Heat

On the meteorological front, they say it's coming. On the feline fertility front....it's here.

I don't think I ever mentioned the tiny gray cat that showed up here days before the bar mitzvah. Every female cat I've ever owned has been promptly spayed so believe it or not, I've never been around a pregnant cat. This girl showed up with swollen teats but not a kitten in sight. Given her insistence on getting in the house and settling down, I figured she'd be having kittens soon. I ran a bunch of ads and called all the shelters but, guess what? She wasn't the only preggo kitty in town. I couldn't throw her out, could I? I think there's a sign over my door that says "sucker" in cat language.

After a few days, she was still swollen up, but maybe less so. It was hard to tell, until one friend felt her up and decided she'd had the kittens and was just engorged. I can't help but wonder what must have happened to her kittens and how she ended up in our neighborhood. Meanwhile, the cat had definitely moved in and joined the family without upsetting the other cats too terribly much. We tossed more than few names around and have finally settled on Chutki (the little sister in more than one Bollywood movie). I called the vet but had to wait until tomorrow for her checkup. All is good, right?

Except that yesterday morning I noticed she was out in the back yard entertaining every male cat in the neighborhood (except our own, who has clearly had it with all the females in the house and only drops by to eat these days). I immediately scared the boys off, brought Chutki in and made it clear to the kids that she was to stay inside. She made quite the ruckus last night, moaning and carrying on, trying to get out through the basment windows and knocking things over in the process. Somehow she was successful as we found her outside this morning with a crowd of noisy boys around again. So it's probably too late and I fear we're going to end up with kittens after all. Because, you know, four cats isn't enough.