Growing the Menagerie Some More

Well.......somehow in stating in the previous 2 posts that Tuesday and Wednesday following Memorial Day were somewhat uneventful was not entirely true. I had a momentary brain lapse....or in my case I think it is a lifetime brain lapse...and forgot that when we returned home very late from Brad's grandparents' that we briefly spoke of how pregnant our cat looks. That would be the same cat that we saved from imminent death sometime early last year. We took her home and nursed her back to health, treating the nasty life threatening wound that she had managed to get across her throat. She was grateful for the love that was shown by the children and somehow just never left. So, we ended up with yet another front porch cat. Sometime in there a feral kitten showed up and was befriended also....both by children and pre-existing feline. He lived under the porch for quite some time and we caught brief glimpses of him. When the weather turned cold and winter set in we set out an extra heat lamp for him and it didn't take long for him to gravitate up to the porch too. After several weeks we finally managed to pet him and he has stayed around every since.

So it was that we returned home and Violet, our grateful to be alive cat, was looking enormously pregnant. We were told by the vet many months before when we originally thought she was pregnant that she indeed could possibly be pregnant or that she may have some awful sickness that there is no cure for, in which it distends a cat's belly and makes them look pregnant. When no babies arrived we sadly thought this was the case. But she seemed to grow and even out over time and remained playful and the farthest thing from sick. But as she walked in front of us the night we returned home we both commented on how largely pregnant...or sick......she was looking. The next morning she had some strange behaviour . She challenged good ole 70 pd Athena and was trying her best to hole up under the concrete foundation the shed sits on. We removed her from harm's way and once again she went right back in there trying desperately to bury beneath. She is a no crap taking kind of cat and will easily fight off Athena so now she has even poor Athena....10 times her size....scared of her. We finally began to realize she was acting so strange that it might be possible that she was near giving birth to the kittens we didn't know she was carrying. We made a bed for her in the laundry room and closed the door for her own peace. Less than 4 hours later we welcomed 3 new kittens to the family. Of the many births I have participated in a cat's was never one of them. So, it was exciting to watch her have her babies...and a great science lesson for all involved. So, our Tuesday after Labor Day was spent watching the miracle of feline birth and learning to hold babies. This seems to be an important lesson around here since the last time we tried this it didn't go so very well since the boys thought it was so entirely fun to "frow da kitty".

But once more I am completely overwhelmingly in love with homeschooling. I think it is fair to say that I fall more in love everyday, but it is days like these that I realize the importance of what it is we do and how blessed we are that our children can be freely homeschooled. They have the ability to watch a cat give birth instead of reading about it in books or looking at pictures. Our little ones can see what it is for a kitten to wait a week to open its eyes for the first time and know what it is for them to be shut during those first few days. We can hatch an egg...or at least attempt to....instead of reading about it in books. We can study the storm systems that go through and watch the weather pattern. Not at all that public schooled children cannot do this but I love the freedom we have to turn it into a learning lesson and create an entire day's school work out of it. I love that they were home to watch the cat give birth. Admittedly, I would've gone straight to the school and pulled them out to watch it but I love how everyone was here participating, helped find a box, made it comfy and were able to come and go each checking in on her.

So it is that we had 3 new kittens. They were thriving but on the morning of the 4th or so day we went out to discover only 2. My favorite one of the group was gone. I am thinking she may have accidentally suffocated it and then taken it off and buried it during the early morning hours. She kind of had a tendency to lay on them despite what a great little mother she turned out to be. It was disappointing since we had planned to keep 2 of them and she was one of the ones that we had chosen to keep. So, I suppose we'll never really know whatever came of the kitten but we are down to 2 of her's. We now have left Samson and Delilah. In their little threesome they were Peter, Paul and Mary but then we couldn't just have Peter and Mary after Paul disappeared.

Then a week after our little triplet kittens arrived and we lost the one Grayson was out working in the farthest carport when he came running in excitedly saying he found the kitten. I had a hard time believing she was still alive and that Violet would just abandon her. I went out tentatively bracing myself for what we may find....mainly bracing against the thought of trying to revive a more than half dead..if not mostly dead....kitten. What we were met with was a 4 or so week old feral kitten that was quite stuck in between the metal poles of the carport. As any good parent would do we unstuck it and....yes.....took it in. The oohs and ahhs and "May we keep it pleeeeease??????" rang loudly for hours. It was disgustingly horrifying to discover that it was nothing but a massive flea bag with all sorts of feral kitty problems to overcome. Ugh!!!! I saw imaginary fleas on me for hours following the bath we gave it. We soaked the scrawny thing in water to have hundreds and hundreds of fleas surface. And even afterwards she had dead fleas stuck in her hair for days. Digging out the long lost flea shampoo we sudzed her up in the bathroom sink only to discover how entirely skinny she really was. Having a few of the Frontline flea meds for cats left I went ahead and applied it after her bath despite the fact it said for 8 wks and older. I figured she was close to dying anyway. Amidst the digging out the flea stuff we also did the whole mineral oil for her ear mites since she seemed to be eaten up with those as well. A day later with this new kitten still around...minus 200 fleas and a bunch of ear mites.....I found myself talked into a trip to our nearest little town to buy eye antibiotic to get rid of the eye infection it had going. In the meantime this kitten has taken up with Aubrey and never left her side. So in all of my years of vowing we would never have any cats somehow we have acquired what is quickly becoming an indoor cat. We tried putting her with Violet and her babies after we got her back in good shape and no longer contagious with anything but poor Violet wasn't having anything to do with it. So abandoned kitty now has a little rubbermaid tote bed, complete with baby blankets, in the floor of the girls' room. I think it is feeling indebted to us for life and has actually ended up being the tiniest, sweetest, unintended gift for Aubrey. After Brad finally gave in since Aubrey occupies a very soft spot in Brad's heart he appropriately deemed our new kitty Lazarus since everyone is quite convinced that God brought Violet's kitten back to us. No one really seems to notice she did some heavy duty growing while in heaven. She miraculously seemed to have come back 4 times her size, had her hair dyed and learned how to eat solids and wean herself in only 3 short days spent in heaven. God definitely knows how to grow some kittens!!! No one seems to care that I'm fairly certain she is a girl and she somehow ended up with Lazarus as her name. Oh well. I guess we can always go to calling her Lazzy....that's kind of girly.

And amidst all of this....we brought home a puppy from Dallas. More pictures and stories to come on that.