Where the cats came from

Weave and Annie asked about the origins of my cats and why I have the litter.   Here are some early photos of them

My previous house and the  cats playing.

This is two of them with Fraser, a British Blue cat I had, one of two of those at the time and another one who went to live at Peter's yard when I moved house.   I had seven cats for a while.  

Here they are quite young on the Moroccan carpet

Here they are as kittens when they would all fit together in the cage and they used to like to sleep in it. 

And this is where they started out on the farm

One day a stray cat turned up here at the farm and it was semi wild but not completely wild.  My brother and his wife caught it and found it had a chip and found the owner, a mile away, and took it back.  A few days later the cat returned and,  again,  they took it back.  About two weeks later it came back again.  They duly returned it and this time the woman said  although she loved it dearly they could keep it as it clearly liked them and the farm best. 

The cat lived out on the farm.  One day they noticed she was clearly having babies.  She went and had them right underneath our weighbridge.  This was a bit of a problem because 40 tonne lorries would come to weigh because it was a public weighbridge.  Whilst we were worrying about this over a weekend the cat and kittens disappeared and were found in a picnic basket in a storage shed where goods were stored for a local retailer.  The picnic basket was brand new and quite high up off the floor of the shed, about 8 feet up.  The little mother cat had carried all the kittens across the yard to the building and up to this basket.

So every night the shutter door was left a little bit open so she could go to and fro to her kittens.  As they began to grow they started climbing out of the basket and dropping down to the floor. Men and forklifts were in and out of this building all day but although they loved the cat and kittens too they were clearly all in danger with the forklifts.     So my brother and his wife carried the kittens home in the basket to their house with the mother for safety.  She was not so pleased but eventually she accepted it.

My brother and his wife  already had several cats and at first, when they had grown a bit, we split the kittens  so I had two and they had two and then for some reason my sister in law, who makes such decisions  in their house,   said would I have all four because she had too many cats but she would keep the mother.    We did offer the woman who originally had the mother cat if she would like any of the kittens but she said no.

So this is what happened.  I took all four kittens to my house and my brother and his wife at the pond kept the mother.  And this is how it is to this day.   The mother lives there and the babies live here.    My brother and his wife have three other cats as well.