Perch

I would imagine that living in the containment of a three-room apartment might get boring after a while. Bongo has taken to sitting on the windowsill and crying mournfully at sunup each day. Maybe I'm projecting, but it seems that this must come from some deep existential feline despair, borne of restlessness and a need to climb trees. Each time I hear that pitiful window-side meowing, I feel a mixture of guilt and irritation. It's not my favorite way to wake up each morning, and I've taken to throwing a small, decorative pillow at him (that's why they're called 'throw pillows', right?) to snap him out of it.

Then he'll scamper into the kitchen, crunch on some kibbles, and find an appliance to climb. These days, it's usually the heating unit, but sometimes it's the fridge top, from which he seems perfectly content to survey his surroundings for hours and watch for small and barely discernable movements in the room.

Cohabitation

No matter the angle, I can't seem to properly capture how cute this situation is. Bongo is sitting up, half-asleep, like an old man in a recliner. Lola is happy to be involved, even if just as a footrest.

Abundance

Lola is starting to look pregnant again. I have reduced her portions at mealtime, but it hasn't helped. Perhaps she's just destined to an extravagant girth. She's still plenty active, but she just lands a little (or a lot) harder when she jumps.

She has a somewhat frantic attitude toward food, and I sometimes wonder if it has to do with having lived an Oliver-Twist type lifestyle before I adopted her. It can't have been easy, scrounging in a dumpster for enough food to sustain her teenaged, pregnant body...

Heatseekers

The colder it gets, the closer the cats stick to one another--and to any warm, inert object they can find (radiators, sleeping humans, modems and routers...). Rather than tearing around the apartment or hanging out inside paper bags (fair weather pursuits), they now curl up on the couch together and take turns grooming each other.

Brothers

These photos came from Bruno (formerly Rabbit) and Rocco's new owner, who has been giving me regular updates on their progress. They are happy, healthy, and just took their first round of vaccinations like champs.


Brotherly regard, demonstrated while napping.

Two

The kittens have left the premesis.

The boys went to a new home together, and from all reports, they are having a great time. Their new owner sent me a batch of pictures today, which I will post here soon. Rabbit is now called Bruno, and his brother is Rocco--the perfect name for him.

The little girl, always the pioneer, went off to live in a beautiful farm house in Conway, where I hear she will soon be acquiring siblings. She left on Monday morning. It was sad to see her go, but the ensuing feeling of stillness and calm in the apartment has been quite novel.

Lola and Bongo are oddly unfazed by the household change. The only difference I've noticed in their behavior is that Lola has started to chase her tail (on me, in bed, at 5am each morning...) for the first time ever. I try to reason with her, but she just won't listen. She still thinks she can catch it.

I don't know for sure if this behavior has anything to do with the departure of her babies, but I do have a theory that with her new position as the youngest creature in the house, she now feels obligated to demonstrate her youth with playful antics. I totally understand. I do the same thing whenever I am in a room full of grown-ups.

Captains

Captains of the industry of cuteness.

Kibble

The kittens made their first foray into the world of kibble last night. It took a while for them to grasp that you only eat the contents of the bowl--not the bowl itself. Once they got the hang of it, however, the food disappeared fast.

The water bowl was another story. I'll just say that there was a lot of snorting and rearing involved.

Lola seemed a bit taken aback to see her babies eating from a bowl, but I think that once she's processed the situation, she'll be relieved that the onus of feeding is on someone else now.

Meanwhile, I'm trying (unsuccessfully) not to get too attached to the little monsters, who will be going off to their new homes within the next two or three weeks...

Rabbit

I got back from vacation yesterday. I was only gone a week, but it turns out to have been a pivotal seven days in the kittens' development. They are huge (relatively) and cat-like, and have completely foregone the cardboard box where they were born.

Now, they are explorers of the Underworld. Under the bed. Under the couch. Under the radiator. Underfoot...

This one is called Rabbit. You can't quite tell from the picture, but he has the hindquarters of a rabbit, and until recently, he dragged them around behind them in the most disconcerting way. I was actually starting to worry that he'd never walk like a normal cat, but he seems to have figured it out sometime in the past seven days. He now scampers around unhindered, just like the other two (who are as yet unnamed).

Faces

I really admire cats' ability to appear deadly serious one moment, and utterly ridiculous the next.

Fur

I try to imagine what it would be like to be dressed in fur on a day like today. It's seven thirty in the morning, and already the temperature is near 90 and forecasted to go up to 98. A skunk sprayed somewhere outside last night, and my window fan pulled the smell inside and filled the apartment with it. Bongo looks mildly disgusted and slightly intrigued. Lola doesn't seem affected, and neither do the kittens.

Awake

The kittens just slept for three days straight. It turns out they were building up to this.

Locomotion

Attempts at locomotion have begun. The kittens will push themselves up on trembling legs, dodder in mid air, take in the new vantage point for a moment, and then resume a prone position.

Nap, repeat.

On other fronts, Lola and Bongo have resumed their ultimate fighting, on a nightly and morningly basis. I am once again sleep deprived. But somehow, here in the midst of late spring, it doesn't bother me a bit.

Bellies

All of Lola's rotundness is gone, but the kittens have it in spades.

Project

This morning, Bongo was grooming the kittens so vigorously that the sound of it literally woke me up. Lola was sleeping peacefully at the foot of my bed, and didn't stir, even when I turned on the light and got up to go check on the kittens. There was so much slurping coming from the box, I was slightly alarmed by what I might find.

It was a festival of grooming! The kittens lay on their backs looking blissed out, while Bongo methodically licked at each of them with enough force to rock their little bodies back and forth. Everyone in the box seemed utterly entranced, but Bongo most of all. I've never seen him undertake a project that lasted more than 30 seconds, and judging from the spikiness of the kittens' fur, he'd been at this a good long time.

After all was said and done, not only were the kittens very clean, they also seemed quite invigorated. There was more movement in the box than I've ever seen before. I brewed a cup of coffee, and sat there watching while they belly-crawled around like giant furry frogs.

Guard

Lola's getting more and more intense in her motherhood. Each time I approach the kittens, she trots over, hops in the box and curls herself around her spawn while looking at me warningly. This is code orange. When I bring out the camera, she kind of goes to code red, and will lie on top of the kittens in an apparent attempt to hide them. This makes me feel, at least momentarily, like the paparazzi that spent a year desperately trying to get a shot of baby Suri.

Meanwhile, the kittens have started to open their eyes, and seem to be growing at a rapid pace--especially their heads. The cuteness levels have doubled in the past few days, and if I can't document it with the camera I may need to write a poem instead.

Character

Kitten Milestones:

Birth
Development of character
Opening of eyes
Standing
Walking
Using litter box
Eating solids
Finding new homes

The first one and a half have been achieved, and the last one is pre-arranged. The rest are yet to come.

Grooming

Bongo grooms Lola, Lola grooms babies, babies make noises.

Captivation

I am totally captivated. It's hard to do anything but sit by the box and watch these little things, and their mother.

Bongo feels the same way. He's constantly trying to get into the box with them, and this morning I finally let him. He touched noses with Lola, and then began to groom the kittens while she sat calmly watching.

Authority

These kittens are small, but somehow full of authority. When they mew for milk, Lola goes running as though summoned by a much higher power. Even Bongo is a little in awe of them. He has only invaded their space once--by accident--when he fell off the windowsill into their box, and then scrambled out looking penitent (a look I've never seen on him before).

I find their large, domed foreheads to be a bit awe-inspiring. Their faces remind me right now of what Michael J. Fox looked like as Teenwolf.

Arrivals

They're here. They started arriving around 12:30, right around the same time as the rain.

Lola took it like a champ and is now sleeping, with three little black and white babies attached to her belly.

Bongo is sequestered in the other room, with no idea of the fun that awaits him. Kittens!

Detente

Bongo and Lola still like to spar, but their confrontations have definitely cooled down to room temperature. Their interactions are now more like performance art. Or kabuki theater.

This particular battle was preempted by the appearance of a squirrel outside the window.

Out

Bongo was once a great outdoorsman. Now that the spring is here, he seems to spend a lot of time reminiscing about when he lived unconfined, climbing trees, chasing bugs, and watching birds--without a pane of glass in his face. I never saw him catch a bird, but he did come home on several occasions with little feather bits stuck to his mouth...

He is still an industrious cat, but he's got a whole new set of activities that could be divided into two categories: Outdoor Watching (watching birds, squirrels, cars, moving branches, and other cats out the living room window) and Indoor Watching (watching the toilet flush, the steam come out of the espresso machine, the little lights that flicker on the wireless router, and of course, Lola).

Lola is five days past her supposed due date. I called the vet, who didn't seem particularly worried, so I am trying to follow that cue. It may not be nice to say this, but she is starting to look like a beached whale when she lies down. And when she walks, there is a certain swaying motion that somehow reminds me of planets in orbit.

Preposterous

Lola is now 2 days past her due date. Her stomach continues to grow, and the kittens have begun to move around, jutting strangely from one side of her belly or the other, creating alarming asymmetry.

Bongo has become less and less gentlemanly. Aside from hogging the birthing box and constantly initiating wrestling matches--day and night--he has also started to get competitive about food. Somewhere in the deep recesses of his psyche, he must know that his life is about to be taken over by creatures with needs that may eclipse his own.

I can kind of relate. Right now, it definitely feels like this apartment belongs to the cats.

Books

Last night Lola laid around looking depressed and world-weary, but oh so young. Kind of like a child bride on the night of her shotgun wedding. She flopped out on the couch and watched as Bongo paced around the living room, stopping occasionally to pull a book down off the shelf. Because he can only reach the lower two shelves, he has access to all the smallish one-dollar paperbacks I've collected over the years: Albert Camus, Jean Genet, Henry James, Frederick Pohl.

Bongo repeatedly pulls down a book called The Coming of the Quantum Cats and then glances at me. Does he want me to read to him? Is science fiction what he likes best, or would he prefer magical realism? It's hard to say.

Lola likes contemporary fiction, but lately she reads nothing but parenting books.

Usurpery

Bongo has usurped Lola's birthing box. It's probably an act of retribution, since Lola has usurped Bongo's spot at the foot of the bed.

In general, both cats have entirely usurped my apartment. The nighttime wrestling is no longer a novelty act--it's now a way of life. Yesterday I showed up for brunch* bleary-eyed and late from oversleeping. I explained that my cats had kept me up most of the night with their very loud shenanigans. My friends offered me a baby gate, so I could keep the creatures in the east wing of my apartment while I slept in the west wing. (It's fun to talk about a 1-bedroom apartment in these terms.) Too bad cats can jump so much higher than babies.

[*One of the most delicious brunches ever. Eggs benedict with asparagus. Esselon Cafe.]

Duo

Patience

Still waiting. Patiently.

I really thought the kittens were going to come last night. Lola displayed all the symptoms of a cat about to go into labor: decreased appetite, restless pacing, impossible rotundness.

Even Bongo seemed to be expecting something. He didn't attack her once. Just sat there quietly, watching.

Vessel

What's full of kittens, covered in nipples, and never stops eating?

Give up?

It's Lola.

And I'm guessing she's going to have those kittens any day now.

Aside from the fact that her girth seems to double every 24 hours, she is starting to get the long-suffering look of a mother.

Short of earning a veterinary degree, I'm probably as prepared as a person can be for the inevitable event. I've stocked up on dental floss (to tie off the ends of bloody umbilical cords) and eye droppers (for suctioning out tiny breathing passages)--neither of which should be at all necessary as long as Lola's maternal instincts kick in when they should.

The one mistake I've made is staying up late watching feline birthing videos on the internet. If I could take that night back, I would. It's one thing to witness the event in person, and another to watch (repeatedly) on YouTube, while another person's cat rotates painfully in a cardboard box, dropping one slimy sack after another onto a pile of shredded newspaper. Oh, and then eats the afterbirth.

I really love the idea of nature, but sometimes in practice it's just plain gross.

Honeymoon

Last night I had to separate the felines due to mortal combat. I put them in adjacent rooms, separated by double 'doors' that are actually 2 tall pairs of shutters held together with hinges. The doors are okay for privacy if you are having a dinner party and need to change your gown whilst guests sip champagne in the next room. But they are pretty useless for sequestering cats.

The rest of the night was a symphony of rattling shutter-doors, and a low, persistent growling (Lola), that sounded kind of like a hummingbird hovering somewhere nearby.

I would have just thrown them in a room together and let them duke it out if it weren't for the pregnancy factor. I don't know how delicate Lola's condition is, but I'd prefer not to risk it. Plus, the nature of their fighting is just too intense to listen to while trying to fall asleep.

That had to be the shortest honeymoon ever. And now there are children on the way.

Nest

The furry pregnant teen living in my house is looking for a place to have her puppies. And by puppies, I mean kittens. I'm told cats like a private place to give birth and when they are getting close to that time, they'll start looking for a sheltered area where they will nestle in and wait. For the past couple of days, each time I've opened my closet door to look for sandals, a USB cord, or an unwrinkled shirt, Lola has made a beeline for the dark, disorganized recesses. I'm worried that if she gives birth in there, the kittens will never be found again, just like the mates to most of my socks.

I've tried to lure her to other spots, but the towel-lined laundry basket doesn't seem to hold any appeal.

I guess I better make some space in my closet.

Gratitude

This cat is definitely grateful to have a home. She eats copious amounts of food and always takes the best seat in the house, but you just can't begrudge her anything because she seems to luxuriate so thoroughly in everything she does.