We took the risk this morning.

Or, should I say, my daughters did.

I had a highly interrupted night last night, getting to bed late and repeatedly awakened by kittens and cats, and woke up with a splitting headache from lack of sleep. I’ll be so happy when I can start opening my door again, but not with the kittens so small and so active.

My daughters took care of feeding the outside cats, then collected the kittens from the rotting barrel, moving them to the nest I made for them in the sun room.

There did turn out to be eight kittens. The biggest litter we’ve seen yet!

I got this picture when I finally headed outside to check the garden. It took me a few times looking at the photo before I figured out where the 8th one was. All you can see is its nose!

There are two black tabbies on there – the stripes are barely visible – plus one almost all black tabby. The colours on these kittens are amazing!

They seemed content as we checked on them, but I’m concerned about the mother. She has always been the more feral of the yard cats. When my daughters saw her around after moving the litter, one of them took a kitten to show the mama. She started to follow towards the house for a bit, then went away. Later on, I saw her coming out of the barrel, then heading to the house for food. She has been in the sun room before – pretty much all that cats have, at some point – but she has never been one to stay close to the house. I’m hoping she at least comes in to tend to her babies. Even if she ends up moving them somewhere else, it won’t be back to that barrel, which would be an improvement.

Still, we have to keep a careful eye on the babies, and make sure not to scare the mama away.

I hope we did the right thing in moving them.

The Re-Farmer