It's so good having five of them! According to ChatGPT (thanks Jacek for the suggestion), five is the optimal number of kittens to have in a litter. It is best for their socialisation, emotional wellbeing and physical health. With six, they tend (says Chat GPT) to roam as two patrols of three; five is the largest number that stays together and looks out for one another. The risk of conflict with an external cat is reduced.
Five months into their lives, and all is well. Wenusia is getting increasingly tetchy in their presence, and will often hiss and lash out with her right paw at (in particular) Scrapper and Czestuś. And then she will signal to me that she wants to be let out. Wenusia comes home far more rarely now, for breakfast, in the afternoon and before I go to bed, with the express intention of cadging a meal, which she eats, and then after hissing at her sons, she will go outside. She now spends around 20 hours or more a day elsewhere, perhaps at my neighbours, cadging treats.
Meanwhile the kittens stay together as a pack, with as the natural leader Scrapper, or, you know, El Scrapperino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
I think it's good to keep a litter of kittens together, to let them grow up together, to roam together. Having five of them is only fractionally more bother than having one. Everything I'd have to do around one takes only marginally more time to do for five. True, the bills for cat food and cat litter are bigger, and there's five times more cat poo to dispose of – but that's no problem in the big scheme of things. The upside is the great joy that the five bring. Below: Arcturus strides forwards, purposefully.
Below: Czestuś sleeping belly-up in the cat-tower in the kitchen, an environment which he feels is so safe and secure that he can adopt this vulnerable posture without fear of evisceration by a potential predator.
Below: Céleste the Forest Cat in her element. Looking more the Huntress here than the Supermodel.
Below: Pacyfik looking contemplative in the forest.
"Milcząc żwawo jedli" – they ate briskly in silence (a saying often misattributed to Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz). From the top left: Céleste, Arcturus, Scrapper, Pacyfik; on the right, Czestuś.
Giving away just one would bring sadness to me, and a sense of loss and anxiety to the remaining four kittens. So for them all, I shall keep them all. As one colony.
This time last year:
Surviving the gloom
Edwardów, south of Chynów, at dusk
In which I realise I'm living in old Michałowizna
Dealing with the Hammer of Darkness
(Go to bed an hour earlier – ignore the time change)
This time eight years ago:
Poland's dream of a superconnector hub
This time nine years ago:
The magic of superzoom
This time 13 years ago:
Welcome to Lemmingrad
This time 15 years ago:
Dream highway
This time 16 years ago:
The Days are Marching
This time 18 years ago:
First snow, 2007
(It's 9.7°C outside right now at six o'clock in the evening)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment