Indoor cats (October 2012)
After we moved Tinkerbell and family inside, we set about making our back bedroom a nice playground that they would be comfortable in. Don had the idea to buy a used bookshelf and cover it with carpet. They approved.
After we moved Tinkerbell and family inside, we set about making our back bedroom a nice playground that they would be comfortable in. Don had the idea to buy a used bookshelf and cover it with carpet. They approved.
Continuing on from the last post, where we met Tinkerbell and her kitten, Pixy-- before Tinkerbell was even finished nursing Pixy, she had a new litter that was born in late August.
We'd already been considering how to catch Pixy and Tinkerbell to get them to a vet where they could be checked and treated for pests and fixed. Now we had to delay that visit for Tinkerbell until she'd finished nursing her newest litter, but we wouldn't wait that long this time to bring her in, since we'd just learned that a cat can become impregnated immediately after delivering a litter. POOR CATS!
It was probably unusual that Tinkerbell only had the one kitten, Pixy, when we met her...one can only speculate what became of the rest of that litter, but it had to have been a sorrow for Tinkerbell, who looked quite proud of her new litter.
She was also so protective of the new litter that once she'd moved them from under a thicket of asparagus ferns, where she'd delivered, to a more spacious nursery under the bougainvillea bush, where she'd been staying with Pixy, she was warry of letting even Pixy visit. When pixy batted one of the kittens (Willow) back, after the kitten batted her first, Tinkerbell chased Pixy all over the backyard and tackled her for a fierce reprimand.
Pixy insisted on being allowed to visit her new siblings though and was soon seen in the nursery with all of the kittens gathered around, looking as though SHE were the mother.
We went ahead then, with getting Pixy fixed, and then brought her into the house. I had been sitting near the food dish each time I fed she and her mother outside, and had eventually been able to pet them as they ate. So picking her up to get her to the vet had not been as difficult as I'd feared.
A few weeks later, not wanting to risk Tinkerbell's fury, I very gingerly lifted her kittens one by one and carried them into the house, and then I brought in Tinkerbell. She too, was not as difficult to pick up as I'd feared, and actually came quite willingly. She actually seemed to understand exactly what was happening. I'd left her for last, so that she could protect the ones that were still outside during the whole catch and carry procedure, as it was not unusual to see hawks on the wires above our backyard.
A couple of the kittens, Haiku and Sinbad, fought being handled, and whether it was from that experience of being brought into the house and deposited in a bedroom, or that was always going to be their attitude, they've remained disinterested in being touched.
So, below are photos of Tinkerbell, Pixy, and the new litter (Sherlock, Willow, Sinbad, Haiku, & E.B. White) both outside in the bougainvillea nursery, and then, inside in their new room.
(Above image) Sherlock and Haiku
(Above image) Sherlock
(Above image) Big sister Pixy playing mother cat with Willow, Sinbad, E. B. White, and Sherlock
So, as mentioned in the previous post, in late May of 2012 Don and I discovered a mother cat (since, named Tinkerbell) and her kitten (since, named Pixy) in our backyard. We had put up a picket fence that kept the dogs on the patio and out of the yard area because when we first bought the house there were a pair of pet rabbits roaming free that Don's mom had left us when she moved to North Carolina. The kitties seemed to think this arrangement had been made with them in mind.
So here are some photos, primarily of the kitten because the mother stayed hidden in the bougainvillea shrub most of the time.
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