Unexpected Babies

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For quite some time now I have been trying to rationalize getting a pet to myself and my husband. Every time I see a cute dog or a stray cat my heart jumps and I want to just run over and give the furry critter a huge hug and cuddle with it. The funny thing is that my husband does the same thing. We're always saying, "what a cute puppy" or "look at the kitty cat!" We've decided not to get one mostly because living in Hawaii, and away from family, means that whenever we'd want to leave or take a small vacation, whether just island hopping for the weekend, or heading over to the mainland means we need to find someone to take care of our pet. So, for now, we've done without a cuddly kitty or puppy; then something unexpected happened...

Yesterday after I woke up, I did the usual. Open the sliding door off the master bedroom to let some air in, when I noticed something under one of our grossly overgrown plants in the lanai. I ran to get my glasses and soon saw a little cat laying in the shade. I ran to get my husband, whispering (to prevent the cat from hearing and running away), and said "come look outside, we've got a cat sleeping on our lanai."

We slowly crept up to the sliding door. It looked like there might be more than one cat. Then we saw something small move around...then another small furry thing started moving. I had seen this all before...there were some baby kittens sleeping with the momma cat. Now, these babies weren't old enough to run around. They scooted, and their cute little heads bobbed around as they wobbled around their momma. They couldn't have been more than a week old since their eyes had just opened. I couldn't believe it! Somehow a pregnant cat found it's way into our lanai and had babies sometime in the last week. It was so adorable.

Nick and I knew that we had to do something to help out this extremely thin stray and her babies, so we excitedly ran to the kitchen and got out a can of tuna and a little bowl of water, then headed back to our room. Nick moved slowly so as not to disturb the mama cat and nursing babies, however, being a protective mother, the mama cat quickly noticed someone invading her space. She immediately starting growling and got up into a protective stance. Nick quietly and quickly placed the food and water down, then backed away. We closed the screen door and left the room. Every once in a while we peered around the edge of the door to see if the mama had eaten. Sure enough, she was scarfing down the tuna.

We're not quite sure what will happen to the mama and babies. Nick and I hope that we can at least help the mama be strong for her little ones; maybe she'll even trust us enough at some point so we can adopt them. But one thing is for sure, we are excited to have this unexpected addition to our family and pray that the mama and kittens will be alright. These unexpected babies are definitely a worthy obsession.