[Disclamer: I have a soft spot in my psyche for pregnant females, and moms, of almost any species]

So, I'm browsing merrily away tonight, getting caught up on email and such, when I notice, on a trip to the kitchen to check on some chicken breasts I was braising, that MamaCat's food bowl looked like it hadn't been touched.

As it turns out, she'd not eaten, or I think drank, since she had her litter last night. I took her food and water from the kitchen over to her box. She jumped hungrily on it, now that she could eat and drink without leaving her new kits.

I had just assumed she'd leave them alone long enough for that while I was away working today.

Funny to find more dedication in a cat than you see in some human mothers.

Here are some of the pics I took of her tonight. (You don't wanna see the pics from last night when the kits were still all slimy and stuff.)

For sake of completeness, I suppose you should see her the day I met her.

The daddy of this litter is T-Bone, who you may have seen here when he was a muchkin himself.

Here as some assorted pics of the kits at about 24 hours old. I know they're not all that good, but I wasn't gonna do much more than stick my hand in the box and shoot, as I didn't wanna disturb them any more than I had to.

There's one that looks just like TBone, a pure white one, (dunno how that happened) two black ones, one of which is sporting some ORANGE highlights - obviously the purrfect cat for Halloween, and one that is a very strange sorta dark champagne color.

At this point they're very small, about the size of jumbo mice. Mama herself is a smallish cat, maybe about six or seven pounds, with a small head and dainty features.

The Champagne kitten, next to the orange and black one.

The black one and the Mini-TBone

TBone and his Dad, Smokey Joe.

There a nearly constant scramble for prime feeding stations, and the kittens roll around is sort of a Brownian circulation. A clear example of the common sayin' in these parts about "sucking hind tit."

... Link (0 comments) ... Comment

OK, she sent me this one today, along with the comment that her mom said she looked like a model in this pic.

No Screaming Eagle Shit, as we used to say in the Corps.

... Link (2 comments) ... Comment

Miss Kitty just had a birthday. I gave her a digital camera and a memory card for her present. She took this pic herself and sent it to me with the disclaimer that she didn't think it "looked too good."

She was always a pretty girl, even as a baby, but now, as I see her smack dab in the middle of the transition from pretty girl to beautiful woman, I am simply awestruck.

She'll be coming to visit soon, as she makes her annual visit to the Texas Renaissance Festival. I can't wait to see her again. It's been waaaay too long.

... Link