OMG!!! KITTENS!!!!!!!!

I hope everyone is having a nice Memorial Day weekend.  It is quite eventful here on the farm.
Look!!!

Five kittens!

Here is the story...We are animal lovers and rescuers, and around about January this skin and bones young black cat appeared in the barn.  He was SO wild, we have spent months trying everything we could think of to catch this feral cat to have him neutered.  So we fed him, and he hung around.  All the wild cats that appear around here have always been males, as they are wandering.   Anyway, about mid April he finally began putting on weight, then disappeared for a day and returned all thin and sleek again!!
Haha, the joke's on us, she  showed us way up high behind a barn beam where she had her kittens  by deliberately walking to it right in front of me.  We never would hear anything up there, and we worried that maybe the raccoons got them.  Yesterday I went out to feed the horses, and there were 4 kittens!  She had brought them down from up high.

So now that they have actually been born, it is my responsibility to keep them from being eaten !  So I set up a large dog cage in the barn with bedding in it, put the kittens in, then sat ALL Afternoon in the heat about 4 feet away from the cage.  The mother FINALLY went in to nurse, and BAM, I kicked the door shut!  Success, finally!!!  We carried the entire cage inside and up to a spare bedroom.  What a relief...all is well.

Then yesterday morning (the next day) I went out to feed the horses again, and there was another kitten crying his eyes out!  We missed one!  I would have thought the mother would have known one was missing, but I guess she can't count.  This little kitten survived almost 24 hrs in the heat, without nursing, and with raccoons coming  around at night!  I brought him right in to nurse, and I think it spent hours nursing...all is well now and I can't even tell which of the two black ones it is.  There are two black, two torties, and one calico.

Now here is something else interesting.  While I was waiting out the mother the other day to get in the cage, I talked and talked to her, and told her that I wasn't going to hurt her, that life would be so much better for her and her babies, never hungry, never cold.  Then after I finally caught her in the cage, she just immediately calmed down, almost like had understood me.  This wild, feral cat now lets me pet and stroke her, and hold her babies,  and I think knows that all is safe now.

All five kittens are already spoken for, we have lots of animal lover friends!  They will all be neutered and have their shots, and live a nice life!

Sorry to ramble on so, but this has been quite exciting here, and such a relief to know that everyone is safe now.

Melinda