Something's lurking in the woodpile ... :-/

Went out to the barn this afternoon to look for some timber and found ...






































kitten1.jpg


Well, now missy, where did you come from? We haven't had authorised cats or kittens here for many a long year. Well, un train peut en cacher un autre, as they say on all the best French level crossings: under my handy garden trailer was

kitten2.jpg


I think I saw their mother too - but she high-tailed it off towards the far end of the property when she saw me, and left the kittens to fend for themselves. Quality parenting, that. :D

She seems to have done a good job with them, though. I reckon they're about 8-10 weeks old, have probably been spying on me have already for a few weeks from a hidey-hole somewhere, and have learnt that I'm part of the local fauna and nothing to be too much afraid of. They're already sufficiently confident to come up for a head-scratch, and to let me pick them up for a few minutes at a time.
 
I'll tell you what's scary:

cat-fiveaside.jpg


At the start of the week, I was a sad old man living alone in the back end of nowhere. Now I'm a sad old man with a load of cats! :scared:

The cat I thought might have been the mother is, in fact, BigBrother (the spotted tabby on the left) about 4-5 months old. The pretty one on the right is about a year old, so might be the mother of the bigger kitten beside her, but might be an older sister or an aunt. The ginger-and-white is still too jumpy for me to do a hands-on evaluation, so I'm not sure whether he/she is male or female ... and the sixth one - yeah, there's another! - well, she is 100% definitely the mother of the little blue-cream, and not at all happy that I've been paying inordinate attention to her baby. :angry:

What's scariest of all, though, is how quickly the four youngest have become completely confident with me being around. That's my work space, so I'm in and out all the time, using power tools and things with noisy engines ... and now they've come out of the shadows, they're happy to play, snooze or sunbathe in full view regardless of the noise and commotion.

They're playing havoc with my productivity too. :D
 
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