Announcing the arrival of our Twin, Triplet, no Quad kittens!

Last evening our son exclaimed, "Kitka peed on me!" For a cat who has never gone anywhere other than her litter box, we knew her time was close, so we made her a spot in the Master Bathroom. I checked her a few times in the night--only some staining on the towels my husband had put in a box for her, but now she wanted to walk around. About 6 a.m. she was wandering around our walk in closet looking for a nesting place of her own choice. I had a pile of Desert Industries clothes in the closet, so I selected out an old red coat with a warm blue inside and laid it in the corner she'd picked. Each of our kids has worn this coat as a back up sledding coat.

This morning I was encouraging another son to get dressed by saying, "As soon as you are dressed, you can go check on the cat to see if she's having her babies yet!" My husband said he found him watching her give birth when my husband came in to get dressed. Our son put his finger over his mouth to quiet his Dad, who instead came to get the rest of us. Everyone came running and found her licking her first kitten (see photo of her doing this with number 4 below) and then got to see the second one plop out in it's sack followed by the after birth -- which she ate, as cats do.

The kids are exited to hear the kittens' mew, roll over and expose their pink paws and under bellies and watch the milk drip down their mouths as they nurse. It's like an animal shelter around here with dogs, rabbits and cats!

After the older ones left for school, the youngest went to check and came back exclaiming, "She's had another kitten!" I went in and she had her 4th while I was there! This I got on still camera. She had 2 black kittens and then 2 grey ones about 2 hours later! I had to leave to help at school -- the kids were surprised to hear we had two more kittens. When I returned, I checked and no more kittens, so the total is 4.

A friend commented: "It's lucky and rare that the kids were able to experience this, both the timing that they were home and the reality that society is moving away from the farm to the city in general making the connection with nature more and more tenuous. Congrats--I think." My husband's parents sent their condolensces on the kittens. My parents wonder what else can we have.

The kids are so excited and we're glad they get this experience since their dogs cannot give birth as they are both male and since we've already had multiple sets of rabbits, thus the separate cages now. Also, with bunnies you cannot get that close to them at birth and until they are 2 weeks old or the mama will reject them, I'm told. Although when it was so cold and we had to bring our rabbits inside the mud room and one male jumped out of his box in with one female in her box and we hope we caught them in time! If not, we know someone who raises rabbits who will be glad to raise them.

It's easy to see these last 2 grey kittens in the photos, but harder to make out the black ones against our black cat and the navy blue inside of the coat.

Our cat is being a good Mommy, which we worried about since she and her brother were abandoned by their Mommy and fed by eye dropper. She is 1 1/2 years old we think. She and her brother were abandoned by their mother, but she's being a great mother, just purring as they nurse and continually cleaning them.

This a.m. our cat finally got up from the kittens for more than just to eat, drink and use the bathroom. I let her out of the bathroom and she ran down to her own room and really was surprised when it didn't look the same. We'd taken her food and water bowl, etc. up to the bedroom closet for her. She also poked her head around other rooms as if it check even though things had changed in her life suddenly, was everything and everyone else the same. She finally jumped back up on me for reassurance like she does several times a day.

Here's a photo of just the kittens sleeping on top of each other while she was away. Now she's back with them purring as they nurse.