Are you KIDDING me???????

Officially, I have seen it all! As most of you know, we allowed our two female cats to have 1 litter each, just so happens it was 19 days apart! In all, we had 12 kittens and 2 mommies. I must admit, it was one of the most joyful experiences for us ever! We have so many stories to share about that. I even have a video of one of the mother cats running up to the top of the barn, bringing down one at a time to the little bed that I made for her in the bathroom. It was amazing she knew what I was trying to communicate to her because she is an outside farmcat, but she knew I was letting her bring in those babes to raise inside until they were old enough. One by one, she took the babies by the neck, brought them down from the loft, outside across the field, to the house and into the bed where she would nurse it to sleep and then go get the next. Wow! I think I may win the big $$ on the funniest home video show! It really is cute and absolutely amazing. When the second cat was in labor, she (I kid you not!) banged on our window in the middle of the night. I got up and let her in, which she is also a farm cat, never had been in before, and she went into a closet in our kitchen and allowed myself, Frank, Olivia, Avery and our dog Scout watch her deliver 7 babies. It was a miracle to say in the least. We were blown away by her, as it took many hours to complete that task. None the less, these mother cats were amazing and we were grateful for the experience.

That brings me to my own "mother hen" of sorts. I allowed each girl to keep 1 kitten from each litter. This brings our total to 4. One of them is definitely babied! Her name is Butterfly and she is adorable, but boy is she spoiled! Here is how each day goes: Olivia wakes up, gets dressed, adn rushes out to greet her baby. She picks her up, spins her around, delights in her, brings her in, pets her, feeds her, allows her to watch her eat as she sits on the bench. Then Olivia makes her a pillow bed, wrapped in the coziest blankets, surrounds her with stuffed animals, turns on a fan so she won't get too warm, turns on soft music to help her sleep and the cat takes her first of many naps of the day. "Butterfly" is a very cool cat, I must say. She never gets up to walk around, no she waits to be carried. She lays in your arms as an infant lays, on her back and will lay like that until you change positions. She rides in the bicycle basket all over the place and just sits there. Good thing the others are the mousers, because as far as "Butterfly" is concerned, they are not at all interesting. Today, I have seen it all. As we finished up our morning routine and were ready to head to our appointments, Olivia announce that Butterfly "wasn't quite ready" for us to leave yet. I was taken back by this comment a bit, as I didn't know what on earth this cat had to do yet and I wasn't going to wait to find out. Olivia showed me! She has trained this cat to SUCK HER THUMB!!! She saw a baby do it once and thought it would be good for her cat to do. She said she had been doing this for weeks and that it "only takes about 20 minutes or so for her to fall asleep!" ARE YOU KIDDING ME! We are beginning the weaning process tomorrow!