New additions to the family!

So we have two new kittens in our household - they are so adorable I can barely stand it.

The whole process of watching my cat deliver and then take care of her young was both terrifying and reassuring - so much can go wrong, but yet she was completely in her element, her animal instincts guiding her actions and generally assuring the healthy delivery of two very tiny, very adorable, little cats.

I will post pictures as soon as possible - probably when their eyes open. They are still blind and mewling and trying desperately to find the nipples. It is stressful to watch - I keep wanting to help but they always manage to find it without assistance, as it should be.

Aside from the new kitties, things here on the homestead are pretty good. We are definitely getting our goats, which is great, but I don't know that we will be getting them from our friend. One of her goats kidded successfully, delivering a boy and a girl, but the other one lost her baby, which is so sad especially after having some successes here with our kitties. The down side of all this for us is that we wanted two nannies - we really have no use for a boy goat. We don't want them as pets, and there is no way the baby daddy would let us eat an animal we had lived with for nine months. So we may have to research some different sources.

On the up side, the goat milk we are now getting has got to be the best stuff on earth - it is so creamy and delicious I want to drink all of it. Sadly, it is for my little man :( Bummer!

So life is good! The weather is much too warm and I need to pay more attention to this blog - Real Food Mama has been taking up much of my time. As it should :)

The caged bird sings..or just flies into the window.

I was sitting quietly on my sofa, watching Zoboomafoo with my son, when out of the corner of my eye I saw our cat Isis running frantically after something in the solarium. Which is rather amusing because she is pregnant and waddles something terrible.

Suddenly, a loud "thunk" startled me out of my television stupor and I realized, with some horror, that pregnant Isis had managed to chase a small house sparrow inside and was trying her best to kill the thing.

Not wanting to clean up that mess, I quickly got up off my lazy ass and carried the cat in while ascertaining that the poor bird was, in fact, still alive.

It was horribly stunned, however, and so I watched it hide in the corner for about an hour or so, until it recovered from it's head on collision with our door.

The funny part of all this is that after it had moved from it's hiding place, I went in to the solarium to look for it and try to shoo it outside. I looked under the coffee table, on top of the armoire, in all the corners...only to have the living daylights scared out of me when the bird flew out of the tree. Because that clearly wasn't the obvious place to look....

Cat House

No, I am not referring to a place to find loose women.

While perusing the interwebs this morning, I came across a rather interesting site. My 15 m/o little boy loves his "maos" (i.e., cats) and frequently request that we look at pictures of them on line. So, while we were doing that, I discovered a video documentary of a place called "The Cat House on the Kings".

This is a no-kill rescue ranch for cats - I think they house something like 700. The woman who runs the place has 6 acres and a serious love for all things feline. Apparently she has feeding stations placed around the property and cat doors in every room, so the animals are allowed to come and go as they please. All of her cats are up for adoption and in the event that one doesn't get adopted, it is allowed a permanent home at her ranch.

Apparently not all crazy cat ladies are actually nuts! It give me hope for myself.

Here is a link to her facility, and the video documentary I found.

The Cat House on the Kings