Kittens, Kittens, Kittens

I know, I know, it's about time for a kitten update.
They're three weeks old now.

Zoe couldn't make up her mind where she wanted to to build her kitty nest so it was fun waking up every few days to find them somewhere new.
Or, being woken up in the middle of the night:
"No Zoe, you can't keep your babies in Kim's sweater cupboard. Quick Kim, close the door when I lure her out with this crying kitten."
And realizing that cats really don't have any spatial sense as Zoe rudely wakes us up to rescue the squealing bundle she dropped into a tiny space behind Kim's bedside table before realizing that there wasn't even room in there for her, let alone 5 more kittens.

She's now made a full circuit of our bedroom, starting at the back of our closet for the first few days.

one day old

After being locked out of the sweater cupboard she found a space in the corner beside the cupboard, behind a bin which we had to move out to make enough room for them to (barely) fit.

6 days old

The morning after the midnight rescue mission we found them squeezed in behind my bedside table, which we then pulled out another foot so they wouldn't have to sleep stacked up even higher than their usual sleep-clump.

7 days old

After experimenting with trying to feed the kittens under an armchair that she could barely squeeze herself under, she finally settled on the space between that armchair and the last corner of our bedroom. We placed a box (that nice cozy one we had prepared that she kept rejecting) across the opening to enclose the space and tucked rolled-up blankets into the crack under the chair to prevent any wandering. This is where they've been for the past 2 weeks but it won't last much longer.

10 days old

Now that their eyes are open & they're walking...

Tiger-face and Number Six at 17 days old

(I'm being generous by calling it walking- they lurch, stumble, stagger & teeter around like a bunch of 4-legged little drunks, although to give them some credit, lately they haven't been falling over onto their backs quite as often) they're soon going to outgrow the nest & we'll have to try and convince their Mom to let them move downstairs into their own pad. With their own 'sand-box' to play in even!
Then Kim & I won't be woken in the night to kittens squealing "NO NO Mommy, I don't WANT a bath right now". She pins them down & washes them so vigorously we can hear her tongue rasping across their fat little bellies from across the room.

Here are some newly-open eyes:

This is Number Five but since he opened his eyes we've taken to referring to him as "the little bear cub" Not one white hair on him. (that's someone else in the bottom corner)

Here's Tiger peeking out from under the pile of his sleeping siblings. 12 days old and still half asleep

11-day-old Tiger-face.

Before you think "OMG they are SO pathetic at coming up with names" I should explain that Shea won't let us name them because we won't be their final home (except for the one we keep, which I will choose... some time... later... I have lots of time to decide so stop bugging me) so we call them by descriptions, or their birth order.

Silver and Number Six at 12 days.

Silver, who was first born (first to do everything, that rascal) was first to open his eyes and Number Six was last, still not fully open here.

The only one missing from this line-up is Mittens, aka The Squealer.
Before the kittens were born Shea said that if one of them had white front paws like Zoe we would have to call it Mittens, so there you go.
We could have come up with something more interesting if one of them had had tall white "stripper boots" on his back legs like Mom. (I mean the kittens' Mom, not my Mom)

Oh, and we still don't know who's a boy and who's a girl.
I've tried, but I can't tell the difference between an "exclamation mark" and a "semi-colon".