Our Eyes Are All Open! Excitement at Rancho J2!

First, the babies~

As promised, the boys. Big Package boy - look at those baby blues! My apologies on photos - today was my day for cutting off heads!

Little Package boy - hard to tell the difference, eh? Actually their itty "packages" are kinda looking alike these days. I can only tell by weight now. Time to whip out the nail polish, I think.

Mama, still keeping an eye on the proceedings.

They're starting to fill up the little red boat!

What a difference a few hours makes! My sis came over to see the babies at 5:30 and Light Tortie Girl still had one eye semi-shut. By 9:30, everyone's eyes were open!! And now our babies can start trying to focus in on their new world.

The kittens have developed velcro claws... and they do NOT want to leave their box! Who can blame them? It's cold and bright out there! I'm going to try leaving the sheet up for a while during the day so they start getting some soft light. Everyone gained again today - they are little pudge balls compared to the Maples. Clan Maples didn't attain these weights for another 3 days. These guys are, on average, 1.7 oz bigger and opened their eyes a couple of days earlier.

And look who came to Rancho J2!

May we introduce you to LilPatch. She is one of Little Bit's babies. Little Bit being the notoriously elusive lady who lives in the woods behind the Rancho. Joy and Jim have been trying to wrangle Little Bit in, by trap, by feeding, by patiently trying to acclimate her to them... well, just about forever. With no luck - she's a very, very canny one. And she taught her babies to be just as wary of the Two Legs. But, little by little, the youngsters began to warm up to the humans who painstakingly tried to lure them close enough to trap or catch. They think (hope, pray) LilPatch's brothers may be snagged soon, too.

J2 is worried that capture may not have come soon enough for LilPatch. The vet wouldn't give her shots 'cause there's a chance she is... yes, with kittens. :-( The good news is that she's now safely inside and, if she is preggers (the wanton hussy), this will be her one and only litter. We'll fill you in some more tomorrow!