Doesn't it just figure? Finally, something blog-worthy happens, and I've been too busy living it to write about it until now. The miracle we hoped for has happened. Mittens has come home! We had been checking the PetHarbor.com found cat listings every day (a wonderful resource, by the way, whether you've lost a pet, found a pet, or want to adopt one, and severely underpublicized in my opinion), and in early June, we saw a picture of Mittens at the Prince Georges County Shelter. PG County is in Maryland, on the other side of DC from us. She was undernourished and pregnant, but when we went to look at her, everybody who saw her and the pictures we brought agreed it was the same cat. As if that weren't proof enough, she came right to the door of the cage and started demanding to know where I'd been all this time in the creaky-door miaou that she uses when she's not happy. When we opened the cage door, she came straight into my arms and settled in. When I saw that her whiskers were ticked brown and white, I was absolutely certain.
We brought her home on Saturday and took her to the vet on Monday. Other than being undernourished and pregnant, he gave her a clean bill of health, no FLV, no FIV, no parasites, nothing that we had feared might befall her on her own.
On Father's Day, June 18, she had her kittens. There were six, but one of them died on the next day. The other five are thriving, and their eyes are beginning to open. There are two black kittens, two grey-and-white ones, and one dark grey tabby. Mittens is a very good momcat to them all. She is starting to put on weight of her own now; her ribs and spine don't stick out any more, and her shoulder blades and hip bones don't stick up as much as they did when we found her.
The other cats' reactions to the kittens are as varied as the cats themselves. Freddie took a look at them, saw that none of them looked Siamese, and looked at me as if to say, "Someone gave her the wrong kittens! They're not Siamese!" He's such a snob. He's starting to accept them, but he's still not quite sure what they're going to do. Romana looked at them and seemed to accept them, but as she walked away, she gave a little hiss as if to say, "Mine were cuter!" Romana had had a litter before we met her. Finn keeps going up to the queening box and looking at them and then walking away with a slightly disappointed air as he realizes they're not big enough to play tag with yet. Puff just keeps coming in and looking at them as if she's trying to figure out what they are.
We still don't know how she got to PG County. Our best guess is that someone picked her up after she calmed down from her mad dash and took her home with them. Then when she went into heat, either she slipped out to find someone who could do something about it and got lost again, or else whoever had her couldn't stand the noise of a Siamese in heat (anyone who has heard one will understand, those who haven't don't know how lucky they are) and turned her out. Either way, we're glad she's home.
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