This morning Marcela’s family surprised her by showing up from Managua. They were already on the road to León when they told her. So she asked me to take her to Maxi Pali to do some last minute shopping so that she would have groceries in the house. So we ran over to Laborio to hit the supermarket.
It was a decently quiet day, but we are so concerned about the safety of the kittens that we basically have the dogs on continuous lockdown and we are scouting the yard all of the time to make sure the cats aren’t out there.
It was a very hard day. Not only is everyone still super sad, of course, and Luciana and I are still quite sick, but trying to keep the dogs and cats apart is exhausting and clearly isn’t a solution. The cats show zero fear of Clive, even after what happened, and freely came into the yard seemingly to see him! Thank goodness I had him on a leash, they came right up to him. He was terrified, as he had been every time that they were in the yard. I’m convinced he sees them as a threat that he doesn’t understand and only killed Chocolate Milk to “protect the perimeter and the family.” Because that’s what he does. Not because he’s hunting them or anything.
So we have a major issue trying to keep the yard free of kittens. By late evening, we had to lock the dogs up completely as the kittens not only invaded the yard for an hour or two before sunset, but once it was dark they just came into the house and took it over. They went all over the house all evening playing all over and having a great time. We couldn’t let the dogs out in their own house all night!
We didn’t play with the kittens in the house, but they wanted to be there. Even when we’d leave and go into a room with the dogs for hours, when we’d come out they’d be lurking somewhere. They have declared it their new home.
Knowing that there was zero possibility now of keeping the dogs and kittens apart, we took to drastic measures and moved the kittens into Liesl’s room. We made a make-shift cat litter box out of a cardboard box and we set them up with food, water, and toys. They are super happy and played and played until exhausted. Then they climbed into bed with Liesl and spent the night near her feet in a little kitten pile. It’s so good to see them happy and together as siblings, but also a heart breaking reminder that the third is gone and they will always seem to be incomplete to us.
It looks like we have more housecats now. These cats took to being in the house with zero prompting. It’s wild how much they just wanted to live indoors.