These cats are weird.

As some of you know, I've been babysitting my friend's four cats for the past month while she gets her life together. It's a mom and her litter of three 11-month-old kittens. The mom (now grandmom) doesn't interact much with her kids or the kitten. She's basically nonsocial with humans and other cats.

Her kids, on the other hand, are super-friendly and super-close with each other. I've never seen a group of three cats so close to each other. They sleep in a big pile often using each other as mattresses. (Triple-decker kitties!) When the kitten came along, initially mama wanted nothing to do with it. A friend told me that I was going to have to feed it by hand. Since I don't live anywhere near a Petco, it just seemed easier to train mama to be a good mother. I spent the first day chasing mama with the kitten and forcing her to nurse. It turned out that mama didn't want to be seperated from her litter-mates, so as long as I brought the kitten to her when she was in the kitty-pile, she was happy to nurse. (Don't queens usually prefer to be alone when nursing?)

Not only does she prefer to nurse in the company of her brother and sister, but her siblings have taken an active role in the kitten's care. Initially, mama wouldn't lick the kitten's butt, so I had auntie do it, which I think might have triggered her baby envy and put her in heat. (I got NO sleep that week, breaking up shtupping sessions.) Thank god auntie has finally stopped kidnapping the kitten and either running under the bed with it or stuffing it in the printer. Now auntie is happy just to babysit. She seems to like being around the kitten more than mama does.

The boycat also takes his turn babysitting, licking its butt and (swear to God and hope to die) actually tried to nurse it a few times. This kitten is going to have some gender confusion.

I was initially worried about the kitten because it had no littermates and aside from the obligatory nursing, mama isn't that interested in it. But it seems that the other cats have filled in the gaps. It's as if they think the kitten is another sibling and treat it accordingly. Instead of one mom with three kittens, I have a kitten with three moms. When two of them go at the end of the month, (I'm keeping mama for a few extra weeks for nursing purposes) it might be a bit traumatic.

Hopefully, it might help Tuly (my cat) get used to the kitten. Tuly has not been anywhere near the kitten because my friend's cats gang up on her and mama has been the most hostile.

(Oh, and what added to the weirdness is that these cats are identical to each other and none of them had names. It took me weeks to tell them apart and when I finally did, I named them out of desperation: Mary, Frank, Marie and Nadja.)

The kitten IS doing well. It's sixteen days old, has gained a lot of weight, both eyes and ears are open and it has started to crawl around. It spent the day climbing around and exploring my couch. It even crawled up into my lap a couple times.