For three days we had these five precious little babies in our home. Abandoned by their mom (who was most likely feral), they were rescued by my mom who found some of them in a dirty wastebasket and the others barely alive under a tangle of wires and leaves. Since they have to be bottle fed and are initially both blind and deaf, they need extra, extra TLC, and can't be adopted until they're at least three weeks old. So we (or I should say I) volunteered to be part of a small group who would take turns keeping these little helpless babies alive. 

It's no easy task. I can safely say, having gone through it twice, that having a newborn human baby at home is easier than five newborn kittens. Like my babies, they needed to be fed almost every two hours around the clock. But unlike my babies, there were five mouths and five bottoms that needed to be stimulated by a soft tissue to pee and poop. At 3 o'clock in the morning Matt and I would hear their tiny mouths mewing to be fed, and as much as we (most especially my dear husband) wanted to keep sleeping, we both got up and nursed them. Matt would occasionally throw a glance my way that said, "How in the world did you get me into this?" I know, dear, I know. 

The boys were excited by their arrival, a little more aloof once they settled in. But both of them were very interested in watching me feed them, perhaps it was watching their mother be a mother to something else. 

I handed them off yesterday to the next person on the rotation. And although I'm still totally tired, I miss them. I had dreams about them last night. I've been thinking a lot about keeping one, which surprises me because I didn't think we'd get a pet until the kids were older. But for some reason, Runty, Charlie Brown, Bear, Big Boy, and Callie (as they came to be named), landed in our hands. Maybe the time is now? We'll see. But man, they were cute.