As soon as I had learned I was going to be a kitty grand-mum soon, I prepared the nest for the babies. Or rather, two nests. After all, we were expecting two litters. I read numerous books about bringing up kittens, spent hours decorating and rearranging the boxes that were supposed to serve as nests, I wrote down check lists and emergency plans just to be on the safe side, and Steve says I even whispered the vet's telephone number in my sleep. In fact, I did all but buy baby booties.
While Mandy reminded me every day not to neglect my reading, carefully inspected each nest and its decoration and critized everything she found not suitable for her offspring, Angel couldn't have cared less. From thourough scientific research, I can prove that a pregnant cat's desire to spend her time in a well-prepared nest grows proportionally to the weight she puts on. In plain words, Mandy was huge in every respect, while Angel never grew out of the "what's this fuss about" - stage.
I'm not exactly the patient kind. Sitting around waiting for something to happen, and knowing there's no chance I can speed things up, is high up on my list of "I'd give my right arm to prevent this" incidents, only topped by "camicaze spider commits suicide by dropping down from the ceiling straight on my head". It seemed to take ages for the girls to release their passengers. When the long-awaited day finally came and Mandy was prepared to give birth, I almost missed it. Did I mention that I hate getting up early? So did Mandy. She would crawl into my bed at dawn, annect three quarters of my pillow and then doze off peacefully. That's why I didn't realize what was going on that very special morning. By the time I came to my senses in the truest sense of the meaning, Mandy was huffing and puffing and trying to blow the bedroom in. Or so it seemed. Within half a second, I was my usual, wide-awoken hysterical self. I grabbed my cat, rushed downstairs and shouted: "Bring me hot water and towels, I'm just about to deliver a baby!"
"They always say it's the husband who hears it last" said Steve. The one thing I'll never understand is why husbands always stay calm in the most emotional moments.
Angel kept us waiting for another four days, and when her kittens were born we realized she had hardly any milk, and thus refused to nurse her kittens. We tried bottle-feeding but the kittens were still too small, we put one of them into Mandy's box, and she accepted it without hesitation - but could she take care of the others as well?
"She can't raise eleven kittens, that's far too much for her." said Steve.
"I can't think of any other solution. If they just make it over the first 24 hours, if they just get a first sip of milk, maybe I can raise them on the bottle afterwards. All we can do right now is give it a try." I said.
Mandy must have heard and understood what we were discussing. When Angel left her nest for a few minutes, Mandy slowly walked over, licked the kittens and then ran after her sister. When they came back into the living room a moment later, they started to carry all their kittens into one nest. Within an hour, the moving process was over, and Mandy had managed to feed Angel's kittens and calm them down. During the following days, Mandy taught Angel all that a good mother must know, and even though Angel never had enough milk to feed her kittens all by herself they all survived and grew up into healthy, playful youngsters.
There was only one problem left, and Steve said it out loud when we saw the kittens cuddled up together, sleeping peacefully:
"How in the world are we ever going to know which kitten belongs to which mother?"
The answer was obvious: why should we care when the mothers didn't?