Wonderful Husband and his father fixed our dryer. Yay!

And a bit later I noticed the kitten mewing was coming from a different area of the house. Curious, I donned overalls and went down, thinking perhaps this meant the bitty felines were old enough to be moving around on their own.

Well, looks like they aren't. Looks like they were probably born this week, in fact. Way too young to be separated from their mama. Looks like Basement is their mama and has moved them to a different area, probably to get them away from the dryer repair noise.

Did not go very near. Not even near enough to count them. Retreated. Hoping she won't move them elsewhere.

This afternoon Wonderful Husband and I captured three of the kittens. Two got away and the sixth one... dunno. Maybe out with its mom? Currently the three we do have are in the bathroom, with the cat carrier padded with a folded towel, a dish of food, another of water, and a lasagna pan filled with kitty litter. They're all still huddled in the back of the carrier, but are handleable. My dad's going to take the one my sister dubbed Cupcake, and then I'll be dropping the other two off at the shelter. One of them seems to have an eye infection, so before I release them to the shelter I'll be asking pointedly to be sure that'll get treated and not be used as an excuse to put the kitten down. It's probably okay, but I want to be sure.

So, three down, possibly still three to go!

Watching Greystoke and her contortions into what I would find awkward angles in order to feed her brood of six squirmy little offspring, I find a new appreciation for the term "catnaps." Because damn but I'm sure that's all she's getting.

(This almost makes me feel sympathy for Nadya Suleman, but not really.)

At least this time they're not strays...?

The last two times we've had kittens at work, they've been the result of the neighborhood strays spawning in the backyard of the house next to our building. The first time, one of my coworkers ended up adopting the two kittens. The second time, I took them home and one ended up with my parents, two with racerxmachina and roseembolism, and wee little Ash died. After that bout of kittens, we trapped some of the strays and got them broken and we haven't seen any kittens since.

Except now at her job the neighbor's daughter saved two who were going to be killed and brought them in to us since we'd been able to find homes for the others. Heidi (the aforementioned coworker) has claimed one for her own, bringing her up to four cats plus sundry other pets now, and I'm going to foster and try to find a home for the other. Two white kittens, one with a gray smudge atop its head, guesstimated to be 6-8 weeks old. They're both much much better socialized than the rounds of strays were; Heidi's is very docile, while the other is very curious and active.

*calls animal clinic to set up an exam for both of 'em after work*

EDIT: Whitey is a girl and Spot (temporary names for both) is a boy. Thusly, Heidi is now going to take Whitey so that her four are gender-balanced. Also, flea comb is made of epic fail.

Last night was a bad night, to the point where my Wonderful Husband was asking me if I was sure I felt up to going to the last of our ballroom dance classes for this session. We went, of course, and I felt better for a while. But then reality crashed down hard again afterwards and I ended up giving up on editing or writing, and just going to bed early.

( Skip if you're not me )

My usual response to these sort of things is to immerse myself in a new book for a while, but as Christmas is coming up, all the books I want are relegated to my Christmas list and I can't read them before then. I'm honestly thinking that I should take some time to engage in the classic feel-better fix of clothing retail therapy instead, since at the moment I'm on the diet bandwagon again (inspired by racerxmachina's weight-loss goals) which means chocolate isn't an option. My good black pants died the honorable death the other day, after all, and my Reeboks are almost to the same point, and I could probably use some new underthings as well. Unfortunately, this requires actual /shopping/, which is the dark side of the force.

On the list of things that please me are

(1) having finished the rough translation of 30 last night when sandpanther helped me hammer out the last few lines,

(2) having gotten her translation feedback on 29 this morning, so I can work on smoothing that out tonight,

(3) curious kittens,

(4) napping on the sofa yesterday with /my/ cat,

(5) and the fact that I'm up, dressed, conscious, and playing on the computer with plenty of time before I have to go to work.

Beryl proved herself a Houdini kitten this afternoon. Went downstairs to check on the trio, and they were somehow suddenly a duo. Looked all over the house for her, despite the door to the laundry room having been firmly closed, then heard a mew that was not from either of her brothers. Pulled out the cabinet drawers and discovered there was a crawlspace under the sink. Don't know how she got there, the drawers were closed....

This evening I assisted my sister in the practice of the ancient, venerable martial art of kitten bathing. And changed their bedding and swept and swiffered the floor, so hopefully now they will be (and stay) much cleaner. I managed to get in contact with a fostering agency, but tokyokitty thinks some of her friends might want kittens, so I shall see if I can't find them homes privately. We worked on gentling the kittens some more. I think we've got Locke and Stalk just about tamed (although Stalk was the worst about getting a bath), but Beryl not quite yet... she's much more happy in a petting session with one of her brothers as opposed to alone. But she ended nice and placid while I worked with her this evening. Stalk got purring with almost no effort, though. The boys are /friendly/....

And I'm almost through with Moebius 30. Just eight more lines including two in the preview. And t-minus thirty-two hours until the torrent for 31 goes up... hope I can make it.

Sister has come and helped play with the kittens and sexed them for me. Lock and Stalk are male, and Barrel is female. So I guess she should be "Beryl" instead...?

Back from PMX. Didn't see much of the con itself, being busy with judging and sleep deprived to the max (I have now in fact broken my record for staying awake... previously it was twenty-three hours, now it's thirty-eight). Pity. I wanted to go to the Ultraman panel. But there were some really cool and some really well-made costumes, so that part was a pleasure, even if we didn't get to award a couple of the people we would have liked to. But there were ten awards spread across twenty-two groups. The Best in Show was a Kingdom Hearts 2 group that utterly wowed us with their attention to detail and clean construction, and then made us die with laughter with the best dance skit I've ever seen. They are going to be a force to be contended with in the cosplay word, methinks. It felt really good to give that award to them, and I honestly think none of them were expecting it.

But after Masquerade was over (with some wonderful MC'ing by Darryl), I got hit with my usual post-con depression, HARD. So I skipped out on a group dinner, which I probably shouldn't've, and came home, picking up Ash from where he'd spent the day with my mother. She took him to get de-wormed today. He needs to go back in two and four weeks for rounds two and three. And, much to my surprise, my Wonderful Husband spent the day calling around to vet places and handed me a brochure for kitten insurance just about ten minutes ago. I thought I wasn't going to be allowed to keep him...? So I'm confused.

We've managed to trap two (well, three, but the third one escaped as we were transferring him to another cage) of the neighborhood strays at work. One of them, who we've called "Blackie" for a while, we suspect is Ash's father. He is about eight years old, has now been neutered, and is utterly feral. He's spent the weekend recuperating from his surgery in a trap cage in my parents' backyard and will be rereleased at work tomorrow. The other cat we trapped, who we think /might/ be Ash's mother, is a lovely Siamese I've started calling "Chess" who apparently a day or two before we trapped her lost her tail flush to her back. I've seen her a few times before during the nearly two years I've been working there, and she always had a tail before. The vet's office is keeping her until Thursday to recover from the surgery for that, and she's probably going to be kept at my parents' house for a bit after that to give her recovery time. She's about three years old and is most likely an abandoned pet, as her behavior in the cage was quite calm and dignified, and we were told that at the vet's she walked quite calmly out of the cage and up to the doctor. I'm kind of hoping my parents will fall in love with her, as I know my mother would like a cat....

I also got a call from my coworker, saying that the reason we hadn't been able to trap Ash's siblings was because the neighbors (in whose yard the litter of them were likely born) had been feeding them. So she moved our traps into their yard and has all three of them in her possession now, to be handed off to me tomorrow. Anybody want black kittens...? Ash is apparently the runt of the litter, incidentally, and the neighbors thought he'd died because they hadn't seen him recently.

And that has been my weekend, Ultraman Moebius 30 is cool (even if not as cool as 21, 22, 24, or 29), and I smell pizza so I'm going to have some and then get Ash to eat.