rough

It's been a rough week on the farm here.

It started when Stew-pot, the cat, had six kittens in the stroller in the garage. To protest my moving them to a nice box lined with rags a few feet away, she refused to feed them for a while and three died. She since decided to feed the remaining three and when I checked them yesterday, they were fat and their eyes were starting to come open.

The week continued when Fanta, another cat with a sketchy reputation for caring for her young, had kittens also in the garage. But Priya and the neighbor girl found them strung out around the yard. Mollie, the dog, while being a fabulously, gentle dog with human children, feels no such sympathy for the offspring of cats. For the second time this year and fourth time overall, felt inspired to kill yet another litter of kittens. Cats are a dime a dozen and I'm not terribly distraught that we have four less kittens except for the chore of locating the corpse's and hoping none are still struggling. One was quite alive in this latest round of killings. Besides have several puncture wounds, it seemed to want to eat. It didn't make the night however. Fanta has since adopted another cat's three half-grown kittens from this spring to be her own though.

The week finished when one of the sheep suffered a irreversible injury as a result of an ornery horse. So I am quite confident that while my children may be considered sheltered in some regards, they are very familiar with the death of their pets.