Anyway, once the kittens were old enough, they were speyed. This is a bigger job for females, and we had to have Minx inside for a few days while her tummy recovered. This was the first time she had been away from her brothers, so I made sure Moonlight Sonata was playing gently in the background, to send her to sleep. Fortunately you can find a 10 hour loop of it on Youtube.

It is worth noting that though they were speyed, the vet didn't cut a corner of their ear. So if you see a cat with ears intact, it doesn't necessarily mean they haven't yet been done.

Oh and the brown lump is one of our bears, who kept her company.

And this is Patch. He is the whitest of the cats, and now also the biggest. When he was growing up he was quite a bit smaller than Tabby and Mark, but he eventually overtook them. Of all the cats, Patch is the most likely to get in a fight. He is also the most accident-prone. He has so far been to the vets with a broken tale and a badly swollen paw. The paw was the one that scared me the most. I went out to check on them before going to bed, and I noticed he was curled up in one of the beds. I patted him and rubbed his paw. But I soon realised it was about two to three times its normal size! It looked like somebody had hit it with a hammer or something. I was mortified. He couldn't walk on it, so I got Alex outside to have a closer look at it. Meanwhile, I had a thought, so went and googled "cat wasp sting". Sure enough, lots of images of cats with very swollen paws appeared. So at least we had an idea of what had happened. Anyway, that resulted in several vet visits before it was sorted out.

Mark and Patch often get confused. They are both equally lovely, and great to snuggle up to.

Our house is on a track quite popular with walkers. The cats often sit on this fence watching the various dogs go by. Well they did in the Spring anyway. Far too hot for that now!