The Summer of Oh! Riley!!!

(this is a "lost" post from last summer...)

The summer of "Oh! Riley" began on June 1st this year. We were wrapping up a busy and active school year. My triplets had returned to homeschooling with this school year... their junior year in high school! My niece had started the year homeschooling 1st grade and was finishing up 2nd grade... and still eager to learn!

Our backyard was finally not frozen or soggy and various plants, grasses and weeds were beginning to turn green again. The kids were beginning to make things ready for planting this summer's garden. I do have to admit that I was not so enthusiastic about this as last year's garden did not work out too well for us. Everyone else was definitely wanting to give it another go!

On the afternoon of June 1st one of my daughters came running inside frantic about something she'd seen or heard in the garden area and absolutely insistant that I come out there right away! Questions about what this was were answered with phrases like, "I don't know" or "a baby" or "a kitten" or "a rat" or "a bat" or "something tiny" or "something noisy" or "something that needs help" or "it's stuck" or "can't touch it" and leaving me with no choice but to go out there myself.

At first glance I'm not sure what I'm looking at - but my daughter is clearly pointing at something. Then I see movement. It's small! It's tiny! It's gray! Seems to have a long tail...

...or something wrapped around a tall weed.

It is clearly stuck - unable to free itself from this plant that is easily ten times it's size! I send my daughter after a knife, some scissors, some heavy towel - an old one, or some other thick cloth of some kind. At this point, I still don't know what IT is. As she is fetching things I'm gently going in for a closer look, while glancing around for any clues.

My daughter returns with all that I asked and more - we now have a crowd and other family members want to know what's going on. What did she find?

So tiny!  So helpless!

The first few days of this tiny feline's life were vital... we searched for his mama, for other kittens, even for a surrogate mama... but in the end we all took turns feeding him round the clock!  For the first 3 or 4 days it was every hour; then we stretched it to 2 hours, then 3, and 4 and eventually he grew strong enough to begin lapping milk from a dish and eating solid foods.

We were blessed that regardless of the many mistakes we must have made in trying to care for this little one as his own mama would have he still managed to thrive!

This last pic he was 9 weeks old and clearly doing very well.  He's come a long way from the tiny 3 ounces when we found him to close to 4 pounds at this age!  And just look how much he's grown... from being dwarfed by a mini-beani baby white tiger to well overtaking the regular size beani baby pony!


I'll have to find more recent pics to post - but this was our summer in 2009!