Kittens in the house!?

Begin Mike's thoughts - 

Tsuki saw me in the kitchen window. Hey, that's cute! She's running towards the house.

Wait...

No, no, no, no, NO!

Barn cats! BARN! B-A-R-N!

Now Aria, too!?

And they're in the house. Why do we have more cats in the house?

Herd them, Loki! Herd them outside! Stop licking their butts!

Happy! Don't you have anything to say? Nothing!?

Well...that was close. At least they ran after Carrie to return to the barn.

 I'm going to have to keep my eyes open now that Carrie's seen the kittens get along with Max and Happy...

Several days passed. Shane came home from Camp Cassano and I drove the Volvo to get the nail in it's tire fixed.

Carrie updated her status while I was away.

The one time! The one time!

"I can't believe you responded publicly like that!" Carrie said. "You've never done that before."

"I just learned it a bit ago. Besides, it's a Facebook post."

"But what will people think?" Carrie asked.

"They'll think I don't want more cats in the house," I said. "And they'd be right."

I'm sure it was worth a good laugh for the people who actually know us in person. I don't care what the far peripherals without taking time to know the situation think about it.

Shane loved all the drama and kittens. Plus, Carrie bribed him with a phone.

The kittens were back in the barn before I got home. "They never left the blue mat," Carrie said.

I agreed to barn cats. I wanted dead mice. I realized that there was a chance they may come in at some point.

Just not now.

I'm going to be stubborn on this one. I don't want the barn to become an excuse to get a new cat or two every six months. Especially if it acts as a conveyor belt to the house! I already got swindled into Happy!

I won the last couple of battles, but I'll probably lose the war.

Carrie's already said she thinks the cats should be confined inside to monitor them after they're spayed. Unfortunately, I see her point.

Then Max is 14 years old. She's lived a good long life, but at some point a vacancy will open up. The kittens wouldn't replace Max in Carrie's heart, but they'd be a comfort and distraction while she grieved.

And Carrie is definitely enamored with the kittens. Especially Tsuki. Tsuki really wants to be a lap cat. I swear Carrie melts every time Tsuki runs after her. "She's my little shadow!"

Aria's the more adventurous one. The other night, Carrie squealed from the couch.

We had a visitor.

"She heard me!" Carrie said.

Which was true. Carrie makes a kissing sound to call Loki and the kittens respond, as well. Carrie was calling Loki and Aria started mewing on the other side of the window.

I had a solution.

"I can still see her on the TV," Carrie said.

She was clearly contemplating sleeping with a new kitten.

So I turned off the TV.

I wasn't going to bring in one kitten and leave her sister alone. Plus, a hyper barn-kitten with claws is not a good recipe for sleep.

No, I wanted the barns cats in the barn. They needed to learn how to catch mice. I had seen dead bugs, but no rodents.

Carrie texted me good news before a zoom meeting.

"Aria caught a mouse," she said.

Good cat!

I felt a little bad when I came to the barn an hour later and Aria was still playing with it. I was contemplating a mercy kill, but thankfully Aria decided to eat it.

Excellent. Barn cat working as intended.

Carrie sent me another text later. Tsuki had a mouse this time!

I told Carrie that the kittens can come inside for an hour for each mouse they kill. It'll be heard to keep track if they eat the evidence, but that works right to my liking!