after the walk on last weekend, we were playing with our and our neighbours’ cats at home:

yesterday my cat miukumauku had her first mouse (according to kornel, it’s a wood mouse). well, she didn’t catch it – that was done by the black cat, the only one of our cats who actually hunts –. but then, she somehow took it off the black cat, proceeded to play with it, while running around the appartment with the mouse in her mouth while growling (scaring off the other cats, most of whom didn’t care anyway, and in part maybe because she didn’t really know what to do with the mouse, i think). then, she finally managed to kill the mouse, and after some more playing proceeded to eat it. completely, with bones, skin and tail.

(in fact, this was not miukumauku’s first mouse. she was dragging a mouse around earlier – one also caught by the black cat –, but that mouse managed to escape and hide where the cats couldn’t grab it. unfortunately, we also couldn’t get it out of there, but then it got out overnight and was eaten – at least we think so, since we found leftovers of a mouse next morning…)

update: here’s a photo from the older incident:

yesterday, when the weather was surprisingly beautiful, we were outside. me, mostly hanging around with my telephoto lens, watching the kittens play, hide, and explore.

later, on the inside, i took some photos of the older cats as well, while they were waiting for food:

they had to wait a bit longer. first, we did some cooking: a vegetarian zürcher geschnetzeltes (based on dinki) with rösti. won’t be the last time we had that :)

today was the first time that miukumauku was lying on our bed with another one of our cats and both ended up licking at each other. this is the best sign that the cats start to accept each other. what a beautiful moment that was!

it’s almost a week ago that i posted photos from our cats, and in particular from miukumauku. well, i took some photos during this time. here’s a selection of some of them.

the black cat is coming back home more often. (right now he’s even sleeping on the couch next to me.) miukumauku is more and more copying behaviours from the other cats, in particular food behaviour (“meow! feed me!”) from the tiger cat (while preparing breakfast, suddenly tiger and miukumauku showed up on the stairs, looking at me – “are you preparing food for us?”). miukumauku is coming quite close to the other cats – sometimes too close –, and is climbing around in the cat trees. especially the big red cat and the black cat are not too amused about that. miukumauku can now leave the house whenever she wants. most of the time she stays on the inside, which is fine for me. i guess she’s copying the other cats as well (except the black one).

on sunday afternoon, miukumauku met her two sisters the first time since they were separated from their mother. it is interesting to see how different the kittens already behave. the two sisters play and live together, while miukumauku has to survive on her own, together with three adult cats who are not the most social ones. the two play a lot, while miukumauku first watched them a lot, tries to play along, but doesn’t really dare to jump on the others, to really play with them. on the other hand, miukumauku also stays closer to her home, knows where she lives, returns from time to time, while the other kittens run around, and just explore every door they can find.
another interesting thing is that apparently, miukumauku doesn’t want to be left alone. when in the evening we were sitting outside, eating, with the kittens back inside, miukumauku was making a huge noise and tried to get outside. when we’re inside, she’s quite different, watching open doors and windows with interest, looking through, but usually staying inside or close to the opening, only walking a few meters, exploring a bit, usually with me standing nearby.

i’d like to introduce my first cat: miukumauku. a beautiful fourteen weeks old red european short-haired kitten. the name miukumauku is borrowed from the finnish language, where it is an onomatopoetic version of “miaow meow”, the typical cat sound, and is used to denote the “@” sign. (another finnish name for “@” is “kissanhäntä”, which means “cat’s tail” – it seems that the finnish people are the only ones who identify “@” with a cat, and not with a monkey, elephant, or other animals… see the list here.) enjoy some photos!

miukumauku moved in on wednesday evening. the other cats here didn’t become friends with her yet, which is not very surprising. for the last addition, three years ago, it took around a month until the cats liked each others. a typical reaction is the following:

the hissing and growling got less frequent during the last days, and the cats get a lot closer to each other before starting to hiss and growl at each other. but it will take some more time until they will start to fully accept each others.

this week, we visited the kittens another time. after almost three weeks, they grew quite a bit, and when we came they were brought outside for us. it was so nice to watch them play outside, explore their surroundings, allowing us sometimes to lift them up, pet them, sometimes they stayed and enjoyed, sometimes they tried to escape again. kittens are just wonderful!

yesterday, we visited three kittens for the second time. this time, i had my camera with me. they grew older, and start to play around and to explore their surroundings. their mother was not around this time, and they were a bit sleepy, but we still had a lot of fun. kittens are so cute!