More New Kittens at the Park

Remember this little guy?

An orphan from the park; he's pretty feral

And this little girl?

Another orphan from the park

Here she is again, in case you need more cuteness:

This cutie was super friendly and all alone, so we brought her home with us

Well, last week, another two kittens showed up at the park, apparently motherless:  This one, who looked just like the one above:

She looked just like the one we brought home with us

And this one:

This little black kitten is the same size as the two calico kittens 

We feel pretty certain that at least the two little calico kittens and the black kitten are littermates, but we are not sure about the other mostly white one.  He looks a bit bigger than the other three, but it is still possible he is a littermate.  Really, we can only speculate.

This guy is just a smidge larger than the other three

We have racked our brains trying to think what intact females we haven't seen for some time, and the only one that comes to mind is this one:

Trixie

I saw Trixie for the first time back in April, down on the beach between our house and the apartments.  Then later I saw her a couple of times during very late night visits to the park.  Nik saw her once at the apartments. 

1. The Park  2.  The Apartments  3.  Sammy's  4.  Our House  5.  The Maisonettes  6.  The Fields

But neither of us has seen her in a long time.  Could something have happened to her?

And then there is Angie, Agamemnon's girlfriend.  She used to come to the park in the morning, even after she delivered her kittens, and then she just disappeared:

Angie, an intact female; we haven't seen her in some time

The missing mother could also be a cat we have never even seen before.

Since we know now from obervation how long and how close mothers stay with their kittens, we know it is impossible for young kittens such as these to appear so long without a mother.  Sometimes we see mothers without their baby kittens, (they will come to eat, then leave), but we almost never see baby kittens without their mothers for this long.  (The exception is when a mother cat may be moving her newborns and she happens to drop one due to a fright.  In that case we may see an infant kitten alone in a bad situation.  But in that case they are so young they likely cannot even walk yet, and that is not the case with these four kittens.) 

After trying on every adult cat at the park as "Mom" and being rebuffed or disappointed, these three finally settled on Baby, who was, at least up until last week, a mother still nursing her four much older kittens.

Baby

Baby and 3 of her 4  kittens

Baby was game after some initial doubts about it.  Though we don't know whether Baby has nursed these three orphans, she has taken on the role of their protector, which we will get to in the next post.

Pretty small to be on their own

We are glad they found the feeding station and are staying close to the group