And kitties make eight

I couldn't help but give a squeal of delight this morning when I found Olivia with her new litter of kittens. Yup, that's right, she finally had them. :)

I knew it was coming though. Early this morning when I came out to take care of the animals I noticed that Olivia was acting very strange. Number one, she was actually rubbing up against me; now for Olivia that is strange indeed, she hates to be touched and doesn't really like to be near humans. Number two, She looked sunken around her hip-bones. That's a sure sign that an animal is going to have them soon and she just had this really weird "Find me a nest box very very quick." attitude; if you know what I mean.

So I quickly got an old blanket and put it in our official "cat nest box". Olivia leaped in there and immediately started making it comfortable.

Two hours later I went out and found 7 adorable, fluffy newborn kittens! I can't help it; I should be sick about having another litter but I can't help but feel a delightful sensation when I get to see a newborn baby, kitten or human. :) It's always exciting knowing that you are the very first human to get to see these little treasures (well, at least I think that they're treasures).

Three of the kittens are pure white, three are white with black patches and one is a tabby.

Maybe we should be cat farmers....We certainly get them in abundance here. $100 per kitten would be a fair price don't you think? LOL.Life is precious.

~B#2

Falling into Autumn

Hee, hee. Those fall puns are fun to do. :)

Anyway. After our tea I decided to do some hunting. No not with a gun but rather a camera. My prey? Anything that had "fall colors". Lucky for me I don't need a hunting tag for that kind of game. LOL.

I meandered around our property, taking snapshots of anything pretty that caught my eye.

Some wild Rosehips I found.

I found a wild apple tree too!

I love the color on these flowers.

Our peonies are dying but they give a show of color right before they die.


I don't know what kind of tre this is but, it's pretty!



Peaches counts for "fall colors" right?

Don't ask me why I like this shot...I just do.


I felt like I had just found a treasure when I discovered these.

Aaaahhh....Autumn.

~B#2

Time for tea

I was in that mood today.

I was in the mood for baking.

So I did! I love days like today; It's a little nippy outside so you just want to stay in and keep cozy. I was also in the mood to knit as I have some mittens that I need to get started on but... Baking won over knitting.

For about a week now us girls (meaning me, B#3 and B#4) have been wanting to have a tea party so we picked today for it.

I made Spiced Tea Bread; it really does have tea in it. :) A blackberry pie and B#3 made two dozen chocolate scones.

We decided to not make it to fancy this time so I just put a lace table runner on the table, used our second prettiest teapot and made it look a bit more casual. A fancy tea for us would be my damask table cloth, My silver teapot and all of my silver and glass things (i.e. cups, plates, sugar bowls and cream pitchers).

It was pretty fun. Mom, B#5 and B#6 joined us for tea as well. :) And of course I had my favorite music going: Vivaldi. I absolutely adore it. I use to never like classical music and I never thought anything could replace my beloved celtic music...until I heard Vivaldi.

Our two prettiest teapots. The Silver one is mine and the flowery one is B#4's.

Proof that the tea and scones must have tasted okay. :)

~B#2

God does answer prayers!

I remember waaaay back (Ok so maybe it wasn't that long ago) when I was ten years old, every night I would pray and ask God to please let me have a horse. But at the time we lived in town so my parents had to constantly remind me that I couldn't have one; although I was positive that it would fit in our backyard and sleep in our garage. LOL. The Lord did hear my prayer and allowed me to take riding lessons for three years at a Christian friend's stable. I still remember during one lesson when I finally reached the stage where I could ride bareback on a 17 hand horse while loping.. I also remember mom keeping her eyes closed during that lesson. :D

I continued that prayer up until I was about 13 or 14 because I figured that if it was the Lord's will then it would happen.

Skip forward 2 years.

I am now 16 years old; I still dreamed about having my own horse and then one day the ball began to roll....

About two weeks ago we were working outside in the evening when a total stranger stopped by and asked us if we would be willing to board her horse till spring! Of course we told her yes!

As it turns out, there's a guy up the road from us who told Miss Jennifer (that's the horse lady's name) that we had some empty stalls and that she should ask us about boarding. The horse's name is Peaches and she actually belongs to Miss Jennifer's sister but she is in the military and was stationed in Arizona and wouldn't be able to have the horse shipped down till spring. For the last 8 years Peaches has been staying with a 4-H girl but the girl is now going to college and can't take a horse with her. We were all soooooooo excited, actually, make that ecstatic! "At last!" we thought, "a horse!" But then a couple of days later Miss Jennifer called us and said that the 4-H girl wanted to see where "her" horse was going. She took a look at our barn and said "Nope, not here." She even went as far as finding another stable to keep Peaches at! I could almost hear God chuckling and saying to me "wait child, it gets better." Miss Jennifer called three days later and said she still wanted to keep Peaches here. HURRAY!!

A couple of days later we got another phone call. Dad told B#4 and I to sit down. We looked at each other wondering what what he was going to say. "Girls" he said, "Miss Jennifer just called and She said that her sister is being stationed somewheres else." Our spirits plummeted. "Let me guess, I moaned, She's coming back to Oregon and now we can't board Peaches."

Dad tried valiantly to suppress the laugh that was coming but didn't quite make it. "No actually she might be stationed to Italy and would be staying there for three years!" B#4 and I were more than ecstatic this time. Three years!!! Okay God, are there any other surprises?

Peaches came last night and she finally settled down this evening. She's a full-blooded Quarter horse but she honestly looks like an Arabian. She is 14.1 hands tall and weighs 800 lbs and is a gorgeous Sorrel color with a stripe and two white socks on her hind legs. This morning when we let her out into the pasture she trotted around the perimeter of it for hours. in all that circling she lost a shoe. She only has shoes on her front hooves and while she was trotting she went to close to the fence, got her shoe caught on it and since she was going so fast she tore it off. Her hoof it pretty banged up now but thankfully she isn't limping and isn't in any pain.

She's trained for western riding which is what I learned in my lessons. And even better, she is trained for barrel racing, pole bending and a whole bunch of other things. She's very sweet tempered and her gaits are great, nice and smooth. We didn't have a saddle so us girls just rode her bareback today. Personally I prefer bareback over using a saddle; I just find it a bit more fun I guess.

Well, God certainly did hear my prayers from 6 years ago and I have been having so much fun watching him work through out all of this. One thought that came to mind was the perfect timing. Had Miss Jennifer come about a month ago we would have had to say no to keeping peaches because we didn't have the spring hooked up yet.

I love this verse in Psalms

Delight yourself in the Lord,

and He shall give you the desires of the heart.

Psalm 37:4

God does answer prayers!!

~B#2

Whiskers, paws, purrs and claws

One would think that after the kitten ordeal I would be sick of cats, but... I can't help it, I still love cats. :)



We are now down to three cats: Spitfire, Octavia and Olivia. We're trying to rehome Olivia soon, as she is pregnant again.

Spitfire is my personal favorite cat in the whole world. Before him I had another cat who looked exactly like him and had the same name. When my first Spitfire died (He got hit by a car) I was crushed but then, oh glorious news, Olivia had her first litter of kittens and Spitfire #1 was the dad. I was soooo excited to find one kitten that was the "spitting" image of his sire. My Spitfire #2 still continues to be like his father. He knows no fear, knows he's handsome and loves to sit on my lap and purr. His nickname is "Boy". I don't know why I call him that but I do; My first Spitfire's nickname was "Spitten" which was a mix of Spitfire and kitten but it just didn't fit Spitfire #2. :)



Octavia is another special cat. When we got Otis and Olivia we also got a third kitten whom we dubbed Octavius (After the little Roman guy in 'Night at the Museum'). Octavius was a gorgeous cat with the most unique markings I had ever seen. A couple of people even asked if they could have her! But one day she mysteriously disappeared and we haven't seen her to this day. :(


So when Olivia had her first litter we just had to keep the one and only kitten that looked like Octavius, only we named this one Octavia. She is really dainty and sweet; she looks like a cat that wouldn't want to do anything that might muss her beautiful self but of course look can be deceiving, she's the best mouser we've had and knows how to keep her brother (Spitfire) in line.



Earlier this morning B#4 saw them playing in a tree and rushed to get the camera so I could blog about them. They are the funniest things to watch. :)




The hunt begins. My "Boy" looking for his crafty sister.

{says to herself} "Hee, hee, hee. He'll never find me up here!

{Says} You know where she is don't you?

The mighty hunter is preparing to pounce on her unsuspecting brother. Chuckling to herself all the while I'm sure! LOL.

~B#2

Going...going...gone!

What a day! The Lord worked things out perfectly.

This morning I told mom that I didn't know how much longer I would be able to continue with the kittens; they were very troublesome last night and meowed to be fed more than usual. Mom and I had already called every vet and animal shelter around but none of them would take them, school starts next week for us so things would become increasingly complicated and we ran out of kitten formula this morning so we were at our wits end on what to do.
So what did we do? I called the Sheridan Vet Clinic this morning and asked them how much it would cost to euthanize 9 kittens. The price wasn't to bad, cheaper than it would be to raise them all to adult hood. The gal who I talked to felt really bad for us and told me to not make an appointment yet but to let her call around and see if she could find anyone to take the kittens.

So we waited and waited to see if she would call us back but we needed to go to town today so I had to call once more and this time set the appointment. I had a different lady on the phone this time, she too felt really bad that we had to put them down but she set us up for 4 pm this evening. When I hung up I felt absolutely terrible, I knew I wouldn't be the one to put them down but I felt like a partner in crime.

When the time came to go the the vet I begged mom to let me stay home. I knew if I went then I would cry and I really didn't want the vet to see me cry. Mom relented and B#3 went instead.
After they left B#1 went out to dig the hole for them; I felt sick to my stomach.

Later when mom and B#3 got home I noticed that there was no box, then I heard mom say that B#1 wouldn't need that hole. I went out to hear what had happened. As it turns out, the first lady I had talked to on the phone had a female cat that was still producing milk and the lady felt so bad about the kittens that she offered to take all nine of them and see if her cat would foster them! Hurray! They didn't have to be euthanized after all! :D :D

So I will finally get my nights back, Olivia can stay out of the house and we can once more have a sewing room. :) I love happy endings...

~B#2

Things are looking up

Well, we made through another night and we still have all nine kitties. We did finally find Olivia, I tried putting her in the nestbox to see if she would let the kittens nurse but she just hopped out. So I put her back in and then blocked the entrance; at first she went crazy, she kept meowing and scratching at the sides of the box but after a few minutes she settled down and let the kittens eat. We have been keeping the kittens in our sewing room so we wouldn't have to go outside at 12 'o' clock and again at 3 'o' clock in the morning, so the room is pretty trashed and smelly (That formula STINKS). Olivia was positively pleased to be let in the house for once, of course she can only be in the sewing room as B#5 and #6 are highly allergic to cats. Everything was going so nicely that it seemed to good to be true. And naturally it was.

Since B#5 and #6 are allergic we really didn't want Ollie (aka Olivia) in the house so I tried moving them out into the barn. Nothin' doin'. Olivia stubbornly refused to go anywhere near the nest while it was outside. I couldn't even pick her up and take her near the nest.

So back in the house they went.

She nursed them one more time at about 10 pm then decided that she was done for good with those kittens. If we put her in the nest she would stay standing so the kittens couldn't reach her, so B#4 and I hand fed them through the night.

It wasn't too bad this time, they're starting to learn to suck on the droppers so it was a lot faster and cleaner.

We feed them every four hours wether or not Ollie has fed them. I'm not quite positive that she is producing enough milk for them all so we just give them extra feedings and each feeding lasts from 30 to 45 minutes.

We're still asking around to see if any vets will take them but so far we've had no luck.

But still Olivia is nursing them and they are thriving so far. Things are looking up. :)



~B#2