Brace yourself....

I could tell you the long story, or I could cut to the chase since I'm sure you all just want to move on along to the super cute pictures.  Basically, we discovered that a litter of kittens had been born in our crawl space!  My first attempt was to open up the trap door, because I knew it was very close to where the kittens were, but a long, low growl from mama stopped me in my tracks!  Since no one in this house is particularly fond of cats (or the diseases that stray cats carry), I put a $50 reward on Facebook for the first person to get the kittens out.  That night, they were out!!

After contacting every cat shelter and rescue organization in the metro area, I found the Feral Cat Coalition, which put me in touch with a volunteer who would be able to care for the kittens until they were big enough to go the Humane Society.  They were only about 1 pound (4 weeks old), but they need to be 2 pounds (8 weeks old).  I had been giving them kitty formula, but the volunteer agreed only to take the kittens if I could trap the mother.  The mother would be with the babies for the next month, then spayed, shot up, tested for diseases, and then I would have to re-release her at our house.

Well, sure enough, mama kitty heard her kittens in the cat carrier NEXT to the trap, but she wasn't interested in the food in the trap, so she curled up in a ball next to her kittens, just outside the carrier.  Cute, but not helpful.  A few more minutes passed, and finally, she was in the trap!  We took them all to the volunteer, and watched mama and babies reunite, then said our goodbyes.  Then, home, to obsessively scrub, bleach, and scrub again the bathtub where the kitties had lived through their wild 48-hour adventure.

You can see my preference for the one that looks like a little tiger...his name was Daisy for 2 days. 

Sniff!