September 15, 2005

• too much for a young mother to handle
  
  Hilary, our cat who had kittens when she was hardly more than a kitten
  herself, has been freaking out.  I neglected to mention that on my
  last trip to town along with the load of mongo, I brought back one of
  Frankie’s kittens.  That leaves Frankie (who had gone
  frighteningly skinny coping with a litter of six) only four kittens to
  nurse now, since Greyfox had already given another of the kittens away.

  I mentioned recently that Hilary had been nervous and cranky because
  her kittens were newly active and all over the house where she was
  unable to keep track of them.  She decided for some reason that
  our teddy bear of a dog, Koji, who had been thoroughly intimidated by
  old Granny cat when he was a tiny pup, is now a threat to her
  kittens.  Koji hasn’t quite been the same since his encounter with
  the stomping moose in January.  He’s got a bad case of doggy PTSD
  to begin with, and now Hilary keeps chasing him into corners every time
  he even so much as sniffs at one of her kittens. 

  Poor Koji.  He loves to sniff cat butts, and he HAS to get close and sniff at anything 
  that moves in his environment.  When the kittens aren’t sleeping
  they’re in constant motion.  Several times a day I’ll hear hisses,
  yips and growls and scrabbling claws as Koji gets harried into a corner
  again.

  The
  first few days that Albion, the new kitten, was here, Hilary hissed and
  growled at him and tried to protect her kittens from him.  The
  kittens, of course, weren’t having any of that.  When mom was out
  of range, and even right under her nose, they would tumble and play
  with Albion as kittens do.  Albion would approach wistfully when
  they were suckling, and everyone would have their meal interrupted as
  Hilary chased the interloper off.

  I suppose that after a few days of rolling around on the floor
  together, all the kittens started smelling the same.  Whether it
  was that, or that Hilary just took pity on him, yesterday she started
  letting Albion nurse, too. 

  He had been fretful and whiny and sorta jumpy, naturally traumatized by
  the 50-mile ride up the valley nestled between my lap and the steering
  wheel in a pillowcase, and the hostile reception he’d gotten at first
  in this strange place.  Now he clings to his new mom a little more
  than her other three kittens do, but he seems okay otherwise.

  I
  hope Hilary will lighten up and relent a little with Koji.  A
  couple of nights ago, all four kittens discovered the secret entrance
  to the box spring under my bed.  They were zinging and twanging
  around in there among the springs most of the last two nights.  It
  made me feel as if I was sleeping on a pinball machine.

  Koji usually sleeps on the bed with me, but with her babies in there
  where she couldn’t get to them, Hilary took up a guard post beside the
  bed.  Every time Koji approached, she would chase him away. 
  He has been sleeping curled up in the corner near his feeding station,
  in the draft from the crack under the door.  It can’t be very
  comfortable for him, and I miss having my foot warmer on the bed, too.

  I can only hope that the kittens soon tire of the underbed pin-cat
  machine, or that they quickly grow too big to squeeze through the
  secret entrance.  I’m not even sure exactly where and how they get
  into the box spring, but I know that getting them out of it would
  require some major furniture moving and possibly some disassembly as
  well.

  

  • 8:58 pm
  • 14 Comments