Pranksters

Inspirational song: The Glamorous Life (Sheila E)

I've been around the block a few times. I'm familiar with cat humor. Those little rats love a good prank. So by now I should know not to believe a cat who insists she's about to go into labor on April Fools Day. Lucky for me I did not stay up all night trying to watch a video stream. When the ultimate feline midwife (Shelly) went to bed in British Columbia (the source of the video), I also went to bed. And speaking of April, I checked in on the giraffe a couple of times today. She is also still pregnant. By the time I settled down in front of the television to write (and to hide from social media until I'd watched all of the Walking Dead season finale), I hadn't even seen a real contraction from either of those coy ladies. I know kittens are imminent though. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. They're close. I just hope that skinny mama can handle the whole process. She is weak.

While I watched the ginger cat on the phone, and I was daintily placing tiny stitches in lace on the wedding dress, the cat left her nest. She went off camera, and the most hideous, sloppy, wet noises came from the direction of her cat box. Moments later, Shelly came in to clean up. I recognized every sigh she made. I had flashbacks to the noises from Cricketstan, in those terrible final days, and the memory of the smell was as vivid as if it were in the room with me. Some aspects of caring for another being who is not well are far from glamorous. It's worth it, though. When Shelly cleaned the room, and changed out the blanket for the skinny mama, she seemed so happy to have a fresh, clean bed to wait out the rest of her confinement.

I'm back on the video feed. I would sure like to see at least one kitten born tonight. As I wrote the above paragraph, I realized that today would have been Cricket's fifteenth birthday. Her sister is still alive, living with my older daughter. With a ginger mama, it's unlikely that one of the kittens would be a solid gray one like Smacky (the sister), but a calico like Cricket is possible. There are a few hours left in this day (and an extra one if you count that the mama is in BC). There's time for babies before the date changes. This is a good day for kittens. Quit pranking me, skinny mama.