7 Weeks Today

The 6 kitties are 7 weeks old today. They have figured out how to climb up on the bed and are happy to share what previously was Mama Kitty's one refuge from her constantly hungry brood.  Although it looks like a "copy paste" crew, there are three who have a gray classic marble coat and three that have soft gray stripes.

A New Chapter Begins

How did we go from having 1 cat in the house to 11 – in less than a month? Our house is now over run with 10 new faces – all tabby in various shades of grey. Our lone whitester is feeling outnumbered – and is wondering what happened to those quiet retirement years he was looking forward to as the only king of the castle.

So let us start at the beginning…..

It started 3 years ago when we kept seeing a white cat with tabby markings showing up at our front step the occasional evening.  She looked hungry so we put a little dry food out for her. For several months, we would see that the food had disappeared overnight and we would catch glimpses of her coming and going.  We would try to get close but she was wary of us and would back away. We assumed that she was either an underfed house cat or she was a stray.

The following summer we saw more of her – she seemed more hungry than usual.  It was not long after thus that we started to see two additional young cats coming through our yard at various times. One looked very much like Mama cat so we assumed these were her kittens. One was mainly tabby with some white markings, longer fur and beautiful green eyes.  It was braver and would come closer to the front step when it thought there would be food. We called it Sabi (from Sabrina the witch who had green eyes…and silly as it seems, Sabi the Tabby seemed a suitable call name).  The other young cat had long black fur with a goofy white patch on its face so that one became Cricket.

As fall closed in we saw more of the young cats and less of Mama Cat. My hubby decided to build a cat shelter in our back yard so the young cats would have a warm place in winter. At this point we knew Mama Cat and these young ones were strays.  As we spoke to other neighbours we found out there were more cats roaming the neighbourhood who did not seem to belong to anyone. Being at the end of the city, right by the highway, there is a good chance some of these cats were simply dumped off at the approach to the highway. 

 Then one day we saw Sabi accompanied by several kittens.  We made sure there was always food left at night time and would often see one, two or three kittens playing around our truck or under the large Colorado spruce in the front yard.  We thought there were about four kittens altogether.  Our neighbour was able to entice one kitty inside so they adopted her.  Two kitties stayed in the general vicinity of our house and throughout the winter we would open a door and see two tabbies waiting for food.  To distinguish them we decided to call one “Chair kitty” since it was always sitting on one of the chairs on our front step and the other one was “Hisser” since anytime we even took a step towards it, it would hiss loudly. We assume Chair Kitty was a she, given her timidity and Hisser was a he, given his attitude towards us.

With a cold winter in play, we decided to purchase a heated kitty house for the front of the house.  Chair kitty had disappeared but Hisser was a regular visitor and was getting more comfortable with us so we wanted to make sure he had an option if it became too cold wherever he spent the night.  Hisser decided that the heated house was just right for him and he took up residence there. He seemed content with the circumstances and he would even let us pat him under the chin every once in awhile.

Fast forward to spring.  Hisser was looking surprisingly fat for a feral cat. It turns out Hisser was a she and pregnant. She would appear at the front door early mornings and evening, wolfing down any wet food we would bring out to her.  We quickly renamed her to Mama Kitty to reflect her new role.

Two and a half months later, in summer, we spotted her walking along the back retaining wall, with a kitten in her mouth. Once she deposited the kitten in a safe spot in the back yard, she brought two more. 

Out the back window, we would see the little kittens jumping up on the concrete sidewalk blocks and trying to climb up the poplar tree.  We couldn’t get close to them but we could certainly see the exuberance of kitten youthfulness when we retreated to a safe distance. 

As they grew to about three months they became braver and would come to the front door with Mama Kitty to be fed alongside her. The largest of the three kittens was a soft grey classic tabby (mottled markings like a marble cake).  The other two had the mackerel tabby stripes in a darker color. For ease of identification, the grey one became Smokie. The other two were named for their personalities, Braveheart and Scaredy Cat.

At that time, we did find out what happened to Chair Kitty. He, not she, became a beloved pet in the house right behind us. He had escaped and his owner climbed over our fence looking for him! All ended well and he was back in his home within a day.

Back to our story….

We decided we would try to capture the three kittens and look for homes for them.  They were more friendly than any of the ferals we had been feeding so we anticipated that it would be easier to socialize them for moving to a loving family. Mama kitty seemed comfortable outside so we weren’t looking to change her situation.

Once we made that decision we quickly realized we had to change course.  Mama kitty was looking suspiciously chubby and we realized she was pregnant again.  Doing the math we realized her brood would be born at the beginning of winter, which meant they would only be a few weeks old when the snow came. The plan now became to capture all four.

The first step of the capture happened more by chance than by design. Hubby had opened the back patio door to look out at the bird feeder when Smokie and Braveheart simply walked inside.  Hubby shut the door right away and the capture commenced. Smokie was the easiest since I picked him up and took him to his new bedroom upstairs.  Braveheart did not come so easily.  She scratched wildly when picked up and then she ran under the stereo unit.  It took a day of hubby cajoling her out with a cat toy before he was able to get her in a box and bring her upstairs to her brother. 

Mama Kitty was next.  We put some food inside the front door and she willingly came in. However, once I closed the door she realized something was up and she did her best to escape.  Fortunately I was able to grab her when she started to climb up the coats on the coat rack and she was quickly moved up to her own bedroom.   

 One kitten left to go.  We had a couple of failed attempts trying to capture Scaredy cat. At night we would hear her plaintive meows, calling out for her siblings.  We could see her sitting at the end of the yard looking for her family.  On the third night, hubby went out to the store to buy a variety of toys that he thought might persuade her to come in. Surprisingly, the winner was the laser pointer. In she came.  We thought we would have a difficult time once she was in but she stayed hunched against the wall, so hubby easily picked her up and took her to reunite with her siblings.

Oh yes….three weeks later Mama Kitty had six kittens and that is how we became a household with eleven felines.