X miaow

So we had to give the kittens back to our neighbour. That was the main thing that happened this week. We were due to give them back on Tuesday, a day when I had to start work at the coffee shop at 12 noon. It was raining, all morning, in a very heavy monsoony way, and I was sad all morning because of giving back the kittens, but there was no sign of our Neighbour who was going to come and pick them up.

I remembered how on the night the kittens were born, it was raining then too and our Neighbour didn't want to walk over the road to see them because it was too wet. Instead she came two days later. I didn't want that kind of procrastination to happen again - it was all too sad-making - so when the rain stopped I gave her a call and said "please come and get the kittens now." By the time I'd put the phone down, it was raining hard again.

At last our Neighbour drove her car through the rain over the road to our place, and came in our door carrying a plastic washing basket with a towel in it. She knew where the kittens were, so she went straight to their box and snatched out first one kitten and then the second one and put them in the basket. The kittens' mother came bounding across the room to see what was happening, but she was too late - when she got into the box, the kittens were already gone. She started to make a very low growling noise.

Our Neighbour carried the kittens out of the room, and I leaned down into the box to pick up the mother cat. She didn't even protest, she just hung limply in my arms. It was so sad. I hurried to catch up to our Neighbour, so I could show the mother cat that her kittens were safe in the plastic washing basket. When she saw them, the mother cat jumped straight into the basket with them and began to check them all over for damage.

Then I handed our Neighbour an umbrella and an extra towel to put over the basket to protect the little kittens from the rain. Our Neighbour took the kittens in their basket out our front door and put them in the back seat of her car. Before she drove away she gave me back my old towel, but she didn't give back my umbrella.

More Cats

Well, those two little kittens just keep getting cuter. Meanwhile, their mum has become much more protective of them ... so no more photos of them at this stage.

Mum has also become quite restless. She's bored of being cooped up in our house and I know she just wants to go out to play. Instead she just waits for her man to come and visit her in prison.

Ahh, here he is.

He's a pretty dedicated prison-visitor. He comes every day, and if she doesn't come to the door to see him, he'll sing her a really loooong looooud song.

Update

Well, there's one thing I can update for you:

This cat, who's been hanging around our place for a while now, not discouraged by us and actually allowed to look all over our bedroom, in any draw that takes her fancy:

She's had her kittens! She had two. And even better, she had them at our place, not in a draw but in the box that we had prepared for her with old towels and flannelette sheets.

As I think I mentioned before, we were pretty sure that she was getting close last week, and on Friday when I came home from a meeting (at which I was given more writing work to do - yay!) she was waiting for me at the door. She beat me inside and went straight to her box and waited there very quietly.

I sat down at my computer, but soon decided that I needed to go out and buy some paper and/or get a takeaway coffee before I could get right down to work. I peeked into Kitty's box to tell her that I'd only be gone an hour or so, and I saw that she was having her babies.

Hayden and I are both so stoked that she chose to have her kittens at our place, after weeks and weeks of secret encouragement on our part. I was feeling slightly bad for Kitty's real owner, our neighbour across the road, until we phoned her on Friday and she said that seeing as it was raining she wouldn't come over and meet the new kittens until after work the next day. Eventually when she did come and meet the new kittens, she asked us if we could keep them here for at least a week.

We're really loving having them, and we weigh them on our kitchen scale every day (that's not something their owner asked us to do). It's amazing how they're putting on weight - like 10 - 15 g every day between morning and bedtime. That's 10%, like a person putting on 7kg between leaving for work in the morning and coming home at night!

February Waiting

February in Townsville is hot and hard and slow. There, I’ve said it. I think I’ve said that very sentence twice before. I didn’t want to have to say it this time, but I can't escape it. It’s true.

This year, like the last two years, I’ve been a bit underemployed during February while I wait for the year to get started. It seems like I’m waiting for so many things …

We WERE waiting for news about the job in Singapore, but it turned out that Hayden didn’t get that one. We’re still waiting to hear about a couple of other jobs he's applied for. I won’t say what they are (in case nothing comes of them) but now that Hayden’s decided that it’s time for him to move, I think he'll keep applying for jobs until he finds the right one. You may place a bet, if you like, as to which of these 79 locations that right job turns out to be in. I think Singapore’s still in with a chance, myself.

In the meantime, we’re waiting for it to be time to get married. Preparations for that big day are still ticking along, although nearly everything’s organised now. Recently we booked a photographer (check out her work – very arty and nice, I think) and as part of that we’ll go up to her place in Port Douglas to have an ‘engagement portrait’ shot. I might or might not show you that when it's done. I still haven’t found my second pair of shoes.

And finally, we’re waiting for this cat, our neighbour’s, to have her kittens. Our front balcony is a lovely breezy spot in the afternoons, so this little white cat with the enormous bulging belly quite often joins me there for an afternoon sit. Earlier today, she was resting on my lap and I could actually see the little kittens moving around inside her, underneath her skin. That was pretty cool.