The kittens are two weeks old as of yesterday. Their eyes are open, and they're starting to walk around in the queening box. Mittens is spending more time outside the queening box checking out the rest of the house. She's also making the kittens work a little more for their meals. She's now lying at the opposite end of the box and making them come to her. Last week, she got fed up with our "helping" the kittens find their way and started moving them out of the box and under the daybed. Once we stopped picking the kittens up and let her mother them in her own way, she stopped moving them out of reach. Now, we only pick them up if she's either lying on one of them or about to do so.
Mittens is putting more weight on recently. You can almost not see her hip bones and shoulder blades. She's also getting a little fiercer. Last night, she met Romana in the hallway, and Romana was between her and the kitten room. Romana hissed at Mittens, and Mittens chased her up onto the video cabinet, tail puffed out, and kept trying to jump up at her. She couldn't figure out how to get up there by way of the climber, so she kept trotting back and forth in front of the cabinet, occasionally leaping up and putting her paws against the cabinet. I'm not sure why Romana has suddenly taken to hissing at Mittens. Perhaps it's because Romana had got used to being the "alpha female" and/or "Chief Fred Groupie", and she feels that Mittens has an advantage over her, being Siamese, intact, and having kittens. Mittens also keeps trying to snuggle up with Fred, but Fred's not having any. I'm not sure if it's because she ran off or because she has kittens that don't look at all Siamese, branding her a hussy, I suppose, in his book.
The kittens still have to be kept warm, so we have hardly turned the air conditioning on at all -- an unusual occurrence in July in Virginia!
