Friday 12 June 2009

Kitten Diary #6

miss fluffy
Raven looking fluffy

It's been a while since we had a kitten diary. This is partly because I'm a bit cross with them. It's not their fault and we knew it would happen but they've learnt how to hunt.

crow looking up the pear tree
Crow watching his brother and sister up the tree

This is a farmyard and there are plenty of voles, mice and even some rats that find themselves labelled prey without much remorse, even from this vegan. If it wasn't our cats, it would be the ferals or even the owls and other birds of prey feeding on them. They breed fast and need to be controlled.

coming down
Not a great action shot of Rook coming down again.

Unfortunately it's also bird breeding season and our intrepid hunters have had, by my count, four unfortunate baby birds only one of which had a chance of survival when I managed to fight Crow away from it and settle it outside in a sheltered spot. The trouble is I'm sure it died of fright anyway.

rook
Rook looking regal, you can see the underlying tabby markings on his coat here.

It's inconsistent to let them hunt rats but chastise them for catching birds. Still, that's the process in the hope they will settle down to hunting the vermin and leave our feathered friends alone. The worst sadness of all is to see them torment the swallows. They have raised a brood and seem to have a family of three healthy younsters but in a good year they might be expected to have a second clutch. I think they'll give it up as a bad job because of the harassment.

crow
Crow, waiting for me to stop messing about in the garden.

Apart from that, and they're not up to murder and mayhem all the time, they are delightful, affectionate and loving little cats. It doesn't seem like they will make anything like as much as 5kg in weight, Raven seems to have settled at just over 3kg and the boys are growing still but very slowly, so they'll never be the huge cats I had hoped for when considering Norwegian Forest cats as a breed choice, but they are fit and strong and exceedingly good natured with humans.

raven
The Princess gives a royal wave.

1 comment:

Soja said...

Hmm. In the past my parents have had cats that have hunted birds, sometimes they could prevent them from being successful by using collars with bells on them, the older cat that had been living wild before adopting them learnt how to remove it, but it helped with the younger ones. Jaffa is barely 3 kg and unlikely to get any bigger, she seems tiny after growing up with 'British' tabbies.