Like we don't already have enough to do....

Looks like our ewes are running long on their pregnancies this year, we are trying to get our garden spots cleared off and tilled, I am working way too many hours at my day job, my back has been all screwed up for the last three weeks and now this... We needed to make a trip up to Whidbey Island to get some more hay for all our hungry sheep. Franna made a run to Del's a week or two ago to get some straw as we have the Barn and the Hilton full of pregnant ewes now. While clearing the remaining straw bales out of the horse trailer, guess what she found...

Kittens !!!! And I mean LITTLE kittens... They appeared to be healthy and in good shape. They are young enough that their eyes are not yet open, but their ears are up. We guestimated that they are about a week or so old. Anyway, she brought them in the house and made some calls to get ideas on raising kittens. Thanks to all the websites and real folks who gave us ideas and to Julia who came over in person and showed us what to do... So now, in addition to everything else we are doing, we are also feeding and taking care of kittens every 4 to 6 hours all day. Thankfully, Franna is staying up for the late shift and I take the early shift before I go to work. I made a run to PetCo (I needed to get Winnie food anyway) and so I picked up several cans of kitten formula and a few odds and ends for when they get a bit larger. Mom cat was still around the day that we found them so Franna put them in a box and back outside to see what would happen. But then she got to thinking that they would probably have about a zero percent chance of survival as we lose lots of cats and small critters in our neighborhood to coyotes so she brought them back in... As you can tell from the photo, there are two of them, a small calico female (my personal favorite when it comes to cats) and a tabby male. Franna named the calico "Miley" and I named the tabby "Toby". We are discovering that one of the tricks for raising kittens by hand is getting them to go to the bathroom. They are not able to do so by themselves and it is something that the mom does via stimulation when she bathes them... We have been doing it ourselves with cottonballs, but Franna had this great idea, - we have three female Labradors, maybe one of them will take on a little of the mothering role. First we tried using our yearling lab, Villa. She really didn't want anything much to do with the kittens and never got with the program at all. Next, we tried it using our older chocolate lab, Kiss (well actually Bryan's lab). It was pretty funny watching Franna put drops of formula on the rears of the kittens and Kiss would clean up the kittens, but only till the formula was gone. Of course, the kittens were less than thrilled :) Hmmm, still better than nothing so we left it at that last night. Today Franna called me at work and told me that she tried using Winnie and that she did such a good job that she is now the "surrogate" mom for two little kittens. And that is at 4 months old herself :) So, we'll see how things go. Franna lost her old housecat, Griz, last fall and I have not had a housecat for 20 years or more. We'll see how things work out having two kittens rip-raring around a house full of Labradors (and Clifford). Should be a lot of fun...