Our fluffball, our baby, our idiot, our kitten, our Easter turns one year old this week.

She snuggles like a baby.

She has the attention span of a toddler.

She has the ambition of a teenager and is keen to get her driver’s license.

She wrestles with her mama Ralph, errant stones on the driveway or the strings on my lawn chair.

She’s always starving and has been known to break into the house in order to get to the milk at the bottom of my cereal bowl (seriously, she’s crafty). She has also learned to hunt for herself.

She thinks she’s a dog, chasing sticks, digging holes and coming when Matt whistles.

Her voice is still her squeaky kitten meow unless she thinks we’re abandoning her–going down the driveway to take out the garbage or walking around the corner of the house out of her line of sight are cause for very long loud meows.

Around the farm, she’s known as baby (my label), BH (Matt’s holdover from when we called her “Big Head“), DB (“Dancing Bear,” Matt’s label for her tendency to rear up on her hind legs so that you can scratch her head), and occasionally Easter.

Happy birthday, Easter.

Home from work one day a few weeks ago with a bad cold (my third time being sick this winter–I am not impressed), I discovered how Ralph spends her day when she thinks no one is watching.

While I set up my laptop on the dining room table and went to work, Ralph blithely ignored her day job of keeping the rodents and other small animals in line.

She had a friend over to visit.

We’ve seen Cow Cat a few times, but he’s pretty shy. As soon as he saw me snap his picture through the mudroom window he took off.

Lonely, Ralph came to the dining room looking for company.

She napped. She sunbathed. She talked to me through the glass.

And occasionally I responded.

No screens for the winter mean we have a walk up scratching window.

What Ralph did not do at any point during her day was hunt. In fact, by late afternoon, she turned her back on me and focused her attention down the driveway, waiting for Matt to come home and feed her.

Ralphy, I think you’re going on a diet now that it’s spring. Agri-Cat kibble will be rationed, and you will have to put a little more effort into fending for yourself.

My displeasure at Ralph’s behaviour aside, I hope that you have a relaxing weekend.

No, renovation fatigue hasn’t turned my brain to mush and I’m not high on drywall dust and paint fumes. I do actually know what time of year it is. (Groundhog Day is just around the corner, right?)

The title of this post is in honour of our newest family member, Easter the kitten. Remember her?

Today is Easter’s five month birthday, and she’s starting to cross the boundary between kitten and cat.

She hasn’t learned her lesson about curiosity yet and likes to investigate everything–including the camera.

She’s learning to hunt, although her prey predominantly has six legs. She eats grasshoppers, wings and all. We’re hoping she’ll move up the food chain soon.

“Hello. Can I eat you?”

She has caught one mouse, although I think that was only because he was stunned and petrified after Wiley and I unearthed his home, and he made it very easy for her.

I’ll spare you the more graphic images of what happened next

She chased a vole this weekend, but, after running in circles around the driveway a few times, she was frightened into giving up the chase when the vole turned and squeaked at her.

It was a very embarrassing scene.

She’s very rambunctious and works hard to entice Ralph to play with her. Ralph’s been a very good Mom and often obliges, even though a wrestling match between a kitten and an experienced barn cat is really not a fair fight.

“Don’t you want to play with me, Mom?”

She’s even started to grow into her head, which as a kitten was her most defining characteristic. We only occasionally slip up and call her by her baby name.

Easter’s not-so-big-anymore head

Being an only child, Easter is a wee bit spoiled. She’ll come when Matt whistles, but that’s because she knows he’s a soft touch who’s good for a cuddle, a scratch and even a treat. I’m still working on training her that she’s not allowed in the house (she made it as far as the kitchen one day) or on the patio table when we’re having lunch outside.

In the family roles, I’m the enforcer and Matt’s the enabler.

Ahhh, the challenges of parenthood.

Upon moving to the farm, we made an agreement: no animals for the first year, except hopefully a dog.

Then came Ralph and Bert. Then Ralph had kittens. And the dog became “maybe next year.”

There’s no hard feeling though. These four fluff balls made our first spring on the farm pretty special.

Trying to get four kittens to hold still and look at the camera is a bit of a challenge.

But now it’s time for them to leave Matt’s and my forever home for homes of their own.

So farewell Rex. Farewell Gypsy and June. Enjoy your new families. Make lots of new friends. Enjoy your life of leisure as pampered pets rather than hard-working farm cats. We’ll take care of mom and tug on her tail every so often for you.

Watch out, Ralph! Rex is coming for your tail!

For those mathemeticians out there who are counting four kittens minus Rex, Gypsy and June and finding things aren’t quite adding up, your calculations are correct.

While we’re taking care of Ralph and tugging on her tail, we’ll also be taking care of this gal.

Our new addition

She was our favourite all along. While three of the kittens look pretty much identical, she stood out. She had golden eyes while the others had blue. She was shy and timid and stuck close to mom while the other three were always looking for attention from the humans. Her head was slightly rounder and larger… which led to the unfortunate name we’ve been calling her for the past 10 weeks… Big Head. We’re trying to rename her, but it’s hard to break the habit. Matt came up with the new label of Easter… as in Easter Island. We’re terrible parents.

Can you blame us? She always has this weird petrified look on her face.

Big Head Easter is showing early signs of being an excellent huntress like her mom. She spent a lot of time stalking her brother and sisters and has perfected her pouncing technique on the tufts of grass in front of the barn. We think she’ll be a good addition to the farm and to our family.

So no animals for the first year except for a dog cat. That’s okay by me.

Feeding time is Ralph’s favourite time of the day. She’s a pretty self-sufficient cat and an exceptional huntress. However, perhaps because she’s accustomed to the uncertainty of not knowing when her next meal will be, she gets quite excited when Matt gives her dinner.

Every evening, Matt makes his way out to the barn, scoops a bowl of kibble from the sack of Agri-Cat and sets it on the big folding table in the basement of the barn.

From the look of things when we first saw the farm, this seemed to be the routine that Ralph was used to.

She hops up on the table and devours the kibble.

Sometimes she puts a paw in the bowl to hold it in place (and no, she doesn’t get the whole big bowl full of kibble).

The other night, she was particularly excited. Matt grabbed the dish off the table to fill it, and Ralph made the leap to the table. Unfortunately, she was still under the table at the time.

Cat skull meet table. Thunk.

Matt dropped the bowl and picked up Ralph.

“Are you okay? How many fingers am I holding up? Where does it hurt?”

Being the self-sufficient resilient girl she is, Ralph was fine. She was hungry. So she squirmed out of Matt’s arms, reminded him with a meow he still had to fill her bowl and, once the kibble was on the table, properly positioned herself for the jump to the tabletop.

And then she ate.

Obviously a blow to the head has no affect on her appetite.

I know you had a cat post yesterday, but this is our final week with the kittens before they head off to their forever homes, so this reluctant cat person is feeling a bit sentimental. For other not cat people out there, please bear with me as I share a few stories of our farm felines over the next several days.

Ralph’s favourite hangout is the flowerbed by the front door of the house.

Once the kittens worked up the courage to discover there was more to the world than just the barn and the ramp outside the barn door, they liked hanging out by the house too.

Ralph won’t come in the house. I can leave the door open, run in and out, and she’ll completely get in my way, but she won’t put more than her front paws over the threshold.

The other night heading out to the barn with Matt, I opened the front door to find Ralph and the kittens all right there. Immediately, one of the kittens scooted in the front door. I stood there for a minute, completely surprised. In my world, cats don’t come in the house. What was this one doing? Did she not know the rules?

I pulled myself together and turned around to pursue the kitten–who was darting this way and that, sniffing shoes and investigating her new territory. Apparently, this kitten has no problem with courage. When I made a grab for her, she ran into the closet.

It was at this point that I went outside, careful to close the door behind me, and called to Matt that I was going to be a minute, because “There’s a kitten in the closet.”

Back to the chase I went. It took a couple of tries, but eventually Marco Polo was captured. She received a lecture on Julia’s Rules for Proper Cat Conduct and was returned to mom and her siblings outside.