Kittens ...

Tollie and Rose were reminiscing about Coco the other day, apparently, before they really got to know her, the slaves thought she was a boy! Honestly, how stupid was that, everyone knows that black torties are girls with attitude! But they were actually quite upset as 'little Eric' has disappeared. The male slave was re-building the garden wall that had fallen down and was miserable. The other slave was just miserable - such was the impact she had when she arrived just a few weeks earlier.

A day or two before the kittens arrived, the female slave took Coco to the vets. He said there were lots of kittens and she was about ready to have them. So the slave put beds around the house but Coco wasn't havng any of that. She wanted to have them in her secret place where she had had her other kittens so she disappeared for just over a day. When she came back for some food, apparently she was exhausted and really hungry. She didn't stop, she had food then went to look after her kittens.

Not long before she had the kittens, her change of diet to include proper cat food, bunged her up. She was supposed to have been given an enema but there was no way she was going to succumb to that. But at least she enjoyed the taste of the laxatone so after a week she was OK.

After a few more weeks, Coco turned up in the barn next to our garden, this was a bit before I was born of course so it wasn't my garden then) and had moved the kittens. She reckoned that it would be easier for her get a good supply of food and to be able to keep an eye on the kits if she got closer to the slaves. There was a big square hole in the door that made it easy to come and go. When the new arrivals had been in their new barn for a few days, they started to poke their noses out of the barn. Eventually, they all came out and suckled as Coco laid there in the Sun. Even Tollie, the hardened old cynic that he is, said that he had to admit they were cute.

She arrived with 3 but never told anyone how many she had had or what happened to the others. They were christened Koala (because she had the markings that made her look like a koala bear), pale ginger and dark ginger. Dark Ginger stayed with us - that's Jaffa.