Shhh ... the Cuties are Sleeping

 

If you are wondering what has happened to the cats and kittens, they have been kept safe and warm by our kind neighbour who doesn't mind cats.

It happened on a day when William was out for a few hours and when he returned, he discovered that only the white kitten was left in the box. The parent cats had mysteriously disappeared along with the rest of the kittens!

He called me and told me about what had happened. He suspected that someone had taken the cats and their babies away and asked me to go and buy milk powder for the remaining kitten while he brought it into the house.

I spent more than $30 buying a tin of cat milk powder and a baby animal milk bottle. By the time I got home, he smilingly informed me that the mother cat was transferring the kittens into our neighbour's house. When she returned for the last kitten, the neighbour's son had closed the door to prevent her from entering, thinking that it was just a stray cat which had roamed into his house.

William found the cat panicking at the neighbour's door. He knocked on the door to explain what had happened. The two of them finally found all the kittens  hidden behind a standing, rolled-up mattress! Apparently, the mother cat was looking for a safe place to keep her babies.

William brought all the kittens and their mother back and put them in the shower cubicle. He read that in the process of moving kittens from one place to another, mother cats often drop them, and it could lead to the kittens dying when they are dropped often enough.

However, constraining the cat in a tiny space was hardly a great idea as the mother cat was getting restless in the small space. For the first time, the usually gentle cat bit William on the hand and scratched it when he pushed her back into the cubicle as she tried to make her escape.

When my neighbour returned from work and came to visit the cat and her babies, I asked if it was possible for her to keep them as I am scared of cats. She readily agreed to keep them for at least a month. We will decide on what to do after that.

We visit the cats quite frequently. The last we visited, all the kittens have opened their eyes and feeding very well. The mother cat is very comfortable in the house and would exit the house to go down the block to relieve herself. Once, when the door was closed at night and she was not able to make her way out, she went to the bathroom and excreted on the floor trap! We deduced that she was probably someone's pet and is therefore litter-trained.

I have grown to like the cat because of her gentle and almost human-like nature but I still cringe when her fur brushes against my legs.