Molly and son and son and son and son and daughter and daughter

Many months ago I wrote about an adorably sweet cat that would sit on our porch constantly. We called her "Outside Kitty." At the time I wrote the blog, that's all we thought she would ever be. Circumstances have changed and she now has a name: Molly. As we eventually learned, Molly was in heat for some time period that she was visiting us. Eventually she got pregnant, which became more and more obvious as the days went by. Molly is such a small, petite girl, that her ballooning up suddenly was especially noticeable.

Once Molly had her kittens, we began to become concerned about her and them. How safe were they on the outside? Molly had found a nice nest for them underneath the house next to us. We would regularly see her going in and out of a hole in the bottom of the house and Janessa told me she'd heard high pitched kitten mewing going on in there at least once. Janessa was worried she'd have to go get the kittens to get them somewhere safe before too long. Molly beat us to it, though.

We were in Reno at Janessa's grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary family get-together, when Janessa's cell phone went off. She excused herself, and when she came back let me know that Molly had move the kittens to our porch! The next door neighbor saw the situation and put the kittens in a box so they'd be contained. That she trusted us enough to do this was touching. Logistically, it posed some problems, but we were able to solve them. Janessa had built a small enclosure on the porch for our cats that they were accessing through a cat door. That became kitten central and has been that way for about the last month. Molly was so happy to have the kittens safe and to have the burden off of her she started to let us pet her and even put her on our laps. She is an incredibly gentle and sweet cat and it boggles our minds that someone could ever abandon her.

When I say Molly had kittens, I mean she had kittens. 6 to be exact. Which, I'm not going to lie, has been wonderful to look at every day. When I am doing the dishes and look out the window and see three kittens on a scratcher sleeping smooshed together or two chasing each other around hopping like rabbits, it's impossible not to smile. When I walk outside to check on them and six kittens rush the gate all at once, well, it's every bit as cute as you'd think and then some.

We've had to wait until now to start really trying to get the kittens adopted out, because until recently they were still breastfeeding. As much as we would love to keep them all, 3 cats is already insane, 9 impossible. If they stayed at this age forever, it'd be a different story. Fortunately, one of them finally got a home. We figured the runt would go first, and she did. She has an incredibly squished face which is irresistible. She also has tons of spunk and moxie. It was sad to see her go. Two more followed in the next week. Three remain; we're hoping to get them all good homes pretty quickly. It's much more difficult than you might imagine. All the animal rescues are full and there are tons of people trying to adopt out kittens. Spay and neuter, people, spay and neuter.

We thought Molly might have a home too, but it fell through. At this point, it's seeming less and less likely by the day. It's hard enough to find homes for insanely cute kittens, what chance does a 1 year old - even a super sweet one - really have? We certainly hope something comes up, but at the end of the day, it's looking more and more likely that Molly will be our 4th - and FINAL - cat. She's much too gentle and sweet to have to live outdoors. She deserves a real home. And heck, she adopted us months ago. I didn't know it could work like that, but apparently it does, as we're quite taken with her.