Drive-by post - now with kitten pics

Another day spent mostly on the road. We took Dar's dad to meet up with her sister; he'll be visiting with her for a few weeks and then back to our place for a few days and then back to Cape Breton. Quite the social butterfly is Dar's dad :)

It's hot, hotter, damn hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be even worse. I think it's the poor quality of the air that really does everyone in. Stupid smog.

No cria. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe, you know, a hundred years from tomorrow, Conchita! God. Talk about your retentive alpacas.

The kittens are on the mend, even the littlest one that we feared wouldn't last out the night. She was all kinds of active tonight; I hear that she was trying to catch her tail and I saw her trying to climb out of her box. browncoat thought the name Miranda would suit her better and still keep the Firefly connection, so Miranda she is. (Plus as Dar pointed out, Miranda was the blind ambassador on the original Star Trek, so we get two geek references for the price of one.) So before I head off to sleep, I wanted to post the pics of the new guys.
( Kitties! )

Animal updates

Conchita still hasn't had her cria. She's taking her sweet time about it, and it's making us a bit crazy. She's got certain signs of heading into labor, but nothing that says "This is it! Boil the water, Martha!" She's humming a lot, and she's more distended; her udders are all bagged up (as they say in the biz), but otherwise she's not exhibiting the signs that Gertie gave us: frequent visits to the poo pile, pacing, not eating. But then Conchita is not Gertie and each animal is unique. For all we know, Conchita will be her usual chow-hound self, probably munching out while she's delivering the cria. And she may very well give birth laying down instead of standing. We just don't know and won't know until actually happens. So cria watch continues.

We didn't make it over to the Stewarts to drop off Satine and Gertie and pick up Cinnamon Girl. We weren't sure where Conchita was headed with the labor thing and then it just got too late. We may be able to pick up Cinnamon Girl tomorrow or Thursday and put off rebreeding the open females until after Conchita gives birth and then do them all at the same time. Which means next year we'd have all of our girls due around the same week, and won't that be fun :)

And over in the kitten corner, we have three sick little kitties. Remember that we took in Mommacat and her four kittens? Well, three of them developed conjunctivitis and one of them has a very bad case of it.( One very sick little girl )

Dar put on her vet outfit and showed us how to clean up their eyes while she got together some antibiotics for mom and the kitties. She wasn't sure if that little girl was going to make it through the night, but thankfully she's still here. She may be permanently blind or have reduced vision because the conjunctivitis was so advanced in her, but she'll have a home here with us. She and Mark bonded in a huge way, and it was the cutest thing ever to see her asleep in his arms after she'd been fed and given her meds. More than anything, he wanted to stay home from work today to help nurse her, but . . . work won.

I"d posted the picture over at pic365 and raynedanser commented on the blue gloves/Firefly connection, so I think we're going to be naming the little girl "River" :)