It’s been an interesting week kitten-wise… we’ve had a feral cat living around our stables for a few months. We tried to get her to the vet to be spayed just before Christmas… an attempt that ended up with me having to go to A&E for tetanus and antibiotics as she managed to bite my leg through my jeans as she fought her way out of the cat carrier. By the time she’d calmed down and was accepting food again she was very obviously pregnant and gave birth to four kittens at the end of March. We’ve been liaising with a local feral cat charity and the plan was to take the kittens to the vet at 14 weeks to be neutered (yes it’s too early but on balance worse to leave them) and try to get the mum at the same time. They were 12 weeks old this week and the kittens were getting very used to being around people. However the mum cat seemed to realise we were planning something as she and kittens disappeared last weekend - no sign of any of them .. mum turned up four days later but without kittens. Then on Thursday evening one of them just appeared in the hay barn, crying and purring and desperately relieved to have found his way back. He was too distressed to leave him on his own so we took him inside. The following morning, a second kitten turned up, also very relieved - while I was checking her over the mum poked her head round the door - kitten was delighted and ran up to her, only to be swiped and hissed at, so we brought kitten number 2 in as well. Kitten number 3 turned up a few hours later hiding under an old outbuilding - we’d heard him crying and he came running to us. So that only left kitten number 4 who we eventually found last night stuck up a tree at the bottom of our orchard. So relieved we’ve managed to track all of them down - we think the mum must have taken them somewhere and abandoned them as we think she’s pregnant yet again…