Friday night's Cat Club meeting

At the Friday night meeting of the Cat Club it had been obvious to even the oblivious males in the group that Ginger was about to have kittens. She immediately became the focus of the meeting. No one was crass enough to ask who the father was, and Ginger didn’t offer any information. Everyone was interested in how her owner felt about the upcoming litter and her chances of being able to keep all of her kittens with her.

Peep and LT felt very strongly that cats should be able to keep their kittens until the parents decided it was time for them to go out into the world. This was usually longer than the people involved thought was reasonable – usually four to five months, rather than the two months at which people began to look for homes to take the kittens. Maybe it was because neither LT nor Peep had had happy kittenhoods, but they felt that all kittens and parents should stay together for as long as they liked.

Of the new cats, Ladybug and Snoogums seemed the most interested in the new kittens and suggested names for them. Snoogums particularly wanted the kittens not to be burdened with names like his. “I like simple names, ones that are descriptive of a physical or personality trait. Names like yours, Peep. Your voice sounds like a little Peep, so your name is perfect. Snoogums, on the other hand, sounds like I’m about to cough up a hairball.” Everyone laughed at that.

Rudy sat through most of the meeting basking in LT’s declaration earlier in the day. He loved her. She’d known that, but for him to say it so clearly was just…. She couldn’t even think of a word to describe it. She was bursting to tell someone, but this wasn’t the type of thing you could say to the whole Cat Club. She didn’t want to tell Peep. Peep either would be jealous, or more likely wouldn’t attach much significance to it. Rudy considered Peep to be a bit emotionally immature. She decided that sometime this weekend she’d go visit Ladybug and Bunny and tell them. They would appreciate something like this. In the meanwhile, let them all fuss over Ginger. She wasn’t worried about her.

Ginger, meanwhile, sat with LT, fielding a barrage of questions. She explained that LT had offered to help her with the kittens. Unlike people, cats seem to prefer to have no one right with them at the birth of the kittens, but once they are born, they do want the father there. He can watch them while she gets something to eat or just move around a little bit, and of course, he has to admire how amazingly beautiful they are. Other female cats are only permitted to visit after a day or two, and then are kept at a distance. Ginger didn’t know why she felt this way, she just did. It was her first litter of kittens, but she was confident that everything would go just fine.

LT was happy that Rudy wasn’t making a fuss over this situation. He wasn’t sure how she’d take it when he stayed with Ginger for the first few days after the kittens were born, but he’d handle that when it happened. No use worrying about tomorrow when today’s still happening. That was LT’s motto.

Photo courtesy of ritcharnd moskow - http://www.flickr.com/photos/stinkypeter/134844656/