16/11/2011 - Arrival of the Kittens

Beautiful Taupo Sunshine

The 16th November marked the beginning of a mission that promised to be difficult. Let me give you the back story...

When I was last in Taupo about a month ago, the stray cat that gets it's food here was very very pregnant, so pregnant that we expected her to drop every day. But she waited until the day after I left. Now this cat is pretty wild and feral, it seems like Di is the only one she'll let near her, so when she took the kittens under the house it seemed like no one would see them until they were themselves feral. I wanted to see the kittens, so I was assigned the task on going under the house on my belly to get them out.

This morning I went for lunch with Kathy and her Mum, which was lovely, but when I got back it was game on. It was a beautiful day in Taupo today... perfect for retrieving kittens. Di got some of Bryce's overalls from the shed, I put on some gloves and a hat (in case of spiders and so I don't get webs in my hair, ew.) And we were ready to roll.

This is a good look, no?

We went to open the hatch so I could shimmy under the house and found, to our shock, kittens! Out in the open! We managed to grab two of them but the other two disappeared back under the house. Under I went, torch in one hand, the other swatting spider webs. It really was a skill. Or not... Anyhow, I reached one kitten and shimmyed back to pass it out to Di. The next kitten was a little more fiesty, and was spitting and hissing like crazy. They're only little though, so grabbing it wasn't too hard. A quick check for any other kittens and I shimmyed out, backwards, which is more difficult than it sounds.

Look how gorgeous the little babies are! They kept trying to crawl out of the holes in the banana box, so I fashioned covers for them out of an empty Heineken box and sellotape. Their mother doesn't seem to interested, so I've tried to ween them onto solids and it seems to be going pretty well. I've self assigned these kittens as my project for the next two weeks since they are just so precious!

In other useful things of the day, it's been a day of getting things done. I finally dropped my jeans at the clothing repairers, I read Adam and Enoch a story on Zoodles and I named all the gap year pictures of my external hard drive. As well as that I Skyped with Mum this morning, which was great since we haven't been able to speak properly for a while. If the weather stays nice tomorrow, I plan to make myself a picnic lunch and take a bike ride. Lovely.