Kittens

I know Marc posted most of these pictures on facebook, but I wanted to get them here on the blog for journaling purposes.

Anyway, a few weeks ago we found some kittens in our backyard! The girls and I had been playing outside for a bit when I walked over near our shed to get a chair. When I got close a little gray cat darted out from under the chair. We've seen her quite a bit around our street, (though we had no idea she had kittens) and the girls were so excited to get to see a kitty. I thought she was acting a bit weird, as she didn't run far. She hadn't even left our yard, despite the eager 19-month-old running towards her. She did leave eventually but then just sat down right beyond our fence. Again, we thought it was a bit weird, since usually when we would get close to her she would take off as fast as she could. I went back again to get a chair and found myself face to face with a kitten. She ducked back in to our shed as soon as she saw me.

Well, I really wanted to close our shed, but not with a kitten in it, so I took some of Nora's old baby food chicken out on a paper plate to try to lure it out. We went back inside to watch from the window, and were surprised to see three kittens trying to eat the food. Mama cat came back as well.

And that's how we ended up spending a perfectly good evening emptying out every. last. thing. from our storage shed. The little rascals would just burrow deeper into our stuff when I would get close to one of them. I felt a bit sorry for the poor mama cat, who was watching from outside of our fence.



The girls absolutely loved them. They were so cute to watch. Nora was hilarious holding them, I was surprised by how quickly she figured it out. Teresa really, really wanted to keep the fluffiest little gray one. I was lamenting that we hadn't kept it later that night when Marc reminded me how sad we would be if we went out with our babies and someone tried to keep the cute little blonde one, or the cute little curly-haired one ;). Touche, Marc.

 

Nora kept trying to hold it by wrapping both her little hands around its neck. It didn't work out so well.

Ha, I love how Nora is just one-handing the kitten here.

Teresa was NOT amused that the kitten wouldn't let go of her shirt.

When Nora was done with the little one she was holding she just walked over to the bucket and threw it back in, so we figured it was about time to send them back to their mama. She retreated to the line of woods behind our house when I opened the gate, so I just tipped the bucket over near her. It took a few minutes, but then we saw them dart out of the bucket one at a time and then all four of them took off into the woods. We haven't seen them since, I guess she is laying low around us, as we used to see the mom all the time. 

In other news, here's a picture of Nora's first tiny little braids:

Seriously, are they not the cutest things ever?