I’ve said for some time that we have two kittens and a tomcat (actually, it’s three kittens and a tomcat now), but I’ve never really introduced them to you. So here are Mitzi and Trixie, our first kittens, as they were the night we brought them home, in late June, 2009.

They might look tame and playful here, but they were pretty much feral. They were born to a half-domesticated cat that had made its home in the barn of an old stove-maker in our town. The poor man got his arms and chest scratched pretty badly by the kittens and their mom when he pulled them out of the barn for us.

We’d seen the mother before she’d given birth, and she was adorable, so we begged him to give us two of the kittens when they were ready to be weaned. He was more than glad to do so — he didn’t want a colony of stray cats in his yard.

Here they are the second day, when we put them outside, in the sunlight. They would hiss at us whenever we got near, so it took a bit for us to gain their trust.

Trixie is the one on the left, and Mitzi is the one on the right. Mitzi is the one that looks like her mother, and the resemblance is even more striking now that she’s grown up and is also pregnant. I’ll show you those photos in a later post…

Here’s Trixie again.

Doesn’t she look like she’s laughing in this photo?

Continue reading →