We interrupt this regularly scheduled program . . .

This morning I awoke to find our very pregnant cat missing. My first thought: Dangit! I knew I should have brought her in last night and put her in the crate. Now we’ll never find those kitties. As I waited rather patiently for the coffee to seep into every molecule of my system and wake my still sleeping brain I checked my e-mail and stared at my laptop screen while I decided how many times I was going to read the same thing over and over before I just gave up when SmockDaddy said, “OH, there’s Samantha.” (Wow, that was almost long enough to be Faulkner worthy.) Samantha is a year old and was born here on April 27th of last year. She would never really let the children play with her and would only let me play with and pet her if the children were not outside. One day, quite a few months ago, before we were able to get her fixed Samantha disappeared. About three months ago one very cold February night she showed back up to eat some food. She has gradually stayed around and let me pet her again, but she is still very afraid of the children. I noticed a rather distinct looking middle bulge about three weeks ago.

I walked out on the patio this morning as she ate to give her some love, making the children stay inside as it was obvious she was sporting a new slimmed down look. I thought that I’d hang out and follow her back to the wee ones. I knew she would never really take me to them, but I have been aware of some of her basic hiding/napping places. I began walking in the direction of one of those locations and she immediately began to follow me with a very close eye. The closer I got to the location the louder her meow became. I got down very low and peered into the bushes and there they were little fuzzy things wiggling around. I could not tell how many there were until I crawled in the bush (I’m sure that was a sight to see, but no one was around with a camera, sorry). I pulled out one little furry head that was a tabby, then another, then another that concerned me with how small she is, then there was another tabby with a complete white collar, and one little blonde male. Five kittens, poor girl! She wasn’t too happy with me for taking her babies; she ran back to the little nest she had made and growled and growled at me with quite a few soft meows in between. I crawled back in (yes, another missed opportunity to get a photo) and scruffed her and brought in to be with the kitties. It took here a few minutes to feel at home and she counted her kittens about six times, but she is now nursing happily (mostly) and we will now be able to get her fixed in about six weeks and dump some kittens in the woods get the kittens used to humans and find them some homes.

Today as we left Wal-mart after buying a cover for her large crate, we ran into a church member who wants our Samantha. Yay! Perfect; he’s an older man with no young children around and he does not care if she sits in his lap or not. He said he just needs someone to listen to him as he talked from time to time throughout the day. I think by the time the next six weeks are up Samantha will be failry well broken into the life of a queen indoors with some tromping time.

DOINK!

We went to the Special Olympics today; it was the area wide meet.

Princerella is too young to participate but was invited to go watch and cheer on her fellow Special Ed and Inclusion friends. She rode with the students on the bus and we drove out later to meet her and watch for a bit. We did not stay long since she was not a participant, but we did get to cheer on a few others that we knew. Actually, we cheered on everyone who was racing whether we knew them or not. And to see the smile on the faces of the participants that won was great, even the smiles on the faces of the ones that didn’t win was great. I kept getting tickled at some of them though and the way they were watching their competitors as they ran or walked the races.

DOINK!

We left the S.O. at lunch time SmockDaddy and I decided to take the others to Pizza Inn for the Friday lunch buffet. They asked us where we were going and he promptly told them House of Liver. There was much discussion about the food available at the House of Liver like Liver with or without Slime and you have Glop if you don’t like Liver or there is always Moss as an option. See, we are weird like that. After further joking around Goro said he’d just rather go to International House of Pancreas. Timing – it’s everything and that boy has it.

DOINK!

The layout of this page may change as I play with the new Gallery function of WP2.5. FYI, if you click through on any of the photos in this post they will lead you directly to a post page of their own, like a little subpost. Those photo posts have their own comment section, but you are welcome to leave the comments here as well.