickly worked out what time it was for her, sixteen hours earlier. It was very nearly time for her class to start.

"Why aren't you on your way to class?" I asked of her.

"Because the kittens started coming out," was her reply.

"Oh." I paused. "Yeah, that's a good reason."

Despite Chesh's attempts to keep the mother in the bathtub, she had insisted on giving birth in the litterbox... which contained clumping litter! The first two kittens were covered in litter and Chesh needed to snatch them away from their mum to break the sack under running water before they suffocated! Whoops! Momma cat wasn't so happy about having her newborns snatched away, but it did the trick. The second two came into this world less eventfully. In under twenty-four hours, we had gone from being a household of two cats to a household of seven!

Five months later, in February 2003, we flew the mother -- whom we had named Rocks[*] -- to New York City and gave her into the care of the lovely ms_redcat... where she still lives today. After failing to find homes for the kittens, we decided to keep all four: Stumpy, Chirp, Nona, and The Boy. Six years later, The Boy lives with us here in my secret lair on Skullcrusher Mountain, while Stumpy and Chirp live with their uncle gyades at my other home -- the Event Horizon[**]. Nona stayed with us for five years, then moved to Nebraska with polymorphism last August. We did not want to let her go, but she clearly loved polymorphism best, and it seemed cruel to separate them.

How did the tiny kitty in my icon above -- The Boy as a kitten -- turn into the moose sleeping on the bed in the next room? Can it really be six years now since he was that small? Unbelievable! As the amazing resourceress likes to say: Time's fun when you're having flies!

---

[*] Because, although sweet, she is as dumb as a box of rocks.

[**] With plans to import them to Oxford in January 2009.

Six

I'm confused. How is it that my little kittens are six years old now?

When cheshcat and I lived in Arizona, we fed the stray cats at our apartment complex. Some of those feral cats eventually warmed up to us enough to let us touch them. Six years ago yesterday, one of those kitties decided that she wanted to come into our apartment. I was in Japan at the time, but cheshcat noticed that this kitty looked like she had swallowed a basketball! Very, very pregnant!

We talked and decided that the best thing to do would be to let the kitty come inside and lock her in the second bathroom. The isolation would keep our beloved Foxy and Totoro safe, in case she was carrying anything, and we could then contact a local shelter to take her so that her babies could be born indoors. We were concerned that she would otherwise give birth in the heat of the Sonoran desert -- still rather intense, even in September -- and that most of the kittens would not survive.

Six years ago today, I received a phone call from cheshcat shortly before I was ready to go to bed in Japan. Looking at the clock, I quickly worked out what time it was for her, sixteen hours earlier. It was very nearly time for her class to start.

"Why aren't you on your way to class?" I asked of her.

"Because the kittens started coming out," was her reply.

"Oh." I paused. "Yeah, that's a good reason."

Despite Chesh's attempts to keep the mother in the bathtub, she had insisted on giving birth in the litterbox... which contained clumping litter! The first two kittens were covered in litter and Chesh needed to snatch them away from their mum to break the sack under running water before they suffocated! Whoops! Momma cat wasn't so happy about having her newborns snatched away, but it did the trick. The second two came into this world less eventfully. In under twenty-four hours, we had gone from being a household of two cats to a household of seven!

Five months later, in February 2003, we flew the mother -- whom we had named Rocks[*] -- to New York City and gave her into the care of the lovely ms_redcat... where she still lives today. After failing to find homes for the kittens, we decided to keep all four: Stumpy, Chirp, Nona, and The Boy. Six years later, The Boy lives with us here in my secret lair on Skullcrusher Mountain, while Stumpy and Chirp live with their uncle gyades at my other home -- the Event Horizon[**]. Nona stayed with us for five years, then moved to Nebraska with polymorphism last August. We did not want to let her go, but she clearly loved polymorphism best, and it seemed cruel to separate them.

How did the tiny kitty in my icon above -- The Boy as a kitten -- turn into the moose sleeping on the bed in the next room? Can it really be six years now since he was that small? Unbelievable! As the amazing resourceress likes to say: Time's fun when you're having flies!

---

[*] Because, although sweet, she is as dumb as a box of rocks.

[**] With plans to import them to Oxford in January 2009.