There I was, nice sunny afternoon curled up in my chair outside trying to rest and “Brring…bring…” phone rings. Farmer has a cat caught in a trap since early this morning- can I take the cat?

I do a mental count of the cats here- I have one free cage, okay, I will take the cat,  because who knows how long the cat will stay in the trap waiting to find someone willing to accept a feral cat. The farm is about 10 minutes from my vet, so I ask the farmer if he minds taking the cat straight to the vet for evaluation and I will take it from there. No problem- off they go.

I settle back, breathe try to relax- phone rings again- this time, it’s the vet’s office: Uh Mary Anne, the cat is lactating!” Uh oh- I ask to speak to the farmer and he gets on the phone, and while I am explaining to him that he needs to take mom back home and let her go because we do not know how many kittens she has, where they are, or how old they are- they may not survive without her. He’s reluctant to do that. He doesn’t want any more cats on his property and people dump them there all the time. Then his cell phone rings and it’s his wife. She informs him that right after they left- 8 kittens came scampering out from under the barn and they were playing out in the sun!

Great news on my end, I ask him to have his wife collect all the babies, get the mom spayed- she will give milk after 30 hours. I will come and collect the babies, and fetch mom in the morning and reunite the family when it is safe to do so.

So right now, I have 10 kittens inside the bedroom- and after dividing up the donated kitten food of last week with my 5 foster families- I have 1 case of kitten food, and one bag of dry kitten chow to feed this kitten explosion! LOL  If anyone can send IAMS canned and dry Kitten or Fancy Feast canned  Kitten or Purina Kitten Chow it is desperately needed! We have 5 females- and 5 males. Three which are black, one a beautiful charcoal gray stripey girl- and six tuxedos.

I have to admit that I was concerned when they first came here because although they look fat and healthy- they were all just lying around doing nothing which is not common for 4 week old babies. But at the 2 a.m. feeding, more of them are coming around and moving about and playing with each other. I have given all them a mixture of KMR, B-12- mashed chicken livers  and baby food with Karo Syrup (doesn’t that sound just yummy?) LOL  They are starting to come out of their shell and they are absolutely adorable little monsters prepared to eat us out of house and home! LOL  Eight in one litter and the two meth babies now reside in the bedroom.

My volunteer photographer is coming over at 10 to take photos which I will post as soon as I receive them. I don’t know what’s more daunting right now- figuring out how I am going to feed them all- or figuring out 8 more names for these beauties! 🙂 Although Mom might want her babies back, it is all dependent on her- how feral she really is (and I suspect she is not) I think what happened is this farm is off a main road but tucked back into trees and someone just dumped the whole family on these people. These kittens are NOT feral. They are balanced, fat and they look healthy. Mom was tested, she is negative. Mom is also black-

But these kittens won’t smell the same to mom- plus there are two that don’t belong in the litter and that means that if mom gets aggressive or ignores them all, we won’t be able to put mom with her babies which would be a shame.

If anyone is doing the math- we now have 28 kittens rescued right now in need of homes- Six have been “pre-adopted”  The other kittens will cycle out of foster care in about 4 weeks time. YIKES!  That’s a lot of kittens for so early in the season. The bright spot is that out of the ten, there are only two that are still truly bottle babies.