Furry Orange Surprise (mit claws and fangs!)

A few days ago Olivia woke up and mentioned that she heard cat noises in the night that were not our cat. I have to admit that I assumed it was a cat in our backyard or....umm....Olivia's imagination. But this morning she went downstairs to put a knitted pumpkin in the washer for felting, and heard the noises again. It turned out to be a little orange kitten nestled on top of an old drop cloth, which promptly took off up the stairs into the kitchen and huddled in a corner of the dining room. I'm not sure who was more surprised—Buddy and Ginger to see the kitten, or the kitten to see Buddy and Ginger. After about half an hour of chasing him around the house he disappeared into the basement and we couldn't find him again. So we took off for Windsor for the weekend and left the door open to see what happened when we came back.

We were sort of worried that the kitten had been some sort of early morning hallucination and would be gone when we got back, but he was still prowling and mewling when we arrived. And thus began Round 2 of our battle to catch the cat, and I have to admit that he won again. He got the best of us for nearly an hour and we each had our hands on the little monster several times each, but he managed to scratch and bite and jump his way out of our grasp every time...

Here he is when he got up onto the breaker box and we thought we'd finally cornered him. I got a big bucket and Olivia got the oven mitts and we thought we had him in the bucket right before he jumped over my head and landed 8 feet below in a 6-gallon bucket, then rebounded out and away again.

After that he managed to bite Olivia right through the oven mitts and squeezed through the bars of Pepper's old crate the first time we actually did catch him. When we got our technique perfected and cornered him again, we sequestered him in Loki's old crate. The poor little guy was so panicked that he had collided with the mirror and gave himself a bloody nose.

So now we need to decide what to do with him.....