Halloween kittens!

I call them kittens, but really they are young cats now, about 6 months old, and still the best of buddies, as you can see here where they are all snuggled up together in the porch on the defunct cushion from a garden chair. They are very playful. Tippy is totally tame and loves to be picked up and cuddled.

Jarvis, alias "Porky". He really is a stout rotund little cat with short legs and a broad beam! He loves to have his tummy tickled. He's not very keen at being picked up yet though.

This is Tippy - or Tippety-do-dah as I call him often. He is SO friendly and quite a character. He has a very loud voice and keeps telling us he isn't fed anything like ENOUGH food! I love the way his little white-tipped tail curls over at the top - he reminds me of the little lad Alfalfa in a childrens' film "Little Rascals" that my children always loved. It's his sticky-up tail with the tip falling over!



Alfie looking pensive.


Miffy is the mama feral cat. She will not tolerate people anywhere near her. We are going to have to borrow a trap to catch her for spaying as although I had hoped that leaving food in the big travelling box would tempt her in, she has other ideas. I thought I loved all cats, but she has other ideas about this and if she were to take herself off elsewhere, it would be a relief to me rather than an upset. She spits and hisses if you walk towards her, though you can actually get much closer (a couple of feet) compared with last Christmas when she arrived, and at the first sign of a person she would be in the farmyard and away. Sadly, she is blind in one eye.



Here are Tippy and Jarvis. Tippy has one eye which lights up slightly differently to the other and I think he may have had a scratch in it which has damaged it. You can't see any clouding or damage in daylight.


Ginger and white Alfie is growing in confidence, but still more timid than the other two, although he is happy to come into the house and even take Tippy's favourite seat inside the front door. He is quite happy to be stroked at length as long as there is food about! They all come inside the house now and have explored the kitchen and even upstairs, though this was when they were younger and more nervous and they soon panicked. Now they are starting to meet the older house cats, who think they are the lowest form of life and hiss and swear at them!

Tippy playing roly-poly in the hall . . .

And then resting on his favourite chair.

All three boys snuggled up together.



Little do they know that they are booked in to have their pockets picked next Tuesday . . . I will spend tomorrow morning cleaning out the lean-to utility room so that they can spend a few nights in there. They aren't allowed to eat from 6 p.m. the previous evening, so they need to be kept in so they don't go off hunting meeces in the paddock . . .