W-wa Jeziorki: Out of the box: exploratory kittens

Friday, 18 July 2025

Out of the box: exploratory kittens

It's half past four in the morning. I am aware of stirrings on my bed by my feet. I wake. The kittens have managed to crawl up the bedding and in the darkness are making their way towards my head, treating my body as an obstacle on an assault course. Because I know that these are innocent bundles of fluff (albeit clawed ones), my reaction is not shock or horror. The first one reaches my face. My bed, overrun by kittens. I reach for the bedside light switch. Wenusia (the kittens' mother) has been outside. She favours hunting at dawn and dusk; I assume the bedroom light has alerted her, she bounds in through the kitchen window to see what's going on.

The kittens are collected and returned to their birthing box, their exclusive home for the first three and half weeks of their lives. But it's not yet time for sleep, so they emerge from the box and start clawing their way up my bedsheets again. By five am the situation has stabilised, all five plus mum are back in the box and I can go back to sleep again.

The time of innocence is almost over. They will be five weeks old tomorrow. Kittens grow and start to explore their world. Everything is new to them. The taste of solid food (from mum's bowl). The front room. The kitchen table. They will range. I must discipline myself to keep things out of harm's way.

What interests me is the dynamics of personalities within the littermates. Who's in with whom, who's mummy's favourite, who takes whose side in a fight. Seeing how this plays out will determine which kitten gets given away and in what order; right now, I am closely attached to them all.

Wenusia enters the final two to three weeks of breastfeeding. Despite eating vastly more than ever, and taking a liking to milk (which she ignored as a kitten), Wenusia is not just thin – she's skin and bones; the kittens are sucking out more than she consumes. Wenusia is a small cat; being so diminutive made me underestimate her age (and thus the chances of her getting pregnant as early as she did). Once the kittens have been weaned and go to 100% solids plus cow's milk, Wenusia will be sterilised, her life fulfilled in motherhood. Until now, she would use the birthing box exclusively when feeding her offspring; now she's happy to act as a mobile refuelling station on the kitchen floor – or on my bed.

Below: Scrapper (Scrappuś). Peak kitten, readers, for the next few weeks. Then kittens turn into cats.

Below: Czestuś biting his mum's ear.

Once a day, Wenusia accompanies me to the forest next door. She follows me to the end of the drive, out onto the road before entering the forest, then we go to our special spot, where I sit on a fallen log, and she sits beside me (below).