Nighttime isn't supposed to be this hot...

[reynardo]

... but chilled fruit salad with frozen yoghurt goes a long way to making up for it. We'll be sleeping downstairs tonight, on the couch, because there's air conditioning. Upstairs we can't run the portable AC in the bedroom, and the outside isn't going to drop below 30C (86F).

And part of the warmth is the little one trying to share our smaller-than-upstairs foldout bed. People, meet Bilqis.

On November 1 last year, our good friends silverblue and chaos_crafter came around to help with the garden (which is approaching "jungle" status). And while they were doing that, they discovered three little kittens in our compost bin. It looks like Mama Cat was keeping them somewhere safe. They weighed in at 350-380g, which puts them at an underweight 5 weeks (about right with their development).

Mum came right back and moved them to a safer place (under the next door neighbour's place. Sorry, Wally.) We decided that we should feed Mum to help keep the bubs healthy until they were old enough to be rehoused. So we put food out every evening.

A few weeks later I noticed three little things scampering around the garden. We contacted a lovely lady who has a safe catching cage, and 36 hours later we had three little floofs safe in the bathroom upstairs. Mama proved a lot more difficult - we caught her once and she managed to squeeze out the back of the cage. Dammit. We've repaired it since, and are trying to entice her again.

We spent a couple of days trying to give the kittens as much socialisation as they would take. This included an outing to our beautifully-screened balcony (thankyou again chaos_crafter) which showed us that certain kittens can climb up flyscreen. Idiots.

I'm terribly allergic to cats, so we ran a GoFundMe and asked for people to adopt. One lovely lady decided that she and her son needed a tiny smooth-haired totally black floof in their lives, and another realised that a floofy soot-sprite was her destiny. So we took all of them to the vet to get their shots.

And lederhosen held the largest, boldest, black-and-white floof in his arms, the first one that had come to him voluntarily, the one who had climbed all over him, the one that had taken his heart and wrapped it around and around her littlest claw, and his heart was twisting...

So I said "One. Only one. We can keep one."

She's adorable, she's cute, she climbs on you at 2am, she adores fish, and lederhosen is her devoted slave.

... yeah, shaddup.

Comments

[too-dle-oo.livejournal.com]

Ah! She IS adorable! (But sorry about the 2AM bit!)

[howlin-wolf-66.livejournal.com]

They're all lovely! It warms my heart. :-)

[akatnamedeaster.livejournal.com]

Aww, she is a super cutie! Although I hope you can break her of her 2am wake up calls, that's not so cute. ;)

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

Floof!

[mundungus42.livejournal.com]

Good lord, such precious floofs! You were doomed from the start :D Thank you so much for taking care of them and finding them homes! Best of luck with the allergies (Mr. 42 is also allergic) and the 2am person-scaling. *hugs*

[dreamy-dragon73.livejournal.com]

She's completely adorable! I'm glad you helped the floofs to find good homes.

[moxie_man]

I see you're doomed. Doomed! Welcome to cat slave-dom.

Oh, and you could drop by The Squirrels' Nest up here in the Maine wilderness to cool off. We got another inch (2.5cm) of snow overnight and it was 5F (-15C) here this morning. Overall, we have roughly a foot (30cm) of white stuff on the ground.

[iulia_linnea.livejournal.com]

Oh, how beautiful! *passes tissues; allergy pills*

[kerravonsen]

Adorable. (I have been enjoying your tweets of Miss Bilquis)
I hope you have good allergy medication!