Kittens!

Top to bottom: 2, 1, 4. To the left is 3.
At least 2 and 3 are eating, everyone is drinking and making a complete mess of their carrier. They're not thrilled about being handled, but will walk up to me once I get them out of their cage. An attempt to let them hang out on my bed failed dramatically. 4 tried to go to my bedside table, but instead fell down to the ground (a fall of at least 4 feet), and was displeased when I removed him from his hiding spot. They all found the spot behind the headboard, which was fine, except 2 and 4 managed to squeeze down between the back of the headboard backing and the wall. Again, displeased yowly kittens. I put 1 and 3, the behaving kittens, back. 2 and 4 had at this point found my desk. Ian's big metal organizing thing was there. They had a ball squeezing their grotesquely giant heads and tiny bodies through there for a while, until I had 1 and 3 safely away. Then they got put back, too. All four spent a while mewing at me after that. I mewed back, so they climbed the wire door and looked at me pitifully.

I have high hopes they will be rehomed easily. If I didn't know I couldn't keep one, I'd be very tempted to keep 3. I have three numbers from the bus ride home of interested parties, though I'd love it if they went to people I knew.

I wonder what their dad thinks about this. He's a tame outdoors cat and loves people. I found him sitting on the pallet where we caught them and started meowing at me-- did he know they were there or did he just find a cat scent and was curious? We brought the kittens out, and they spilled to the front of the cage, mewing frantically and trying to touch him. He was very interested ("What are those things?") but quickly grew more interested in the horizontal position of my legs.

We'll have to livetrap the mother to spay her, and get Gabriel snipped as soon as possible. I'm pretty irritated that Robert's been planning to do this since October, and still hasn't gotten around to it. Livetrapping will probably ruin any chance we have of making her friendly, but at least she won't be making more feral cats.

I didn't really do much yesterday other than kittens. I helped get Reno ready to ride and walked him around for a minute before letting Gillian take over. I watched Lady be lame. I took Nicky for a walk with Gillian and Star. The interesting thing about Nicky seems to be her intense respect for someone attached to her halter. Her owner said she was a wild weanling and it took 3 hours to wrestle a halter onto her, but she's always respected it since. This goes to an impressive level. Yesterday she was acting up a little, but I asked her to trot. She freaked out, went to rear and bolt. I'd basically committed myself to having to let go of the lead rope, but a second after she put pressure on it, she stopped by throwing herself to the ground. Then she got up and stood very calmly. This is the second time she's done this sort of thing, but the first I thought she'd just lost her balance. It genuinely seems to go deep that she must not put pressure on her halter, and it's self-reinforcing when she does this. It's nice when horses teach themselves things so you don't have to. She also was totally fine with everything she hadn't seen for months-- the bridge and the round bales.

I'm happy we have Reno under saddle. I think I'll finally have a trail horse. I haven't been more than 100 feet past the culvert under saddle since the first day I got back on a horse in October. When Nicky gets going, I hope that that will work for trails too.

I don't know what to do with Luca. When he's good, he's absolutely fabulous. When he's bad... well, damn he's bad. I can stay on no problem, but I'd rather be moving forward with our training instead of focusing on why we shouldn't buck whenever we damn well feel like it. Maybe Gillian should get on and see if the same thing happens to her, or if it's a me issue. I'm sick of him trying to kill me, and I want something fun to do. I'd rather have higher aspirations for a show than hoping Luca doesn't hop the chain and kill the judge.