The kittens are doing well. We had an unexpected problem, though, with the mother. I know I’ve mentioned that she’s extremely protective of her kittens when she sees other animals. The problem is that she flies into protective-Momma mode whether the cats are near enough to hurt her babies or not. Friday night, Fred and I were hanging out in the room with the kittens for a little while, and when we got up to leave we started walking out the door together. Unfortunately, Mister Boogers and Miz Poo were hanging out on the landing right outside the room, and when the mother saw them, she lost her mind. She was howling, she was screaming, she was hissing, she was spitting. Fred managed to catch her before she could get out the door, and as he pulled her back, she grabbed the back of my pants and held on for dear life. I’m pretty sure if he’d let go of her, she would have climbed over me to get to Miz Poo and Mister Boogers.
Who were scared and cowering by the top of the stairs, by the way. I don’t blame them – Momma sounded like a wild cougar. A really mad one.
Fred finally got the mother to let go of my pants, and I went out and shut the door. He stayed in there for another ten minutes or so, but every time he started for the door, she was there ahead of him. He finally had to grab a blanket we’d put in there, toss it over the top of her, and run out of the room.
We talked about it for quite a while, but couldn’t come up with a good solution. Because dealing with a hissing, spitting, howling Momma cat is not something I wanted to worry about every time I went in the room.
“What we need is something like a decompression chamber!” Fred said. And then he came up with a plan.
Saturday morning, after he’d gone hiking with some coworkers, he stopped by UHaul. There, he picked up one of their wardrobe boxes. He brought it home, split it down one side, and set it up in front of the door to the guest bedroom.
Basically, it’s like a big cardboard screen. When we’re going into the room, we step in front of the door and pull it around us so that it’s sitting on either side of the door. It’s like a little room outside the door – our cats can’t get in, and even if the Momma cat came running out of the room, she can’t go anywhere but into the little box room.
Is my husband smart, or what? I would NEVER have come up with that on my own, I can guarantee that.
It’s working out pretty well so far!
Want some pictures? Sure you do…
This is my favorite nursing picture so far. Snoopy apparently had so much to eat he can’t even move.
Snoopy (front) and Edgar.
Peanut’s getting it from both sides.
Oy is a mama’s boy.
Peanut’s keepin’ it clean.
Peanut’s a little charmer.
Mama hugs.
SO. SO. SO. CUTE.
Mama cleans.
Mama feeds.
Peanut is far and away the most sociable of the kittens. It’s gotten to the point now where if I go into the room and sit down, he stops whatever he was doing (unless he was eating. Because NOTHING will stop him from eating.) and comes over, climbs up on my leg, and waits for me to put my hand around him so he doesn’t fall off. Then he rolls over onto his back and waits for me to rub his belly. When I do, he wiggles around and cleans himself and stretches.
These kittens are so freakin’ cute that I’m pretty sure I’m going to bite my tongue clean off one of these days.