The last time kittens were born at Pure Water Hollow was the summer of 2007, 6 years ago. Sandy is the only cat left from that batch.
This is what Sandy looks like now. He's a very pretty cat, but we had him fixed long ago so he would stay around and not mate with the other cats we had at the time. After a dog attack last year, he was the only cat we had left at all!
Then last July we adopted Tigger through Dumas Rescue and in August we got Charlie and Fritsie along with our German Shepard/Great Pyrenees mixed dog, Augusta. Tigger, Charlie, and Fritsie were still in the "kitten" stage when we got them, but they were older kittens. We chose not to get them fixed so we could have the kitten experience once again. We figured it would be good for Timothy to see brand new kittens emerge and the rest of the children also were excited at the thought of new kittens. So we decided to just let nature take it's course.
Both Tigger and Charlie are orange cats. I used this picture of Tigger on the blog not long ago and Charlie looks pretty much just like him, so we're not sure exactly which one is actually the daddy cat. It was exciting to see Fritsie get large with kittens in her belly; and then one day noticing she was skinny! A couple weeks later the children found a bunch of small kittens in a box in the shed. We tried to take pictures, but it was always too dark in the box and we decided not to take them out before Fritsie was ready.
Before too long, we began to see inquisitive little faces peering out the building! These first pictures were taken May 18th.
This little orange kitten was the first one to really come out and explore and run around. He was amazingly friendly right from the start! Timothy named him Puff because he looked like Sally, Dick, and Jane's kitten which was named Puff in a book Timothy likes.
Soon, the others began venturing out into the open.
Timothy loves them all!
Augusta also seems to be very fond of them, and the kittens have shown no fear of the dog at all.
There have been many cute scenes of the little kittens. I've only photographed a small sampling.
After another week or so, Fritsie moved her litter to our front porch. In this picture you can see all six of them, along with their mama making sure her kittens get all the can food they want. It has been neat watching her wait for her kittens to eat before she eats any of it. She has been a really great mama!
They sure are small, cute, and playful!
Timothy has been having great fun with them! The above pictures were taken June 4th, after he had been splashing around in the river earlier that afternoon.
I'm sure I'll come back here some time and show more pictures of the kittens. The children have names for all of them, I think, but I'm not sure what they all are yet. We have decided that we are going to keep all of them, and probably move them to our place at Pure Water Pastures when they get bigger. We have had mice in the barn, shop, and house and there are no cats around. I think they would enjoy a home there, as long as they can keep from getting hit on the road. That would be sad, but we will have to brace ourselves for the possibility of one getting hit since the the barn and field is on one side of the road and the house on the other.
But that move is still pretty far into the future. For right now we will be enjoying watching them romp and play and grow on our front porch!
Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of these kittens!
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