Come, kittens! Come, kittens!

This morning, I found one of the chicks perched on the top of the pen. Clearly it's time to get their new coop ready and move them. Otherwise, I may wake up one morning to a chick nesting in my hair. It's hard to believe they are only two weeks old. For the past two weeks, we have been putting the kittens in the bathroom for the night because we didn't want them making an impromptu visit to the pen. They've been fairly content with the arrangement, as when I make my multiple nightly visits they are always curled up together and seem happy to see me, but not overly eager to escape. For the past two nights, they have been left out in the house at night. To be honest, the chicks are outgrowing the kittens, and at this point if a kitten did end up in the pen, the chaos created by 20 hysterical, wing-flapping, high pitched cheeping, body slamming chicks would send the poor little fellow crawling up the wall and out in a blink of an eye.

Most evenings I take a walk down our lane. I like to take as many animals with me as a possible. There is no question about the dog. If I so much as walk out the front door after supper she convulsively leaps to her feet and barrels down the lane in anticipation. Of course, there's no helping the droopy disappointment if I'm just heading out to the lawn chair with a book. The bunny goes where the dog does. He's reluctant, but dedicated. He does have a tendency to wuss out on the way home though, flopping over in the middle of the lane and refusing to move. He hates being carried, so the threat of being tucked under my arm usually gets him going again.

The kittens are another matter altogether. My last cat, Frodo, (bless his wandering heart) went with us for every walk, from the time he was 7 weeks old. Even at that young age, when he got tired he hated being carried and kept insisting he could make it on his own. Sheldon and Sawyer have no interest in walks, and prefer wrestling in the dirt under the porch, chasing butterflies and throwing each other down the front steps. I tried carrying them partway down the lane and then putting them down, hoping they'd follow. Instead, they wrestled in the dirt, chased butterflies and threw each other into the ditch, there being no stairs handy. I then tried carrying one of them while the other one stood forlornly in the lane trying to decide exactly how much he really needed his brother, after all. We had a bit of success with this method, as it turns out they are pretty attached to each other, and once trotting along beside us, they seemed to enjoy themselves.

Last night I just took Sheldon with me. Sawyer was sound asleep on the couch, and I couldn't bear to disturb him. Just kidding. My alternate choice of activity last night, had the walk not panned out, would have been flicking his whiskers to see how long it would take him to wake up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what they say about the easily amused...

Anyway, I took Sheldon with me, carried him part of the way down the lane and then put him down and kept walking. He turned to head back, saw how far it was, chased a bug into the edge of the lane, beat up a few blades of grass, saw I had moved on, sat down on the lane and cried. Then he followed. I didn't go the entire way down the lane, as I unexpectedly needed a potty break and the farmers were working the adjoining fields. The trees by the side of the lane don't provide that much privacy. Besides, bunny started flopping over sooner than usual, probably due to a slow recovery from the intense heat that we've been having. Mini the dog had already done 3 trips up and down the lane to my 1/2, so she was okay with heading back. By the time we returned, Sheldon was doing the "running w/the pack thing", trying to keep up with Mini and feeling all big-boyish. It was sweet.

On a sadder note, one of our hens is sick and didn't end up in the hen house last night. She's had diarrhea since I stopped the antibiotics I was giving them for a respiratory problem several of them had. I have been feeding her kefir on chunks of bread, kefir being a highly probiotic fermented milk drink. She has been eating well, but hanging around the house and looking quiet. She's been sweet, because every time I go out of the house she follows me around and sits under my chair if I'm lounging. Chickens are social creatures, and it's been hard for her, that the other chickens have been touring the grounds and she has been left behind. I hope that she is just tucked under somewhere getting better. That's not likely though. Sadness.