This article was written with the assistance of Grammerly’s AI tool. It improved several things, and anything that is hard to read is my fault, not the AI’s. -JMH
Two weeks ago, I was feeling overwhelmed with everything that life was throwing at me. In an effort to simplify my life, I decided not to adopt any of Babe’s babies. Things have cleared up quite a bit, and I’m ready to welcome Lulubelle back into my life as Dave and Vivi get ready to go to live with Max. So the kitten coverage is back on My Two Lives.
I need to write articles for the kittens’ third week of pictures, not to mention their life beyond their third week, and I hope to do that this week. I don’t have many pictures from the past three weeks, so I also need to take pictures of them now.
Gizmo (née Chuck) will be staying with Babe’s primary human, although he seems to be spending more time with me than with Bobby. I don’t mind, except when he wakes me up three hours before I had planned on getting up and head-butts my face in such a way that he blocks off my airflow.
My new laptop arrived a week ago, but there was an issue with the initial power-up. I have a replacement laptop on the way. I will share the whole experience once I receive a properly functioning laptop.
I must say that when I contacted System76, the company making my laptop, about the problem, they didn’t hesitate at all once I showed them the issue. I chose to buy a laptop from them based on the great things I had heard, and so far they are handling the problem beautifully.
Babe’s kittens spent their second week of life living in my closet, and that worked out pretty well. Mom could lie on my bed to watch over them, and I didn’t have to go far to see them myself. I could also turn on the closet light and get better light for pictures. Bobby and I spent a lot of time sitting in front of the closet watching the pets, a routine that would continue until Mom moved them again.
Momma could lay on my bed and watch over them, and I didn’t have to go very far to see them myself.
The kittens closed out the month of May by turning one week old, and they spent most of the day asleep. It’s hard to believe they’re a week old, but time has been flying by for me for a long time. As is the case with most babies, they’re wickyd adorable when they sleep.
8 Days Old: Go ‘way picture lady, it’s time to sleep
I almost forgot to take a picture for 1 June, and by the time I had the camera ready, they were going to sleep (again). I missed several cute shots because I couldn’t get a good angle for a picture. It’s hard to see five kittens in the picture, and the one on the top right just wants to sleep. I believe this is the kitten that would be named Lulubelle, but I can’t be entirely certain from the picture.
9 Days Old: Getting so big!
I usually try to get pictures of the kittens without Babe, but today’s picture of them sleeping on Mom shows how much they’ve grown in just a week. I love how one of them is a pillow for Mom and two others drape themselves across Babe.
10 Days Old: Did I interrupt someone’s nap?
I forgot to post a picture to Flickr on 3 June, and the kitten that would be called Dave looks like they’re upset with me. I took it a little after 22:00 (10 PM), and I can’t tell if they’re complaining about my taking so many pictures or if I’m interrupting their sleep.
11 Days Old: The kittens are getting vocal
Today’s picture is a screenshot from a video I shot of the kittens. They were moving around so much that I knew a still picture wouldn’t capture their cuteness. As I reached my hand in to pet them the kittens started mewing up a storm. Their cute little mews are so adorable! It was hard to keep from laughing at them, as you can hear in the video.
12 Days Old: They’re so cute when they’re sleeping
I had to run some errands and didn’t get much time with the kittens, but when Bobby came down to say hi, several kittens came out to see him. Unfortunately, Mom returned from whatever she was doing, gave the kids a good licking, and moved them back into the closet.
13 Days Old: Sisters make great pillows
The kittens will be two weeks old tomorrow, and it’s adorable how they snuggle up together for naps. I hoped to spend more time with them but they’re asleep most of the day and I hate waking them up. Sometimes I’ll just lay out on the floor and watch them sleep, and mom’s been known to climb up on my back, put her paw on my shoulder, and make sure I’m not waking them up.
Coming up in the next week
The kittens finally start exploring outside the closet, plus more cute sleepers and the first individual pictures of the kittens.
Babe’s babies are five weeks old and they’re big and playful. They still sleep a lot of the day, but they’re a lot more energetic. Let’s start the collection of their pictures on this site with photos from their first month in the world.
The Kittens’ First Day
As I’ve said before, Babe decided to have her babies in a DIY cat bed I had made for her last August. I used this video as a tutorial, and Babe used the bed several times over the fall and winter until it got a little too snug for her liking. The photo shows Babe in it from September 2023, and I figured it was too small for her and her babies, but she proved me wrong.
Babe started giving birth before 7 am on Friday, 24 May, and by 9 am she had given birth to three kittens and was pretty knackered. She’d have two more kittens, and it got hard to see the kittens in the box. I cut the neckline of the tee to fold it back at the top, but she wasn’t happy with me taking so many pictures of her newborn babies. Unfortunately, I had several people asking to see pictures of the babies. As you can see, she didn’t have a problem telling the paparazzi to bugger off.
A few minutes later she either decided to let me get more pictures or was so knackered she didn’t feel like fighting me anymore.
1 Day Old
Mom went up to see her human Dad for a few minutes, and I took advantage of the opportunity to get a picture of the day-old fur babies. They’ve gotten a little bigger since they were born, but they’re still so small that they don’t cover from my wrist to the base of my fingers. You can clearly see Vito with his white body and a white gap between the strips on his head and down his back. Kenny’s directly to his right, with his white belly and stripes down his back.
The others have their daddy’s stripes, each having their variation on the tiger theme. Daddy is a neighborhood cat, and he tends to get lost when Bobby (Babe’s primary human) or I show up, but Bobby was able to take this picture in mid-March, not long after Tiger (as we’ve taken to calling him) took advantage of Babe being in heat.
2 Days Old
Momma let me take her picture as she stretched out for a break on my bed. My bedroom was the main living area for me, Babe, and her kittens for the first month of the kittens’ lives. I didn’t want to do things in the living room and miss being needed in the bedroom, so I made sure I stayed close as they grew big enough to get around on their own. It worked out well for everyone, and I liked being able to look in on the kids pretty often. I was already taking time to just watch the kittens without necessarily taking a picture of them.
I posted my first image of all the kittens today, and I also posted my first kitten video to YouTube. The video named itself because it is an adorable kitten pile.
3 Days Old
At three days old, it’s amazing how much the kittens are filling out. Mom’s eating as often as she can just so she can have milk for her kids to eat.
The kittens still aren’t very active, but I’ll bet that at three days old, I wasn’t doing much besides sleeping, eating, and pooping. One thing for sure is that I was spending more time putting down my laptop and phone, going over to the kittens, and watching them. I couldn’t wait to reach out and pet them, but I knew it was still too soon.
4 Days Old
I found myself taking a lot of pictures of the kids being fed, and I wanted to try and get photos of the kids apart from their mom. But I saw this scene of the kittens having dinner and I had to get a picture. I also managed to get a little video that went up on YouTube.
5 Days Old
After taking last night’s picture, Babe moved her litter into a larger box. I knew they wouldn’t fit in the original box much longer. This is one of the possible birthing boxes I made for Babe, and it has an opening in the front that Babe can walk through but is still too high for the kittens to cross. The best part is that the new box has a removable lid that makes it easier to take pictures. It’s also easier to watch them, and I love how some of them use their siblings for pillows.
6 Days Old
Before calling it a night, I knew there would be thunderstorms overnight, so I tried moving the box across the room. Babe wasn’t having any of that, though, so I moved them back. When I woke up, I went to check on the kittens but the box was empty. What the hell??? I called up to Bobby to see if they were upstairs with him, but they weren’t. As I went back into my bedroom I noticed something changed.
Babe had considered having her kittens in my closet, but there was no way there was room to set up a birthing area in it. Babe had tried moving the kittens into the closet, but I wasn’t sure about that. Bobby asked me to block off the closet, so I laid my mirror over to block her access under the door. I also put my personal shopping cart in front of the mirror to keep it from falling over.
Momma cat probably saw her kids were frightened by the thunder and lightning and moved the mirror away from the closet door, and when I walked back into the bedroom I saw the mirror had been moved enough to let Babe get her kittens into the closet. Sure enough, when I opened the closet door, I saw the kids nestled snugly in the closet. This is where momma must have brought them during the storm.
I don’t think I have a better picture of the furry family to close out their first week with.
Last week I said I was moving my kitten pictures here from Flickr. It’s taken me longer than expected to decide how to present the pictures here. I’m also resizing the images to load better on this site, and I’m re-processing the pictures so they look the best they can here.
The kitten pictures are coming, and I hope to have the first week’s pictures up before the Dodgers take on the D-backs at 22:20 (10:10 PM ET). Please forgive my delay. I hope they are worth the wait. Now that I’ve settled on how they’re presented the process should go faster. I’ll post the photos in one-week groups for the kittens’ first five weeks. That will bring me up to last Thursday’s pictures, I’ll switch to doing one post per day beginning with the pictures from Friday 28 June.
I have some new pictures to share, including some video of the adorable kittens playing in yesterday’s late afternoon sun. I haven’t transferred them from my phone to my computer yet, but I’m looking forward to letting you see the playful kittens.
