Kimii's Legs

by Joyce
(New Zealand)

Finally a sunny day after a week of rain. A great day to wash clothes and hang the washed laundry to dry out in the sun. Wondering where our expectant mommy Kimii was, I felt this gentle brush against my leg and looked down to find her there. Odd, I thought. She had never really been this affectionate, so I decided to give her as much attention as she wanted.

So I walked over to the sliding door where a mat for shoes was laid out. In the process, Kimii weaved through my legs as if she hadn't seen me for weeks. I sat on the mat, cross-legged, and gently picked her up. I put her down on my opened cross of legs. I rubbed her cheeks and felt her bulging tummy.

Then she meowed.

"Oh, I know you'll be a great mommy!" I told her affectionately. I was about to put her down to get a brush to brush her before putting up more laundry when Kimii started behaving strangely. She curled and roleplayed a spinning top on my lap. Confused, I just watched her get comfortable. I thought perhaps there was something wrong, perhaps the kittens were moving around too much?

At length, Kimii settled down and I sighed. She was fine. The heat was probably getting to her. Then something wet dripped down my inner thigh. I moved Kimii's tail out of the way to check what it was. I did not see my thigh. Instead, I saw a dark red blob. A kitten in its sac.

Kimii circled and circled all around my makeshift leg-and-thigh nest. All the while dripping fluids all over my legs and shorts. After a few minutes of a struggle, out came her very first kitten. Pure white with light grey stripes. Kimii sniffed at the sac and meowed like there's no tomorrow and began circling again.

The eldest kitten started to move around in the sac, but Kimii was too busy trying to get the second out. Two minutes went by. The first kitten was moving very roughly within and Kimii was starting to eat at the sac of the second kitten beside me.

So, I called for some warm damp paper towels and a hot-water-sterilized scissors. I picked up the first kitten in its sac and pushed it next to Kimii's second kitten. She ignored it. Without a choice, I picked up a bit of sac and tried to puncture it by ripping, to no avail. So, the scissors air-cooled, I nipped a hole on the sac away from the kitten. With the paper towel, I eased the kitten's head towards the hole.

By this stage, Kimii had her third kitten out in an instant and was already eating away the placenta. I displaced the third kitten as soon as she had licked it once, and replaced it with the first kitten in its place. Kimii finally tended to the first kitten. I heard it meow as I put the third kitten on a clean sheet.

The kittens were put in the laundry basket cover on the clean sheets that I had just taken down from the line. Kimii brought the first kitten into the makeshift bed and gave birth to 3 more kittens.

After 45 minutes of labour, she had 6 healthy kittens. They came in the order of grey tabby, brown tabby, black and white, black and white, grey, and grey.

They all came in a pair so we named them thus: (as white as) Sugar and (as brown as) Honey; (one who carries a black) Ball (in her white mouth), and her brother Paddle (who had only one leg with a white sock); Salt (who had some white strands of fur on his forehead) and Pepper (who had dark spots on her fur).

Thus is the story of our Kimii, our silver tabby, who made a nest out of HER human legs and gave birth to 3 pairs of pairs. All kittens were given a home, and Kimii went with Sugar to a new home (but this is another story :D).