Kittens

We are really enjoying having two kittens in the house! They are about six weeks  old now, and spend a lot of time playing. In fact, they are in my lap right now. Goofball is asleep, and Grizzly is chewing on her (yes, Goofball is sleeping through the chewing!). We gave them their names when they were quite little. Goofball has always been laid back about life, and would relax in our hands from the beginning. She has always liked to lay on her back to sleep or play. Grizzly, on the other hand, complained about everything—hence her name. She has been the favorite of their mother since the beginning, and the one that Princess almost always dragged into the house in the mornings. She would kick and scream the whole way in, rather than curling up like kittens are supposed to. Grizzly took about four weeks to stop crying every time we picked her up, but now she loves people as much as Goofball does.

Here they are at two weeks old.

Three weeks and starting to play.

Mr. Diligence holding them at about four weeks.

Mr. Imagination with Goofball, the one he chose to keep, at a month old.

Five weeks and wrestling. Grizzly is the one on the floor here, kicking at Goofball.

Our little kittens aren’t so little anymore! They are nearly full-grown now, but we’re enjoying them just as much. One problem they are running into, though, is that they don’t both fit on the same lap at the same time anymore. This morning, I was sitting on the couch reading my Bible, and Princess jumped onto my lap from one side. A second later, Bandit jumped on from the other side. He was on the inside, though, so she had to jump off while he curled up for a cozy sleep! She had to spend a minute washing herself to get over the disappointment.

We find them sleeping in all sorts of funny places; here are just a few pictures from the past couple of months. This first picture was when they could still both fit on my lap.

This was one of the first days this fall that we lit the fire in the coal range. They loved the heat, and spent most of the morning in front of it.

We found Princess asleep on my laptop one evening.

She also loved sleeping on the coal range a few hours after the fire went out, while the cast-iron top was still warm. One day, however, she decided to take a nap there while I had the fire going. I suddenly heard frantic skittering and turned around to see her running away from the stove! She raced into the other room and stood there looking very scared and offended. Her paws were slightly scorched. She has stayed away from that stove ever since!

Just a few days ago, we found her here—apparently there wasn’t a human lap around that suited her!

They don’t always sleep, though. Until the past week or so, there would be fierce fights every morning. Bandit got sick last week, though, and for several days didn’t do anything. He wouldn’t even eat for a day or more. We were pretty concerned about him, and prayed for him. Soon, he started eating again, and now he’s back to normal.

This was the first time we saw Princess on top of the garage roof. She couldn’t figure out how to get down. She would look down, scratch her shoulder, run a little way, give herself a few licks, run a little way, lick herself again…. We just cracked up watching her; it looked for all the world like a person scratching his head while he tried to figure out a puzzle! And sure enough, within half an hour she was down.

I had the boys clean out the garage one afternoon. They threw out this pile of boxes to be burned. The cats had great fun stalking each other through the pile before it was loaded up and taken out to the paddock.

We bought a couple of suitcases one day, in preparation for our trip to America. The cats thought we got them just for their benefit!

Little Miss did the same thing!

“Aw, I’m too late. The lap is already occupied.” So he started scrubbing his sister.

Our cat disappeared a few weeks after the earthquake, so we decided to try again. Some friends of ours had new kittens, so we requested two of them. They had the mother spayed when the kittens were five weeks old, and the kittens learned to eat dry food then. We picked them up a few days later, on Christmas Day. We are sure enjoying having kittens again! They were tiny when we got them, but now, about two weeks later, have grown a lot. They are also changing fast in behavior. They have learned how to play much better, and are getting friendlier all the time, especially the little boy kitten. The girl has always been friendly. She’s a fighter, though, and unless she’s sleepy she’s playing—which often means chewing on the person she has chosen to bestow her favor on at that moment! We named the black girl Princess and the gray boy Bandit. These first two pictures are on the way home. Those poor traumatized kittens! They were terrified.

They fell asleep on a chair as soon as we got home, and slept for several hours.

Later that evening, they woke up and played some.

Once, early on, Princess fell asleep on my hand. She’s too big to fit like that now!