Wow, that's a pretty nasty infestation.

Seen a momma cat anywhere around?

In any case, at that age they will still be nursing. Check with your local Humane Society to see if they know anybody who can foster them and mom (if she gets caught). It would work better than you trying to parcel them out on your own.

I remember a few years back when you got that other batch of kittens under your house. Romeo, Spitfire, Muse, and Betty, I think their names ended up being. I kitten-sat the furballs over Memorial Day weekend when you went out of town.

Same mother?

Sneaky bastard. Now my wife wants me to drive to Michigan and get a kitten. Jeeze...

I guess this proves that Dean's World loves kittens!

Jerry,

Different mother but I'm pretty sure it's the same father.

All six-week old kittens are incredibly cute. That's how people have been suckered into the cat culture since the times of the ancient Egyptian monarchy.

That too is more or less the way Stefi and I got stuck with most of the cats of our life. They sort of wandered out of the woods and into our property.

Alan Kellogg is right. Because they are still nursing, keep the family together, and look for an industrial-strength cat lover to palm them off onto.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Arnold pretends to be a curmudgeon, but I just knew that deep down he's a sweetie! I bet the stray kitty-cats they take in think so too :)

I'd be interested but there's probably a law against transporting underage cats across state lines with the intent of using them to contain the local mouse population. ;)

Current Mr Cat may not agree with you Lucy, but thanks for the boost anyway.

This guy (we call him Scratch, but he isn't in shape to do much of that) came in out of the woods around here last summer. With a big open wound across the lower part of his nose, one of his four canines busted off and a the root festering, and no front claws. There is no physical evidence he was de-clawed, so maybe it was something goofed up in his genes. We figure he got mangled by some other animal. He tries to use his front paws to scratch at our oak doorframes, which is sort of an instinctual thing in cats. So we figure he just isn't aware he has no front claws. We got the rest of his bad tooth removed by a veterinarian who specializes in this sort of stuff.

But the bastard tries to run off and play hide-and-seek in the wooded bluffs around here every chance he gets. We try to stop that behavior, because he doesn't have the natural defenses of nearly every other cat. Which means he might try to go after some feral version of himself, and the other guy would probably cut him a new asshole.

Any way, he bonded first with my oldest son, and he snoozes near him when he's at work with me down in our offices.

You've got to be careful with male cats. They piss around in spare corners (to mark territory, I think).

Anyway, I guess he's part of the Harris family now. Which means he gets fed like everyone else.

I guess I just like cats. They're so damned independed, take shit from nobody, and smell better than young kids because they continually clean themselves.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Kinda like you, eh Arnold? Well, I can't speak for the "cleaning themselves" part, but hey... :)

We used to drive our mom nuts bringing home strays all the time...

Hey, Dean: why not auction off the cats for the Alliance too!? Heh heh heh.

They are so cute. Maybe they have a future in TV?

Dean and Rosemary, you need to send those kittens right on over to Joel Veitch at rathergood.com. He'll have them punked out and playing electric guitars in no time...

(They do bear a remarkable resemblance to his current cast of kittens.)

Lucy

About Arnold, not only is he a sweetie masquarading as a curmudgeon but I have it on good authority (from the man himself) that secretly he has a reputation as a romantic as well (the authority being Arnold quoting his wife Stefi ;-). Now if he just weren't an avowed dog disliker, he'd be the perfect male role model for all these young whippersnappers.

About dogs, Jane.

I don't eat 'em. So nobody can accuse me of that. But having them lazing around, stinking up my house? Drooling all over me? Sticking their noses into my crotch to determine what gender I am? Echhh!

About being romantics after 35 years with my lady (32 of them in marriage). The romance never really ends as long as either of you or any of your children are alive to remember the warmth, vitality and closeness of both the good times and some occasional bad ones. But it helps even more so if you are willing now and then to lend your wife a hand with the gardening, the housecleaning, picking the appropriate shade of Martha Stewart yellow-green paint for the walls, sorting and putting away the freshly washed and dried laundry, getting a DVD or videotape film that she as well as you want to see, and lots of other things. And it helps if she comes out to work the gun matches. (None of this comes easy or natural). Then you can let the good times roll.

But strangely enough to some people, Stefi hates eating out. (Expensive and unwholesome foods that make you fat.)

I knew a guy back in the '50s, happily married. He once told me that when ever he saw a beautiful sunset, "I always think of it terms of how fine a sight it must be to Carol". (That was his wife.) I never forgot that conversation, all my years with Stefi.

I guess, Jane, romance has to be viewed as something that's one part dancing a tango and one part seeing that the kids are tucked in.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Arnold,

You need a blog; this shit is just too funny.

"Which means he might try to go after some feral version of himself, and the other guy would probably cut him a new asshole."

ROTFLMAO!