I've been there, cat

Hello, Internet friends!

I'm on the last week of living at my in-laws in Logan. GH has been working at his new job, I have been getting my garden up and running, and the Dark Lord has been chasing around after the two dogs and nine cats.

Oh. Did I not mention the nine cats? Yeah, the short story is that a few weeks ago my mother-in-law's two male cats had surprise litters within days of each other. The kittens are adorable and they all have intended homes, so that's good. What is less good is that both the mothers are first-time moms. The white cat is in her element. When she nurses the kittens, she purrs and looks all peaceful and content. (Good for her. That was definitely not my experience.) It's a good thing, though, that she seems to enjoy this motherly duty, because after we'd been here a few days I realized I'd never seen the brown cat nursing any of the kittens. Turns out, she doesn't. I don't know if she lacks the instinct or what, but I maintain that maybe she just has supply issues, okay??? Don't judge her!!!

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Turns out the one instinct that is strong within the brown cat is to up and move all the kittens to places that she deems as being safer than the garage. (What? First-time moms being anxious and possibly irrational? Never.) This includes the time when she scaled them up and over a 6+ foot fence so they could relocate to the neighbor's shed. She moved them during the night, and by the time the white cat had found them (so, you know, they could eat) and we figured out where they were, the 9 kittens had become 7. We don't know what happened to the other two. (GH thinks that maybe his family just miscounted in the beginning and there were never nine, but they swear there were.)

Two days ago I went into the garage to check on the food and water and heard a bunch of mewing coming from behind the lawnmower. Rolling my eyes, I went over to see what the brown cat had done. There was one fuzzy kitten underneath the lawnmower, mewing frantically, but it wasn't until I touched the sides of the very full lawnmower bag and felt movement that I realized what those insane cats had done. I called GH to help me detach the bag and out popped the two momma cats. The babies blinked out at me from inside the bag on their bed of grass.

So. My mission:

Keep kittens out of lawnmowers, off of fences, and away from other unsafe places.
Continue to keep the terrier away from the kittens, because I do not want to risk having his ratting instincts kick in, resulting in death and gore and kitten bits.

Even better? The brown cat is in heat, which I learned when I Googled her odd and strangely friendly behavior towards me and also the dogs.

Gooood times.