How we acquired our two cats, Boo and Cinnamon

Ah, the unexpected delights of work-camping. As gate attendants at a Corps of Engineers campground, the job came with a campsite, and with the campsite came a wild campground cat, a female calico. We named her Lil’ Bit. We were asked by the winter caretakers to feed the cat, as they had during their stay. Soon after we assumed this duty, she blessed us with kittens.

Being grandparents to kittens was fun but stressful. We seemed to go from one crisis to another. At one point, the mother cat became too sick to continue eating and drinking. Since she was taking on no water, the milk slacked off and the kittens were hungry and hollering. With the mother cat passed out, we finally got enough water into her that she recovered enough to nurse the kittens.

We tended to forget the mother cat is “wild” because she let us pet her and the kittens. But she would allow us to show the kittens to just one person at a time. When we showed them to two park rangers at the same time, she did not like that and let us all know it by escaping into the woods with one of the kittens while we were at work. After recovering the missing kitten from a trash pile, we got it back into the box with the others and moved box and kittens inside the coach.

About this time, mom showed up. Although she was hissing and spitting, she kept her distance. We had a stalemate. We returned to work, leaving mom outside to stew.
When we got home at 10:00 p.m., mom was waiting for us. We invited her to come in, and about that time the kittens realized we were home and started a hungry chorus. When mom heard this, her mother instincts kicked in and she could not help herself. She came inside, growling all the way.

She made another attempt to escape with one of the kittens, but with the door
closed, she was stuck inside. She carried the kitten around in circles, but finally
Work-camping Continued on next page she lay down and let the one kitten nurse.
Wow, we’ve made progress. We took the rest of the kittens out of the box and put them with her on the floor. After a while of nursing, we put the kittens back in the box and then lifted mom into the box. She lay down, and we breathed a big sigh of relief.

Good as this is, it posed a significant problem. We now have a “wild” cat in the house, and we need to go to sleep. Was she going to tear the place down? Before we fall asleep, we hear thunder. A storm is coming our way. How are the kittens going to react? Would you believe, the little darlings slept all night long, right through a terrible thunderstorm.

The next morning, mother cat came in and climbed in the box with the kittens,
who immediately started eating. All, including mom, seemed happy and con-
tent. Great! But we had to go to work and couldn’t leave mom and kids in the house for eight hours alone. After a while, we decided to risk another fight and moved the kittens and box back to the front cubby, then moved mom back also. Everyone settled down and looked normal. Life is good!

Our life was relatively calm for a few days. The kittens lived in their playground in the front cubby of the coach. Mom was up and down when the kids needed a meal. We sat in a chair or on a box in front of the door to the cubby and happily watched the activity. We named the kittens Cinnamon, Patches, Sandy, Boo and Boo Boo. Cinnamon and Sandy are yellow and white, Patches is the calico and Boo and Boo Boo are all white (as in ghost) with blue eyes.

Now, you may have figured out time is passing and the family is growing older. We don’t want to have more feral cats in the local woods. So, we need to make some plans. We got prices to “fix” mom.The problem is what to do with five kittens. Because of our lifestyle, we have avoided pets for the last seven years. A call to local shelters did not take care of the problem. They have a glut of kittens up for adoption. So, back to the drawing board. We put up signs on the gatehouse with the hope that good families would swarm all over us to adopt. In the meantime (and this was not part of the plan), Pete falls in love with Cinnamon, one of the yellow and white kittens. We start taking her in the coach to get her used to it. Then Jo decides Cinnamon is lonesome and brings one of the white kittens inside. Now, this is getting out of hand! But we can’t help it and resign ourselves to a lifestyle change incorporating two cats. And so another chapter in our life begins. The signs on the gatehouse eventually had their effect, and we found good homes for the remaining three. We are a little sad to lose them, but five cats in an RV?

We had Lil’ Bit “fixed,” and she still lives in the campground.