So I'm a great-grandmother...

Make a Smilebox postcard

Here are the newest additions to our home! Our Caroline gave birth to 6 kittens early Thursday morning...the 11th of June. Here's how it all played out.

A few months ago when Caroline (the cat...just for clarification) was in heat, we found her in the garage. The garage door was closed so we were pretty confident that she wasn't outside with a special friend. That perspective changed in just a few short weeks as she became larger and larger, she was more lethargic and she wouldn't let Abby carry her around. So we talked to the resident vet in our church and without even looking at her said, "Yep, I'd put money on it that she's pregnant."

Great. So then Paul and I are trying to figure out when she got outside and we decided that the morning we found her in the garage must have been the "morning after." She must have been outside before we closed the garage for the night and she narrowly escaped being stuck outside of the garage for the whole night...and we found her the next morning. We completely made up this story in an effort to make sense of the whole situation. However, we have no factual basis for these claims what so ever and so we say, "We have no idea how she got into her `delicate` situation."

Skip forward to June 11, 2009, 4:18am.

Paul and I awake to an interesting sound in our room. I immediately know what it is and Paul is kind of in a daze repeating over and over, "What's that sound, what's that sound." I calmly reply in a half-sleep voice...Caroline just had her kittens under our bed...

About 3.7 seconds later we both realize what I have just said and we fly out of the bed. We have to move the end table that is at the end of the bed and...there she is.
She is licking to death 3 little kittens. So Paul and I watch for a few minutes and we kind of smile at each other and say, "oh, how cute..." etc. As we are climbing back into bed I say, "Well at least there are only 3." We got back into bed because I was certainly not taking care of this situation at freaking 4:23am.

Skip to 7:30am.

We wake the kids up to show them the `three` new kittens. The kids come into the room and got down on their bellies to look under the bed and Jacob started counting.
One. Two. Three. FOUR! What??? Ok so four. Now we have four. Whoa. We get on with our day and a few hours later we go back to check on the kittens and Caroline. Abby counts this time.

One. Two. Three. Four. FIVE! SIX! Holy smokes. Six. What are we going to do with six kittens. We'll figure that out later. We got a box and got the kittens and Caroline in a box and slid it under the bed because that is where Caroline was "comfty" (as my kids would say).

The boys have picked out which ones they are going to keep. Caleb is picking one of the "cow kitties"... (translation...white with black spots) He named it Soccer...of course he did. And Jacob picked one of the darker ones with the stripes. He named it Recon. So that rounds out our family. Mommy, Daddy, Jacob, Caleb, Abby Sue, Caroline, Recon and Soccer.

As the day goes on Abby begins to figure out that Caroline is the kitties' mommy, She is Caroline's mommmy so she is the kitties' "Nana" and I am her mommmy so I am Caroline's "Nana" and I am the kitties'....

That's right people I am a great-grandmother...to cats.