Look who showed up this morning!

While feeding the outside cats, I could hear a quiet meowing from the storage house and went to check. There she was, peeking around the corner!

She did eventually come over for pets. I was even able to pick her up. As soon as I turned towards the house, though, that was it. She was done!

So I continued what I was doing, and soon saw her at what had been her favorite spot to eat; at the food bowl under the shrine.

Unfortunately, while I was way out by the sign cam, I started hearing a cat fight. I ran over and when I got there, I saw Butterscotch being chased up a tree by Shop Towel (aka: Sad Face), the visiting tom!

I was not impressed.

I did manage to chase him off, but Butterscotch wouldn’t come down from the tree while I was around. She was still up there when I left for the city, but she was gone when I got back.

At least she did come back, and I hope we can eventually persuade her to come back indoors!

This next photo is from last night, and it’s just hilarious.

Yup. Two Toes Toni is “nursing” all of the babies!

A couple of them had tried to nurse on her before and she let them. I was on my way out of my room when I saw Tin Whistle trying to latch on, and she seemed okay with it. I came back to my room a couple of minutes later and found all of them latched on, and TTT looking so very content.

No, she is not lactating. They’re getting nothing from her right now but the comfort of nursing, and not getting hissed at, hit or bit by their mother. In fact, TTT was right into grooming as many of them as she could reach.

Looks like they have claimed each other. 😄

If they keep nursing on her, she may start lactating again, but it would depend on how often and how consistently they do it.

Maybe they can teach her how to use a litter box.

Before leaving for the room for any length of time, I scatter stuff all over my bed to keep her from peeing on it. So far, it seems to be working. No more wet spots. However, she is dedicated to using the space under my desk. If I’m in my room, I’m working at my desk, so she won’t even try to go under there (though it certainly doesn’t stop the kittens!). She waits until I’m either asleep or out of the room. I caught her trying to dig around on my bed yesterday evening, so I shooed her away, spread stuff over where she had been digging, then left the room, in hopes my being gone would let her feel relaxed enough to use a litter box, or even the puppy pads, while I was out. She didn’t. In fact, even this morning, the puppy pads were still laid out flat. I couldn’t tell if she used any of the litter boxes, though. So I wasn’t surprised when I got back from the city and found one of puppy pads dug up and used.

I don’t get it. The litter box is RIGHT THERE. Why won’t she use it??

She’s healed up enough we can let her out of the room, though she’s still pretty hesitant about going out the door. The kittens have no such hesitation and I end up having to close the door before she has a chance to leave, just to keep the kittens in. They are too small to let out. Mostly because they can get into things in the basement that larger cats can’t. When they do escape, they usually right straight down the hall and either into my husband’s room, or the bathroom. Tin Whistle likes to run around the basement door and sit there between the door and the 1″ hardware cloth “door” we made to keep the cats out of the old basement, but still allow for air circulation. So far, they have not tried to go upstairs, nor up the steps to the dining room.

Some of the other cats are intensely curious about them when they do escape!

Do you have any idea how hard it is to juggle 3 kittens on one arm, while trying to open a door with the other and not letting the remaining two kittens out?

I really hope we can adopt these babies out soon.

The Re-Farmer