We Have Kittens!

Grey Cat now a proud mother of four kittens

 

Born Wednesday evening to our grey barn cat, four little furry bundles of joy! 

 

Last year our grey cat only had one kitten and she decided to have him in our chiminea.  Unfortunately the kitten did not survive, we think he was killed by one of the visiting tomcats.

 

This year grey cat continued her tradition of having her kittens in odd places by choosing an empty feed sack that was on top of our pile of unopened feed sacks.

 

The first indication we got that labor was imminent was when the usually reticent gray cat pushed past me as I was preparing the evening feed, crawled into the empty feed sack and then stuck her head out of the sack to hiss at me.  Well, that told me that in the grey cat’s opinion I needed to leave and I suspected that the kittens were on their way.  While the grey cat is quite wild she is not usually prone to hissing at us and so her behavior was a sign that something was happening.

 

I left the feed barn as soon as I could to give the grey cat some peace and quiet to have her kittens.  That night I dreamt that she had four kittens and it turned out she did, so either I am getting good at judging how many kittens are in a very full pregnant cat tummy or I am starting to have dream premonitions!

 

The next morning I checked on the grey cat and for a moment thought she was dead.  She lay heavily inside the feed sack, her eyes open but glazed over and she did not move when I called her.  Fearing the worst I started to open the sack to check on the exact condition of the cat when she sprung to life hissing at me.  Well that answered that question; she was definitely alive and had apparently been contentedly nursing her kittens.

 

Grey cat stayed in the feed sack with the kittens for most of Thursday making us wonder how we were going to get to a new bag of feed when we needed it.  Fortunately Ric was down in the area of the feed barn when he saw the grey cat leave the feed barn and was able to gently maneuver a feed sack out from under the one containing the kittens.

 

As far was we can tell there is one black kitten, one orange kitten, one gray kitten and one black and white kitten.  Hopefully this year they will survive, but with tomcats in the area the kittens are vulnerable.  We are trying to think of what we could do to allow the mother cat access to her kittens while preventing the neighborhood tomcats from also accessing them. 

 

We have always had barn cats at the farm, the alpacas get on well with cats and we like the cats as they keep the rodents and snakes down.   At the moment the only two adult cats we have are the mother grey cat and Kit Cat our part Siamese male cat who was dropped off here several years ago.  As both of those cats are aging it would be good to have a new generation to take over the mousing and snaking duties on the farm.

 

I suspect grey cat will move her kittens soon, she usually does, but in the meantime we will enjoy sneaking a peak at them in the feed sack while she is busy eating outside.

 

Rosemary