Kitties!

My mother is finally a grandmother. Nope, wasn't me. Or my brother. It was the most recent addition to the family - Goldy.

Sometime in January, Lady (our German Shepherd) was outside with Dad. She found something of intense interest under a tree in the front yard, and whined and carried on 'till Dad came over to see what she'd found. She had discovered a tiny gold kitten, shivering and half starved in the snow. Dad brought it in the house and Mom took over as medic, with Lady in attendance.

It didn't take very long for the kitten to recover, and become the typical manic ball of ever-moving fluff that kittens tend to be. It also didn't take very long for our long-suffering dog to heartily regret rescuing that animal. The kitten, now christened Goldy, considered Lady to be her mom, her nurse and her favorite jungle gym, all rolled into one. If she wasn't on the dog, she was stalking her. Lady was supremely good-natured about the whole thing, right up until Goldy decided that she should be eating from Lady's plate. Fortunately, the kitten was bright enough to realize that Lady's warning snarls were serious.

The vet wouldn't fix the kitten until she was six months old. My mother, in spite of the mean dogs and the proximity of the road, wasn't willing to keep the kitten indoors.

The end result: yesterday my mom left a message on my machine - Goldy was having her kittens in the middle of the living room floor. There are six of them, although one is a runt and may not make it. Three are gold, one is black and white and two are calicos.

Mom's keeping one, my brother will be taking one, I may take one and the vet has agreed to post pictures of the remaining kittens in her office. I have told Mom that I'll take one, conditionally. I'm not at all sure how my Sophia will react to a fuzzy little interloper, so Mom needs to have a buy-back clause.

But in the meantime, feel for my poor puppy. She thought she had it rough with one kitten in the house. Now, she essentially has to deal with seven of them.