The Kitten Saga continues

Readers may remember that our yard was blessed again with kittens in May (see Kittens: The Sequel). The story didn't end with that post, obviously. When the kittens reached six weeks, I was ready to get them indoors. Alas, if I'd only started a few days sooner -- poor Gadget was taken by some predator and found dead one street over. The neighbor's nosy kid found the nest of survivors in our yard (grrr!) and came over to report that his mom was going to call the Humane Society and have them taken away (double grrr!). That accelerated the plan, and after getting a spay certificate from the local no-kill shelter, I got Toast, the mother, trapped and rounded up the babies. Toast went to the vet and got spayed and came back home.

Here are the babies a couple days after we caught them. I put together a "playpen" in the living room made from those wire squares that go together to make storage cubes. This kept them safe, and and the same time kept them around people.

This is Sprocket...


And here are Edison and Gizmo.

Toast still hangs around the house. She's a smart little girl and saw me take her babies in, so when she came home from the vet, she came up on the deck to peek in the windows until she found them. I feed her regularly, and she's slowly getting used to people. I think she's a little lonesome; when I go out into the garden, she often follows me around.

So the idea was that we'd foster the babies for the no-kill shelter, and then they'd be adopted out when they were past the delicate stage and had been fixed and microchipped. We were quite sure that six cats would be too many for this house.

Only...

... we're kinda used to them now. And rather attached to them. Edison, the goofy little brother of the trio, is a lovable little purr machine. Sprocket has the most winsome face and loves to cuddle. And while Gizmo is more independent, she can be a loving little thing, too. They're all doing fine with us, but are still shy of strangers.

So it looks like we're going to have to have a word with the shelter about these three:

Gizmo

Sprocket

and our darling Edison.