Baby watch

The Midwest was hit by a big snowstorm yesterday, our second within a week. You may have read about it. It was bad enough here that my orchestra rehearsal was canceled, with a concert looming next Friday and a last-minute change in the program after one of the violin soloists injured her shoulder this week. I decided not to risk getting stuck in the snow with a bum knee, so missed a cello lesson, too. Felt a little less like a wimp when they closed the music school before my lesson time, anyway.

So I had a lovely day at home, playing with kittens, blogging, practicing, e-mailing, reading... too many things. I had a touch of cabin fever, being stuck inside watching the snow fall, and didn't stick with anything for very long.

I got an e-mail from D-, who had made it in to work before the roads got really bad. As you might recall, Charlie and Eden moved in with me in order to make room for a pregnant cat at D-'s house. The cat's name is now Juliet, though she was originally named Romeo by a shelter volunteer who might benefit from a little more training ~g~. We've been on baby watch for a week. Her note:

I had a wild night with Juliet. She got to spend time with me in my bedroom after I got home from your place. She was restless, moving from under the covers next to me to laying on my chest to hiding under the bed. I put her back in the bathroom for overnight by 10 or 11. At 2am she woke me up making a racket scratching at the door and crying and such, so I went to check on her. Everything seemed fine but she really wanted to cuddle. Her canned food was gone so I gave her more and went back to bed. Then at 4am she woke me up again with the same craziness. This time I brought in some new alternatives for her birthing space: a cardboard box lined with newspapers and larger litterbox with a cover to replace the small one she had. She checked out the cardboard box and messed up the newspapers, then climbed right into the litterbox and started scratching and scratching in there and settling in. Well, I wasn't going to have her giving birth in her litterbox, so I got another clean empty covered litterbox and lined it with newspapers. She crawled in there and started scratching again and then tearing the newspaper into strips with her teeth. No babies though, so I finally went back to bed. And, still no babies this morning, but she is certainly nesting!

She also asked me to dig up a couple of references on birthing kittens (referred to as queening). Those references strongly suggested that birth is imminent when the cat is displaying this level of nesting behavior, and if you've peeked below you know already that they were right. There were 2 kittens waiting for D- when she got home, with 2 following in rapid succession and 2 more a little later.

Darn. I had predicted 7.

Momma and babies are doing well.