Cat Colony

Our long time readers may remember nine months ago when we discovered that two new-born kittens (which we later named Oni and Chibi) had been born under our house. Eventually their mother moved on when they got old enough, and we continued to feeding them as if they were our own. Oni and Chibi expect food from us twice a day, although they are still fairly wild. Oni constantly wants attention from us, but he refuses to be touched. Chibi occasionally will let you pet her but mostly lives to eat dry cat food.

A few weeks ago, the cats were acting particulalry strange. Oni was uncharictaristically hissing at Chibi. Chibi finally confirmed what we had suspected for a while: she had been pregant. She had been getting pretty fat, but it wasn't until she dropped a day-old kitten on our porch that we could confirm she had had kittens! Her two kittens were born under our neighbor's porch and were later moved to the foundation of our house (where Chibi and Oni were originally born) during a typhoon. Oni was mad at Chibi for a couple of weeks, but eventually got over it. Chibi's lazy character makes her a pretty awful mother, often failing to guard her kittens and forgetting how to get to them under the apartment building.

We are obviously very concerned about a situation that I have ignored for a long: we need to deal with these cats! Japan has a stray cat problem, and we've been told that there are little local resources for dealing with them. If we wanted to keep them and get them fixed, we would have to pay premium prices at a vet's office. We did finally find a humane shelter called Ark in Osaka that will apparently retrieve the cats and take care of them. We may be calling soon, but hopefully we can play with the kittens a bit before we have to.