My daughters and I were outdoors when Rolando Moon appeared. We haven’t seen her for weeks! As we went around the yard, my younger daughter noticed Rolando was growling at something by the outhouse, so she went to investigate. Next to the outhouse are two old rotting barrels. One of them doesn’t have a top, so there’s a piece of sheet metal weighted down with a brick that covers most of the opening.

There was a cat inside!

This was a surprise, and I thought it might be stuck in there, so my daughter move the brick and started to move the metal, only to have the cat burst out and run away.

Not far away, though.

This would be why.

Yup. It’s another litter of kittens! Very, very young ones!

I’ve zoomed into the full size photos and tried to see how many there are. There are at least 6, but there may actually be more!

Oh, my goodness. I just realized that there is another kitten under that board, towards the right! Which means there might be as many as 8 kittens in this litter! This is the largest litter we’ve ever seen.

The mama is one of the more feral tabbies that I noticed a while back, looking ready to give birth any time.

I think. It may actually be another mama. The one in the above photo has stripes. The one I saw today, I thought it was more spotted than striped. I really didn’t get to see her much at all. As I said, she’s one of the more feral mamas.

That is really not a good place for kittens. It’s certainly a very safe place, but with the way it’s covered, rain would be getting in there, and everything’s all hard and dirty.

If the mother were less feral, I’d be making a box nest and working to get the babies out, then setting the box somewhere the mother will find them, but if we do that, she might just abandon them. She would certainly end up moving them somewhere else.

*sigh*

Too many kittens!

The Re-Farmer