So it's that wonderful time of year again when everything is coming back to life and even the animals seem to know instinctively this is the correct time to give birth. Spring will of course gift their offspring the best chance of survival. Off-Spring is the way to swing ;)
March is actually the first month of the year but long ago it was changed for reasons unknown. Likely just to mess with our overall balance & inability to sync correctly with the seasons. We know the months were different in the past because September represents the number seven (sept is French for seven), Oct represents the number eight, Nov the number nine and Dec the number ten. Which would make March the first month.
I think we can all agree this would be a much more natural place to begin each year, but in fear of getting side-tracked early on in this post i better stick to the cat update!
Double mother kittens 😻
This is Fifi, our original female cat, four years old and pregnant for the third time.
Last year she gave birth in a pig den in the middle of some blackberries, on the land next to ours.
We suspected the same kind of story to play out this year but instead she decided that home would be the best place.
She was walking around the house shortly after the full moon acting a bit strange and i knew instantly what was going on so commandeered Luna's Barbie house to get her accustomed.
She seemed happy here, feeling the love which went into its construction.
As is our way, I put a few orgonite pyramids & crystals around the area, Sabrina put three tensor rings, Esteban put one of his Flower of Life drawings and Luna put some carefully positioned lego.
Luna also did this drawing which was placed on the top floor of the Barbie house.
She likes to move around a bit during the birth experience so we extended the towels like this.
It wasn't long before the kittens started to arrive.
Here's the first one, fresh to the world.
Instinctively they know what to do, searching for the milk.
The children watched the birth of three kittens hoping for one which stood out as being different to the others.
Luck would have it that two kittens were a dark tabby colour while one of them was ginger & white. They decided this one would be called Ron Weasley! (Harry Potter influence).
When Fifi stepped out for a pee we moved the Barbie house and replaced it with a larger tub but just at this moment Rocket arrived and upon finding the babies alone, she jumped in with them.
Rocket is Fifi's daughter born two seasons ago and she is also pregnant.
The kittens were searching for milk initially, but it appeared they were not able to find any.
Things were a bit uncomfortable when Fifi returned.
On the first night there was lots of fighting between them and it felt as if Rocket may have to be banned from the house till she gave birth.
We thought this because Fifi was leaving Rocket with the babies more and more, so our fear was that Rocket was not producing milk yet and the babies would starve if Fifi left for good.
But then everything settled down after the first few days and Fifi seemed to accept Rocket as one of the babies.
The whole thing has been very interesting to watch. Like a lesson.
Most of the time Fifi & Rocket are able to make a very effective kitten sandwich, keeping them warm, fed & loved as a team, and the kittens quickly learned which mother was for sleeping on and which was for drinking from.
A sandwiched kitten here.
Fifi didn't have much love for Rocket prior to the birth (mothers are like this once the kittens reach a certain age) so the lesson i would say relates to the way in which females are naturally drawn to help each other after giving birth, immediately able to put past differences asside.
Perhaps, if humans were not so connected to "the way it's done" they would be able to follow their natural instinct all the way back to a system which sees mothers working as teams during these early stages of infants' lives. There is something so isolating about the idea of family, each of us locked away inside our convenient boxes, leaving mothers for the most part to deal with these testing early years alone. Or perhaps if they are lucky with a man who is available sometimes.
I foresee a world which is able to build its childcare systems more in line with nature and our own intuition, free from supposed conventional wisdom.
Love & Light everyone 🌱
And all the best to my friends in the Caturday group 😺