They LIVE!! Meooooowwww.

Okay. We have established that I am imperfect and far from faultless. That doesn't mean that I don't like to be right. Cuz' I do. Alot. A *foible* I have been working on for some time...

It brings me great pleasure to announce that I AM SO GLAD I AM WRONG :-) It seems we all jumped the gun on the kitten fiasco. Though said kittens were absent for a week and a half, we were overjoyed (umm...sort of, remember, those cute kittens become stray cats,) to have them turn up as cute as ever. At first, only the kitten that Grayce and Owen dubbed "Ellie" because she has the exact same markings as her mama, appeared. A few days later we spied the rest of them...

Not eaten by snakes.

Not eaten by Rats.

Child Therapy averted! For now. I just have to figure out how to capture Ellen and the kitten bunch and take them to the vet so that they can't reproduce further...

Ellen is looking mighty fine these days on her diet of leftover meats and fish. She won't touch bread or CAT FOOD...and I think I fed her my lunch last week.

But she's not my cat. I don't even like cats. Really.

Did I mention that we currently have 6 toadlets?? And the kids want a giant snail? Add in the house geckos and the rat holes in our patch of green and it seems we are running a small zoo...

The Fischers Animal House

in India

About those kittens...

Parenting.

No matter where you live and love it's guaranteed that you will be thrown a few curve balls and that you will, undoubtedly, drop many a ball, along the way. Unless you are one of those perfect parents, of which, I've met none. Because you don't live on this planet. I, on the other hand, am happy to report that my parenting imperfections are many and I think it's noteworthy to add that while my children claim to think I am perfect, they frequently notice that I am not. That's me: Imperfect Mother on the Planet Earth!

So, anyway...about those kittens. If you've read previous posts you will know that we were adopted by a stray (and often pregnant) cat, whom the children named, Ellen Degeneres. A few weeks ago, Ellen showed up skinny and we have all been waiting for her to bring the kittens out of hiding (sort of...given that kittens eventually become stray cats.) On Thursday, she did so, moving her kittens into our next door neighbor's laundry room (bars on the doors but no screens). There were four, adorable, sweet kittens and Ellen was a doting mother, allowing us to get very close and the kids went over approximately once every 30 minutes to "check on the kittens."

Did you notice the "were" in the above sentence? Which brings us right up to the whole parenting curve ball/misstep thing. The one where the cat shows up crying at the door and the kids are extremely concerned about the fact that they can't find the kittens. The one where they begin asking questions and your first response is to say that the kittens were probably eaten by Rats or Snakes which presents a problem because: #1 your kids are 4 and 6 and the kittens were the sweetest and it is unimaginable that anything would EAT them and, oh, by the way, #2 "mama, that means the rats and snakes probably come to our house."

Yup. Good Parenting always means telling the absolute unvarnished truth. Doesn't it? No? Oops. Horrifying and Scaring your kids because your mouth moves faster than your brain is pretty much fodder for the therapy they will seek in their adult lives...

I guess it's a good thing that I didn't mention the other possibility....where some stray-cat-hating-maniac bagged the kittens and took them off to the lake. Cuz' that would have really added to the conversation...

The Fischers in India
currently crafting a fairy tale about four heroic super-powered kittens and their, could-be-alive-and-well, journeys around Palm Meadows...

P.S. I can't post any pics of the kids and the kittens because I was "going to do it tomorrow" and, well...you know the story.