Here's the short version: Fed a stray cat. Thought it was a boy. Really a girl. A pregnant girl. She kept coming around. Disappeared. Came back not pregnant. Five weeks later discovered three kittens under our house. Really four. Raised them up. Found homes for three. Kept one. And the mama. So we went from 0 cats to 5 to 2 in six months time. Welcome to our madhouse.
And now the long version: A few months ago--way back around March and April--I noticed a tabby cat was often hanging around our house. Unlike most strays, this one didn't spook easily around humans and would let you pet them. My feline anatomical understandings being somewhat rusty, I thought the cat was a male and I dubbed him Robert Louis Stevenson--or Louie for short--in the grand Hayman tradition of naming our pets after authors and literary characters. I started putting some food out for the Louie (leftover from our dear departed Suyom) and he'd come around every so often.
Well, he grew bolder and bolder and started coming by every day, even sometimes just inviting himself into our house where he would curl up and sleep on our rug for an hour or two before heading back outside. I thought he was a sweet cat, but wasn't sure I wanted to adopt him (thinking he might have a home somewhere else) and not sure I wanted the responsibility again. But he was tolerant of the kids and very easy going so I couldn't make up my mind what to do with him and therefore did nothing.
My brother and sister-in-law dropped by for a visit in April, maybe early May, and wondered if I knew our cat was pregnant. When I adamantly insisted it was a boy, they dropped the matter but said she sure looked pregnant to them. When my mother-in-law came by later that week and said the same thing, I knew I was in trouble.
Yup. Totally a girl. Totally pregnant. Being that I was already so accustomed to calling her Louie, I just switched her name to Louisa May Alcott. (And now she gets called Louisa, Lou, or Mama.) She kept hanging around. She kept being pregnant. One night in May she laid on the couch in between David and I while we watched TV and we could see her belly moving with all the kittens inside. The next day she didn't come around. And the next.
The kittens were obviously frightened, having never seen humans before, but we caught three of them (we searched the entire crawl space and didn't see more) and brought them inside where we immediately gave them all much needed baths and picked off their fleas. We bathed Louisa as well and set her and her kittens up in our playroom after I ran to the store and bought litter and kitten chow. We figured the cats were 5-6 weeks by this point.
The next day, we were supposed to head to David's parent's house for Father's Day when I decided randomly to check the crawl space one more time. I opened up the little door and sitting right there was kitten #4. I snatched him right up and brought him inside for his own bath and flea treatment before reuniting him with his mama and siblings. I'm sure he spent a miserable 24 hours on his own, poor thing. I'm so glad I checked again. (I went back several more times over the next few days, but never found another kitten so I'm 99% sure we found them all.)
The kids, of course, were ecstatic to have a whole litter of kittens to play with. They were fluffy and small and just their size.
Being that we had named the mama Louisa May Alcott, I decided to name the kittens after characters from Little Women. The calico female I named Jo, the lighter grey tabby I dubbed Teddy, the blue-grey cat I called Meg, and the dark tabby--the one I pulled from the crawl space last--I named Bhaer after the German professor Jo eventually marries.
As it turned out, my feline anatomical knowledge was still abysmal because Meg--who I thought was a girl--turned out to be a boy. I couldn't think of another name for him (Little Women, naturally, being a tad short on male characters) so I just started calling him Not Meg, which the vet thought was hilarious.
The kitties grew and grew. They slept everywhere and wanted to eat constantly. Louisa proved herself to be a capable and caring mom. She was also apparently an extended breastfeeder because those kittens never wanted to quit. (I took her in to be spayed when the kittens were 12 weeks old and she was already pregnant again! Poor thing. I felt terrible about that, but we certainly didn't need more kittens.)
I found it interested that they almost always lined up in the same order to eat--Bhaer, Jo, Not Meg, and then Teddy.
They were a lot of work. I was constantly cleaning the playroom and changing/cleaning out the litter box multiple times a day. For the first few weeks, they mostly stayed in the playroom and rarely ventured out. But they eventually discovered there was more to the house and they wanted to explore as much as possible.
The back of the couches were their favorite places to sleep as well as on top of my towels in the rolling cart in the kitchen.
By 12 weeks, I was ready to find them homes. A woman in my ward wanted to adopt two of them, but after a lot of back and forth, they ended up not being able to take them. But she did tell her friend about our kittens and her friend did adopt Teddy.
He was our first to go, several weeks before the others. Teddy was a beautiful light grey tabby who was something of a mama's boy. He loved his milk.
He was also the most socialable of the kittens, always wanting to play and sleep with the others so I was very happy that his adoptive family already had a cat, two dogs, and kids. He was definitely not meant to be alone.
It took me a little while longer to find homes for the other kittens but Not Meg was the next to be adopted. I'll admit that he was not my favorite of the kittens at first but he really grew on me as he got bigger even though he had a penchant for attacking my toes.
He was a stikingly handsome cat with blue-grey fur and white paws. He was also the biggest of the kittens and I imagine he'll be a big tomcat someday. He was adopted by an older woman with grown children whose last cat had passed away a few months before.
Despite being the beauty of the bunch, Jo was the last to be adopted. I think, in part, it's because female cats can be more trouble and really need to be spayed if they're going to be a good house pet.
And like most females, Jo could be very persnickety and demanding so I was glad that she went to a home where she will receive lots of attention and be spoiled. She was adopted by a very nice college student from KSU who grew up with pets and wanted a cat to keep her company. She sent me some photos last week and Jo is indeed being spoiled rotten and she looks terribly pleased with herself.
And Bhaer, my little friend I plucked from the crawl space after all the rest? He's staying with us as is Louisa.
Bhaer proved himself to be the most tolerant of the kids. Adelaide constantly picks him up and carts him around, bundles him up in blankets and lays all over him and he just takes it. Not happily, of course, but he doesn't tend to scratch or bite unless severely provoked. He's super cuddly and purrs almost as soon as you touch him. He's totally rambunctious and is on a mission to destroy our blinds, but I think he'll settle down once he's through kittenhood. And he's got an appointment to be neutered this week so that may help, poor thing.
He still tries to nurse but Louisa just kicks him away.
So that's the story of our house of felines. I'm glad we were able to find homes for them and that I no longer have to care for five cats. I was starting to go a little crazy there. But Bhaer and Louisa are sweet additions to our home and I'm happy to have them here.
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