Kitty Chaos

There is a misconception about peaceful country life. There may be peaceful conditions somewhere, but usually not here. Last week, chaotic was probably a better adjective to describe my household.
I don’t know if my animals are more neurotic than others or if other people are just too embarrassed to talk about it. The first real inkling I had was several years ago when one of the cats kidnapped my dog’s puppies. But that’s another story for another time. This time, it’s a case of kitnapping.
I have to go back a few weeks to the first litter of kittens, which were born quite un-eventfully to Patches, one of three calico cats who live part time in the house. She gave birth to five of the biggest kittens I’ve ever seen, one of which opened her eyes at 4 days old. All of them had their eyes open within a week. That was strange enough, but at least the kittens were pretty much staying put. Then, when they were about two weeks old, Dolly gave birth to a lone black and white kitten in the middle of my bed. Apparently she decided that was not the safest place for the baby so she moved the kitten in with Patches and her family. Patches didn’t mind; in fact, it worked out pretty well for everybody. The kittens especially enjoyed having two food sources and each cat could take a break without worrying about what was going on back at home. Sort of a mother’s day out program. It was good for Dolly’s solo baby to have other kittens to snuggle with and for about a week, peace reigned in the bedroom closet.
Did I mention how precocious Patches’s kittens are? Well, they decided to explore the rest of the house at about three weeks old and it just tore Dolly all to pieces. Her kitten stayed put, but she was pretty alarmed at all the coming and going with the other babies. If there were a Kitten Protective Services, Dolly would be the head of the agency. She just didn’t think it was safe for those babies to be out of the nest and spent a lot of time and energy bringing them back to the fold. It was sort of like trying to fill up a bucket with a hole in the bottom. The kittens were too big to carry, especially since Dolly only has three legs and is a smallish cat to begin with. So she would grab them around the neck and sort of drag them across the floor. They didn’t go quietly and when I was talking on the phone several times, the caller asked what on earth was wrong with those cats.
Just as Dolly was getting reconciled to the idea of the kittens leaving the nest, her own kitten started following along. I think at that point, she gave up the idea of keeping them under wraps, and everything would have been fine had not Buffy had her kittens, right there in the same nest as the older kittens.
Now, Buffy is a young cat and this is her first experience with motherhood. Dolly, as head of Kitten Protective Services, was immediately convinced that Buffy had no idea what she was doing, and she may have been right. She would hover over her and then look back at me as if to say, “I’m going to have to remove these kittens from the home.” Which is exactly what she tried to do. I found one in the kitchen cabinet, one in the dresser drawer and woke up in the middle of the night to find one in my bed. For a couple of nights, it was just like trying to sleep in the middle of a three ring circus, with kittens going everywhere and not quietly. But finally, things pretty much got back to normal, or as normal as it ever gets at my house. Buffy has figured out the motherhood thing and is taking care of her kittens, along with Dolly’s kitten. The other babies are eating on their own now, for the most part and beginning to go outdoors in the daytime. But they still go back to the nest in the closet and there they all are, three different groups, all curled around each other in peaceful harmony, at least for a little while. Anyone need a kitten?