Just when we thought we were no longer the crazy cat people...

...SURPRISE!

Funny story. It took several weeks of phone calls and phone tag, but we FINALLY got an appointment to get ChaCha and KitKat fixed. Because the appointment was on a Friday (Sept. 7), we brought both girls in the house to make sure that (a) they didn't eat after midnight, and (b) we could find them the next morning. On the day of their appointment, Brett drove them to the clinic and picked them up later that day. Because of the anesthesia and their stitches, we kept them separated from each other in the house the rest of that night and the next morning.

Well, that next morning, KitKat was going NUTS trying to get outside. Actually, both cats were anxious to get back to the great outdoors, but KitKat was especially hyper, clawing at the back door.

And then we heard it--the high-pitched squeal.

Oh, no.

It took us a while, but eventually we found the source: two kittens under the deck! We were stunned, to say the least. KitKat must've had them right before the surgery. The vet, if he noticed at all, didn't say a word, so we had NOT A CLUE that she'd had another litter. We, in our efforts to help KitKat heal from the surgery, had deprived those babies of their mommy for at least 72 hours!

Well, after that traumatic introduction to the world, the kittens stayed under the deck for a couple of weeks. KitKat, ever the dutiful mother, would take care of them under there, but in spite of my pleading, she just would not bring them out into the backyard. Brett and I tried several times to prod the babies to come toward the light, but they were happy in their dark little home under the wooden slats.

One morning, we noticed the unmistakable smell of skunk, and when we checked on the kittens, their home just reeked, smelling more like polecat than cat. Later, during one of our attempts to lure the babies out, Brett looked between the boards and saw black fur with a white stripe. Convinced we might be enticing a baby skunk to join us out in the open, we gave up on that effort.

Still, the idea that these kittens' growth would be stunted--and my selfish desire to get a closer look at the cuties--led me to threaten on more than one occasion to rip that deck apart to get to the precious ones. So imagine our delight when I found the babies on the front porch this afternoon, three weeks and a day since we learned of their existence. Finally, we can get a good look at these, our last (I PROMISE!!!!) kittens.