She texted back that they were waiting for her husband, the vet, to get back from his job, and that he'd given Dagne an ultrasound today and she had five huge kittens and possibly was going to be delivering sooner than Ginger had anticipated. Also, I already knew about her second pregnant cat Teddy who is due Sunday.
And she wrapped up her text by saying, "is there any reason we're waiting until Monday for you to come get Thimble and Colby?"
Even for me, crippled as I am with interpreting social signals, that sounded astonishingly like "could you come earlier?"
I hate changing my plans. I really do. But on the other hand, there really wasn't a reason I was having to wait until Monday. I'd just gotten back from having my mp3 player connection fixed in the car, so I'd have music on the drive. All the kitten proofing (that I knew needed to be done) had been finished a week ago. Honestly the only reason I had waited until Monday was because I didn't know if she, the breeder, would be okay with letting them go two days after their 11th week birthday instead of closer to 12 weeks.
So I told her that, much abbreviated of course, and she basically said either Saturday or Sunday was good. Knowing Teddy was due on Sunday, I proposed Saturday.
That meant that on Saturday I did all my chores, ate my breakfast at my parents' house as usual, and then drove the two and a half hours to Ginger's house. Er, make that just a smidge over two hours ... apparently I was driving a little faster than usual.
Ginger spent the morning giving Thimble and Colby a bath and blowdrying them. They were so incredibly soft. And that's the softest they'll ever be; their coats change texture as they grow up (I remember Pippin used to be cloud fluffy too as a kitten) plus the bath made them even softer. It also made them smell different to themselves, so when I got there she had just finished, and they were both spending a bit of time washing to get things back to normal. Or close to it.
Thimble appeared to remember me. Colby was more occupied with the washing.
I'd asked for one more set of photos, not realizing the amount of work that went into them. The baths were extra; but just the photoshoot requires a lot of work. She has camera lights and sets up a board across between two cat cages with a backdrop she has to put up. The board is how she keeps the kittens in one place; they can't go forward or back due to the lack of somewhere to step, so all she has to do is keep them from going to one side or the other.
However, setting all this up takes time, and then the photos take time, and then editing the photos takes time.
Here is one of the new year's photos and a "behind the scenes" look at the photoshoot.
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| Behind the scenes: what a lot of work it took to set all this up! |
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| Happy New Years from Thimble and Colby |
Then she had to draw up the contracts and register the kittens on the CFA website. (She wasn't really ready for me to come before Monday either. I wonder if the sudden decision to have me come on Saturday was as sudden for her as it was for me?) She's got a template for the contracts, of course, but all the extra stuff had to be filled in.
Finally we got everything done and signed and the check written. Toys were put in bags, as well as some books (including a tales from a Maine Coon breeder book that I (a) didn't have, and (b) had never seen before, so way cool there) and a comb and a seam ripper (marvelous for getting out fur mats) and a claw clippers even though I already have one, but that's okay because now I have a backup in case one breaks.
I loaded up Colby and Thimble into my front pack for the short trip out to the car from the house. I was parked in their garage. It was funny because I mostly did it just to see how they'd do in the front pack. It's not like as an adult I can put more than one into there, and besides, it's going to be Apricot's spot.
I put Colby in first and Thimble in on top of him. There's room for them to be side by side, but they didn't arrange it that way. Colby scrambled on top of Thimble and wanted to look out and see where we were going, so I actually hooked his harness into the single hook that the front pack has (I don't think its designers anticipated putting two kittens into it) so he couldn't get out. Thimble just curled up underneath Colby, all patient.
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| Too dark so it's blurry, plus they kept moving! |
They got dispensed into the CarGo in my back seat, and off I drove for the two and a half hour (if you follow the speed limit) trip home.
Within fifteen minutes I got meows from the back seat. Very plaintive, upset meows. I finally decided it was probably the CarGo itself, and that they really would have preferred a carrier. I texted (yes, while driving, although I used Siri to help) Ginger "why are they meowing at me" to confirm or deny my suspicions and she confirmed them. (Is there a way to get Siri to read texts to you?)
So before I got on I-85, I pulled over into a Tractor Supply parking lot and transferred them into the carrier that was in the trunk. I put the carrier inside the CarGo (since I didn't have room for it in the front seat) and we headed off again.
Not a peep out of the Rowdy Boys from that point on. In fact, once I heard purring. They purr, I have discovered, at the drop of a hat.
Yes, I'd brought a carrier too, just in case. Occasionally I show signs of thinking ahead!
My mom had asked me if I could stop in before I went home so she could pet the kittens. She knew it would be a while before I could have people over to my house. I asked Ginger if that would be okay, and she said it would, so I stopped by my parents' house before I went home. It's not a big hardship, as they live less than a mile away from my house!
Well, now we had a problem, because my original idea had me opening the CarGo door and mom reaching in and petting. But there was an issue with that idea in the first place (the actual car has to have its car door open for that to work, and visions of chasing kittens all over my parents' yard did not appeal). And now they were in the carrier as well. So when I called mom to let her know I was incoming, I told her to bring keys to their car.
So we got into the backseat of her car, and I had the carrier in my lap, and I opened the top so Mom could pet them. They purred at her and Thimble poked his head out the top, seemingly thinking we were home and it was time to go exploring. Mom was going to get out and let Daddy have her seat, but he climbed into the front seat of the car and twisted around to reach them from there. My eighty-year-old father is still pretty spry!
Mom's biggest comment was "they're so soft!" Yes, they are. The harnesses they wear make life so much easier because the harnesses are so much easier to grab than soft, friction-less kitten fur.
We got home, and I went inside without the kittens. I left them in the car with the car running, the environmentals on, and the door locked on my precious kittens. I greeted Apricot as usual, but he was fascinated with the smells on me. Not as fascinated as he was two weeks ago when I had visited the kittens on a Saturday, and not as alarmed as he was the first visit I'd made, so there's progress.
And then I brought the kittens in, walking through the house with the carrier. Apricot observed this process but didn't seem alarmed.
That came later, when the kittens' smell started permeating the house. Would you have noticed it? Probably not. I don't know why my sense of smell has kicked into overdrive in the past year, but I was bothered by Apricot before he took on more of the smell of the house and I got used to his unique scent, and I noticed the kittens' scent in the air this time. It's not a bad smell. It's not like they pooped and didn't quite separate the poop from the butt, like sometimes happens.
It's just their unique, individual scents. And it's not something either of us were used to. Apricot kept giving the door to the guest bedroom (otherwise known as the pink room) dirty looks. He wouldn't go down to the end of the hall unless he had to. Oddly, he kept using the litter box in my bedroom (the door to the bedroom is right next to the door to the pink room). But he didn't eat anything last night. He has an alternative litter box in the living room, but apparently he likes the one in the bedroom so much better that he braved the smell (which got stronger the closer you got to the pink bedroom's door) to get there.
(I'm writing this on Sunday afternoon.)
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