Newest member of the family

Not going to post about politics just now (it's all horribly depressing, I have nothing to say that hasn't already been said better than I could.) Instead, something cheerful.

On November 1, Silverblue and Brandt (+ Velociraptor) came over to help us with our garden, which was getting *cough* slightly unkempt.

While pulling weeds, Silverblue made a discovery in an old compost bin:



Three tiny kittens, somewhere around three weeks old. We have a lot of roaming cats around, and evidently some feral mama had decided that this would be a good place to hide her babies.

They were much too young to be separated from their mama, so we weighed them, put them back, and hoped she'd keep them there. Unfortunately she was scared, so she took the babies away and hid them somewhere else - our neighbour thinks under his house. We put food out for her every so often, in the hope that she might come back, and she was happy enough to take the food.

Last Sunday, Rey looked out the back window and saw three not-quite-so-little scamps and their mother exploring our back yard. We tried to catch them but they bolted. At that point we borrowed a cat trap and baited it.

We checked just before bed on Sunday night - nothing.

Around five in the morning I woke up and went down to check the trap, and found this rather pretty black-and-white kitten:

We set up the trap again on Monday night, and caught the remaining two. ( Rest of post cut for lots of pics. )