October 30, 2009

• What a couple of days!

  On Wednesday night - blessedly, after Bridgette was asleep! - Jasmine started having her kittens.  Here she is giving birth to her first one:

  

  The miracle of life has its messy moments:

  

  Jasmine, examining her baby:

  

  I regret to report the next two kittens were stillborn, which made us all very sad.  What worried us was that Jasmine was clearly still pregnant.  The next morning  -  after causing Jessica and Brianna a sleepless night due to the surviving kitten's mewling and Jasmine's meowing (Jasmine hauled the kitten to the small closet in their room)  -  I stuffed the two of them (Jasmine and her kitten, not Jessica and Brianna) into a pet carrier and took them to the vet.  Later that morning there came the call saying Jasmine needed to be either euthanized or be essentially spayed, because were are at least two dead kittens in her.  Easy choice!  Do the surgery.

  Later that afternoon came yet another call, this time an excited vet employee exclaiming she had "awesome" news:  there were three kittens born alive!  The vet was stunned to discover this, and performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on them (which I rather hate thinking about) to get them going.  How he knew those three had a chance while the fourth one didn't, I don't know.  That's why he's the vet and I'm not, presumably.

  Anyway, we wound up with four kittens...three white with black areas on their heads, and one black:

  

  Brianna insists on keeping the black one, while I want the one born first, as I saw it born and held it almost immediately afterward (we'd thought it was stillborn, too, then it surprised us by moving while Jasmine licked it).

  It's awkward, that Jasmine is determined to keep the kittens in that closet in Jessica and the girls' room, as a rowdy two-year-old is scarcely suitable company for them.  Last night I kept them in my room so they could sleep, meaning I had no sleep at all until nearly 7:30, when I grumpily handed them over to Jess.  Jasmine was dogged in her persistence about trying to take various kittens to Jessica's room, while I was just as dogged about hauling them back.  That was one of the most exhausting nights I've ever spent.

  Maybe tomorrow I'll go look at them; today I've felt I had quite enough of them overnight.

  This afternoon Bridgette had been pulling towels out of some shelves in the hall, and climbing onto the middle shelf.  I didn't object to the towels being pulled out, but did object rather strenuously to her being on that shelf, so wound up having to pull her out of it, over her vociferous, furious wails.  Being crabby due to the lack of sleep (to be fair, I slept this morning for a few hours), I gave her a swat on her diapered bottom.  Mercy Maud, what a flood of tears that elicited:

  

  She stood sobbing with her hands over her eyes for at least two minutes, the little Drama Queen.

  This evening we went to the Halloween party up at the club, where we were delighted to find Elaine and her family.  Elaine made Meredith's costume, and Margaret was a star, wasn't that clever?

  

  

  Jessica and I aren't made of such creative stuff, instead simply purchasing the girls' costumes (Brianna's a cat, while Bridgette's a fairy, though the cool evening necessitated the latter forgoing her wings for a jacket).  Here's Kirsten with Bridgette:

  

  Kirsten told her sisters she's dressed as an annoyed teenager.  Good costume.

  

  I'll get a decent photo of Brianna tomorrow night. What is frustrating is that I left early, then Brianna was chosen to go on stage during the magic show but no one took pictures.  Boo. 

  It's about time for me to turn in, leaving Jessica, Kirsten, Dmitry and Zhenya watching some scary movie.  Ugh. 

  • 11:36 pm
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