In our short time at Spring Wind Farm we have raised chickens, ducks and guinea hen from chicks received in the mail, not to mention a puppy and two goats. Now its a brood of kittens, but no hatchlings here. We were present from the noisy conception, through two months of Dotori's ever widening pregnancy, to their birth on New Year's Eve.
We hoped to have kittens in the spring to have a few more barn cats to control rodent populations. The parents of this bunch, Hwadu & Dotori, were young and amorous. See earlier post for their backstory. We didn't keep them apart and they didn't wait, so.....
Whether chicks or kittens or something else, babies need attention. Dotori turned out to be an excellent mom, always ready to feed and watch over her EIGHT, OMG Eight!, little ones. The last one out was a runt but Kunaka and Osaek made sure he got his share of milk and now he's as big as any of them. Osaek has picked up where Dotori's care left off, providing food and water now that they're older, and changing out the litter boxes daily, a necessity with 10 cats in the house.
The first now out, a multi-colored or tortoiseshell or torty, has had many firsts: first to venture onto the plastic covered floor, first to climb over a blockade. A born leader, she's going to stay; but now ten weeks old, we've started to send some of these guys to their new homes. We're only keeping three, three polydactyls for their mousing advantage. One is going to our Ann Arbor temple, and one all the way to Mexico City. While it's a bit sad to break up the team, it's become easier to keep the smell down in the house!
Hwadu's fathering days are done and Dotori is soon to get fixed. The others will follow. We got plenty of cats. It can be argued that the world has plenty of cats, and cats without homes. That it would be more responsible, even humane, to adopt feral cats for this job. Perhaps this is true.Perhaps we'll do that in the future. It wasn't exactly a planned pregnancy. What do you think?
I never watched cat videos, but now I've made one. Check it out: https://youtu.be/MUCzzDdeqTQ
Comments