* * *
Another hour and a half of weeding this morning, and the onions are done. I also weeded the tomatoes, though I didn’t do a perfect job of it, just grabbed what I could. I also knocked about 6,000 little bitty cherry tomatoes off the vines while I was weeding (okay, maybe more like three) – it’s a good thing we have an entire row of tomatoes, I guess.
Maxi and Newt like to keep me company while I weed. This morning they chased each other through the garden, then settled down for naps under the squash plants. The squash plants are now so big that if they’re under one of them, you can’t see them until you’re right up on them.
Kinzie asked in yesterday’s comments: So will Maxi and Newt be disallowed from the backyard once the gate goes up? Or will they be climbing the fence to get in and out? If they do that, won’t MB and T try to follow them out? etc, etc.
No, we’ll let them into the back yard as much as they want to be there. They’ve interacted with our (indoor) cats plenty by now, and though there’s the occasional hissing, they all get along fairly well. In fact, when we let our cats out to hang out in the back yard last weekend, Miz Poo and Maxi were within five feet of each other for several minutes and no one got hurt. Amazing! I don’t know if they’ll start climbing the fence to get in or out – so far, they seem a little confounded by the fence and I haven’t seen them climb it yet, but who knows what’ll happen once the last gate goes up? If Tommy and the Boog (sounds like a cartoon, doesn’t it?) start climbing the fence (and they are definitely the two who would do it, have no doubt), we (Fred) will run the electric fence around the yard and collar those bastards up.
By the way, Fred has let Maxi in the house a few times. It goes pretty well, until Sugarbutt spots her.
Right now, Maxi will come in and look around if Fred coaxes her (or picks her up and carries her inside), but she has no apparent desire to be in the house. The fact that she and Newt get along with our (inside) cats means that if the weather gets nasty this winter, we can bring them inside and not be too worried about them all killing each other.
Unfortunately, these kittens are the scaredest, skittish-est, hissingest cats on the face of this planet. I haven’t been able to pick them up and snuggle them – anytime you get even close, they hiss and run away to hide. I’ve only had them less than a day, though, so maybe they’ll improve. So far I’ve gone in and just sat and read so they could get used to having me around. Fred got them to play near him last night for a few minutes, but these aren’t kittens who are coming around asking to be petted, for sure.
Two of them are named so far, and I still need to come up with names for the other two.
Meet:
Tina Louise, so named because of the “beauty mark” next to her nose (though to be honest, I haven’t gotten close enough to her to be able to tell for sure that it’s part of her coloring rather than some shmutz she hasn’t cleaned off yet), and “Ginger” was taken. She’s got some set of ears on her, huh?
Spanky, named after our Spanky just because. He appears to be the bravest of the bunch, but if you get too close, he’ll hiss, too.
I wanted to name this one “Spot” after our Spot, but that name’s been used before, so I’ll have to come up with something else. This one’s a male.
No name on this one yet, either. This one’s a female, and the most skittish of the bunch.
The story on this bunch is that their owner called the shelter and said she had three kittens and that they were inside and had been handled plenty. When she showed up at the shelter, she had four kittens, the mother cat, and a RABBIT with her. The truth came out that the kittens had been living behind a washer and dryer and hadn’t been handled at all. They’re about 10 weeks old, they’ve been fixed, and they use the litter box just fine.
If I can tame them at least to the point where they don’t hiss like little wild things every time you look at them sideways, I’ll be happy.
“Ah hets kittens.”