Who could have predicted, at my age, my 'maternal instincts' would be triggered by kittens

[Siwsan]

Don't get me wrong - I was, and still am, a very hands on and affectionate Auntie and Great-Auntie. I just chose other things over maternity. But these little sweethearts have touched me in a very deep and protective way. I'm constantly checking on them, playing with them, and thinking of little 'enrichment' activities. When I wake up in the middle of the night, my first instinct is to check on them, but that has proven to be unnecessary. Every little advancement brings me SUCH joy. I don't even mind having to chase after little Squeaky, who has become quite the little speed demon. Smokey started doing the 'kitten hop' today. Madoc has figured out just the right, tiny meow to get me to pick him up and Sootie is just a flat out snuggle bug.

On Sunday, when my family is here, I'm going to get some GOOD photos of the kittens so you can see their sweet faces. They are such little wiggle worms, I can't hold them and get a photo, and if they are on the ground, they are RUNNING.

Giving the 3 up to good homes is going to be emotionally painful, but I know they are all going to have a much better life than if I had just left them in the garden.

Thanks for indulging my blithering!!

[MLAA]

1. I really enjoy following their progress! Keep the updates coming!

[Siwsan]

2. I most definitely will!

I'm having a moment of peace, right now, because they are all having a post breakfast snooze.

[MLAA]

16. I think I could use a post breakfast snooze!

[Siwsan]

17. I'm facing a pre-lunch adventure in lawn mowing

I thought it was going to be MUCH cooler, today, but I was wrong. So, best get that done before the heat and humidity really ramp up.

[niyad]

3. This newest chapter in your life is bringing so much joy to so many of us, and we

thank you for sharing with us. Your updates are the first thing I look for each morning. Looking forward to seeing their sweet faces.

You know, of course, that one of the next steps will be when they discover the joys of climbing up your legs. I recommend long pants, no shorts.

Thnk you for so many smiles and joys.

[Siwsan]

4. Sootie was just 'attached' to my shirt

I'm so glad you are enjoying this journey with me.

As soon as they are big enough, I'm going to find a kitten collar so I can definitively tell Sootie from Smokey without having to do a side by side comparison, trying to figure out which one is SLIGHTLY bigger (Smokey). It was easy when Smokey was still hissing and spitting at me but that's long past, now. Well, Sootie was, too, but not as aggressively. The vet told me that was a sign that, left for much longer, it might have been more difficult to habituate them to the point where they could really trust humans.

[niyad]

5. "Just In Time" from "Bells Are Ringing" is playing in my head now.

[Random Boomer]

21. Spicy kittens

About four years ago, my wife spied what she thought was a rat running away from a food dish on our front porch. When it came back she realized that it was a tiny grey kitten, not a rat after all. Over the following days the kitten made himself at home in our backyard, and Elsa, our housecat, adopted him. We would see them lying together in a pile of straw or wandering through the yard; he followed her everywhere, except into the house at night.

The kitten ran from us at first, but eventually I coaxed it to come eat from the food dish I set out in the yard. Then it let me get closer... and closer... but the first time I tried to touch him it was like setting off a furry grenade -- so much hissing and spitting, with this teeny tiny kitten arching its back like a Halloween cat!

A few weeks later he finally followed Elsa into the house and stayed the night, and then it took a few more weeks before he was comfortable being petted. Now, I can pick Smudge up and he purrs, and sometime he'll even jump onto my lap and fall asleep. But the feral streak is still there: he wants to be outside, coming in only for meals or if the weather is especially bad. Most of the time he tolerates being inside for the night, but when the weather is really nice he'll throw a fit and start beating up the other cats, even Elsa, until we let him out.

We've had much better luck with the kittens we got early and started handling when they were younger than Smudge. Pepper was abandoned quite literally on our back porch at about 4 weeks of age, and I was handling him within a day or two. Unlike Smudge, he loved the touch. I think he was really scared at being all alone in the big bad world. Pepper has just turned one year old and he's my goofball gentle giant. He'll play outside (fenced-in back yard) for a little while, but he's the first to want to come back inside and he loves being petted and held.

[Siwsan]

24. All four of these kittens seem to love being held and petted

But they also love to run FREE, the short distance I allow. The last thing I want is to have to move furniture to retrieve one of them. If I'm sitting on the floor with them, they all will crawl up on my lap and either just curl up or use me as a spring board. And they are all pretty chatty, with Squeaky being the king of chatter. He sounds like a bird.

I will forever remember watching the vet as he saw how active and alert both Madoc and Squeaky are, despite being small. He put a little pate cat food down on the exam table and Squeaky went face first, into it. The vet laughed and said, yea, he wants more than just milk! I'm still making them a slurry so that I'm sure they are staying hydrated as they learn what water is for - other than washing their feet. And I'm giving both Madoc and Squeaky a little extra water via an eye dropper. They absolutely refuse to take any liquid from a bottle but they really get into lapping it up from the dropper.

And this morning they absolutely licked the food bowls clean. I'm gradually figuring out just how much they need and since they are all thriving and growing, I guess I'm getting it pretty close to right.

The crazy thing is to see how MUCH they are growing and changing, in less than a week! I'm already excited to start comparing photos, as time goes on.

And from the aroma I just caught, I think their poopers are working, just fine.

[blm]

11. ✔️

[TuxedoKat]

6. Thanks for saving them

Are you keeping one of them? Maybe your family will take some too...

[Siwsan]

7. I'm keeping one, my niece is taking one, a friend is taking one, and.....

my niece is going to contact a friend who just lost a cat, to see if she might want the last one.

But they will stay with me for, probably, another month. That's what has been recommended.

[NJCher]

8. That's fantastic

Then maybe once in a while they can get to see their brudders and sisters. It will also make it easier to part with them because you will know you can still see them.

[robbob]

9. How's mommy cat doing?

Any chance she’ll ever be less then fully feral?

[Siwsan]

10. She's back to stopping by for a meal

I think both she and Skittish are far too feral to ever really be anything other than meal time visitors, but that's ok. Catching and spaying them will bring me some peace of mind. And neutering Bruiser. He's the only Tom that comes around my house. Actually, I haven't seen any new ferals in quite a while. There used to be 3 or 4 others that have disappeared.

[Random Boomer]

22. Ferals come and go in our neighborhood

We have a few familiar regulars who have been around for years, but most of them appear for awhile and then disappear and we're left wondering whether they were just passing through and found new territory or whether they just couldn't survive with all the competition for resources.

[seta1950]

12. Thanks for sharing

It’s like a light in all the darkness in the news

[MuseRider]

13. I do not "know" you at all

but your care and love for the kittens and cats around you says so much about you that if I never knew anything else I would want to be your friend. You have a great big heart that is saving lives of innocent little creatures, can there be any heart better than that? Nope.

[Siwsan]

14. Don't you go making me tear up!!!

Thank you SO much for the kind words. I might wear the shell of a warrior, but I am pretty mushy, inside. I come by that honestly from my dad and grandfather.

The joy and laughter these kittens are bringing me FAR outweigh anything I'm doing for them.

[Niagara]

15. Thank you for indulging us with your kitten adventures.

It was a pleasure reading about your kitten adventures, so thank you for sharing with us. It was super surprising that Spooky was actually a mommy with nursing kittens.

[CaptainTruth]

18. Thanks for the updates! They remind me of when I fostered kittens.

I can relate to your joy in watching them grow, I felt the same. Giving them up was hard but in my case, with the shelter I fostered for, I always got a new batch of little ones when I returned the current batch at 9 weeks old, so I had a constant supply of kittens.

That made me popular with the neighbors & my kittens were very well socialized because folks were always stopping by to snuggle them & play with them. I had one that was so cute & snuggly she stood out from the rest & she got adopted by a lady who did therapeutic visits to hospitals & nursing homes. The kitty became part of her therapy program, & there was even an article in the local paper about her & the kitty.

[Siwsan]

19. This is definitely a fun adventure

An entire re-organization of my usual routine, that's for sure. But then I've gotten used to that sort of thing, over the past 18 or so months. At least this re-organization is caused by something positive.

[slightlv]

20. I'm a foster fail...

Every time a kitten (or cat) would show up homeless, hungry, and needy I'd take it in, determined to work on socialization and then find them a good home.

It just so happened, that good home was mine! (LOL) I'm the veritable crazy cat lady around here. But that's okay. Most of mine are adults now, a few are -very- elderly (as in over 20 yrs old), and I have 3 who are 2 this last month. Also rescued this enormous hound dog who is so afraid of the cats! Wants to constantly play with at least one or two of them, but one look at his huge feet and they decide against it. Only my Norwegian Forest Cat will even give a thought to playing and loving on poor Lexie pupper.

I never was real maternal until critters came into my life. I also inched my hubby over the line with me. Two of the rescues were his alone (and held to him, alone). We've built a catio in the backyard and the house LOOKS like we have a ton of kids, from all the toys on the floor! (hehehe)

[Random Boomer]

27. Wait, I don't remember writing this post

Just at the time my wife and I were saying "We need to scale back, no more new pets" we took in a young stray cat, for TNR only we said, we'll let her go back into the neighborhood pool when she gets back from the vet, we said. Of course that didn't happen, because she was a sweetheart and showed no interest in leaving us.

Then a feral kitten moved into our backyard and what could we do, right? We couldn't just let him starve in front of our eyes. He was too wild to rehome, so he became part of the household, too.

Another stray kitten was one too many, so we took her in just until we could get her spayed and find her a home. Only she was a really grumpy cat, turned to fat right away (after being starved for so long, she wasn't about to stop eating), and had a tendency to pull out her hair. Not exactly adoptable material, so she's still here.

During the pandemic yet another tiny kitten showed up on our back porch, and we absolutely could not take on another cat so I promised my wife faithfully that we would get him a new home as soon as he had his first shots.... his second shots... was neutered... had recovered from being neutered.... And she finally relented because I loved him so much, and he was such a snugglebunny, but he was ABSOLUTELY THE LAST CAT. The problem was that as an "only" kitten, he was having a hard time getting socialized properly. The adult cats loathed him and he was getting quite rough with everyone, humans included.

With winter approaching, we were concerned about yet another kitten living in our back alley. She was too old to consider turning into a pet, but at the very least we had to TNR because she was a tiny thing and would have difficult surviving a pregnancy. So she spent a week in our house recuperating from surgery and to our surprise she started playing with Only Kitten and his behavior problems quickly faded away now that he had a playmate. And the little stray followed his lead and quickly adapted to being a housecat. She now is one of the first to claim my lap when I sit down.

So here we are in our late 60s with a house full of young cats. Not exactly what we had planned to do, but here we are nonetheless.

[slightlv]

28. I loved this, Random Boomer!

It sounds so much like our house here! One cat, dearly departed now, was chased up a tree by toms, who had already killed the rest of the litter. He was squalling so loud, I heard him from inside the house. I went outside with a baseball bat to beat up whatever kids were doing whatever to the kitten. That's when I saw the situation. Once I ran the toms off, I was standing under the branch this handful of cat was clinging to when he suddenly let go and landed right on my head! I called him "Peaches."

Our three young ones are all siblings. We did the TNR to the feral colony at the old house, but when we moved over here we noticed that though these cats knew what houses to hit for food and pets, they had NO street sense whatsoever. They'd lay out in the middle of the street, completely oblivious. Two of them are nearly identical tuxedo tabby's, and the other is a muted tabby. So, we scooped them up and, with the "mean" cat (according to my husband) that had laid down in the crook of my arm and looked lovingly into my eyes with those wonderful slow blinks, we took 'em all over to the new house to join the "old crew."

We're a special bunch of people, ya know? There's just so much meanness all around us. It's a small thing to help an animal in need, but it restores your soul, at least for a little while...

Now I gotta go see what the ruckus at the bird feeders are. Got a new bird who's chirping out a warning I've never heard before. I think it's a ladderback woodpecker... no doubt mad at the row of cats lined up facing him from the catio! (LOL)

[femmedem]

23. Maternal instincts triggered by kittens is only the first step, LOL.

I'm also childless by choice but my love for the ferals has expanded my maternal instincts to the point where every time I go outside, I'm rescuing flies from the water dish I put out for various critters.

Like everyone else, I'm getting a lot of joy from your kittens.

[Siwsan]

26. After the stress of the past, well, FIVE years, it's nice to post about something to smile about

No doubt being so sad when I realized that little Tuxie, Skittish's smallest kitten, had disappeared, has really motivated me to make sure these kittens would NEVER meet a similar fate, what ever that fate may have been.

There's been too much stress, death and sadness - It feels so good to focus on something positive.

[Random Boomer]

29. Our two youngest kitten rescues saved my sanity this past year

They brought so much joy into our restricted lives and lifted my spirits. There was a sameness to the days before they arrived, a real sense of growing claustrophobia.

I won't be going back to work now, my company has agreed to permanent WFH until my retirement, so I'll keep them around without interruption.

[Phentex]

25. Love the updates but...

also really enjoy your pictures of flowers and other creatures you come across. Thanks for sharing!

[IcyPeas]

30. can't wait to see the little wigglefloofs good luck with the photoshoot

😻

[applegrove]

31. You do them justice with their names and activities.