While going outside to investigate some animal noises (the visiting toms were at each other again), my daughter and I were surprised by another noise.

A tiny, squeaking noise.

Coming from the old dog house.

It was dark, but I went over in hopes I could see something by the security light, but backed off immediately when I heard growling. Mom was home, and I didn’t want to scare her away.

This morning, I went over to sneak a picture. I couldn’t see inside, so I couldn’t tell if Mama was in there. I just stood by the side of dog house and reached around with my phone.

It was enough to startle the mama out, so I quickly took a photo and left, hoping for the best. A quick glance at my phone, and I figured there were at least two, but it wasn’t until I uploaded the picture to my desktop that I could finally see how many kittens there were.

I was wrong.

There are four of them!

Oh, my melting heart.

This is Mom – the one I had designated Rosencrantz, because she has more orange on her than her sibling.

Which means that Guildenstern is probably going to be having a litter, too – unless Guildenstern is male. We’ve never been able to socialize these two enough to know for sure.

I would love to be able to bring her and the babies into the maternity ward in the sun room, but we would have to catch the mom, first, and she is just way too shy. The best we can do is leave her alone and stay away from the dog house as much as possible, so she doesn’t move them somewhere else. If they stay close, we’ll have a better chance of socializing the babies, at least.

Beep Beep has not had her babies yet, and she is so huge. I would not be surprised if she had more than four in there.

I am really hoping we’ll be able to adopt these ones out. Otherwise, as my mother joked when we talked about the kittens, we’re going to be a cat farm. :-/

The Re-Farmer