Family: Kittens! ...Mi-mi-ao Mammy!

Look there are kittens in the box!

...four ball of fluff have to go hunting...

I've been trying to get a good shot of them. It doesn't work. The corner that seemed just perfect - out of reach of Guide Dog Yeltsin, lodged between the piano and the harps - is too dark and just a little tight. So I'm left with nothing else to do but wait until they're big enough to climb out into the light.

For now it is screeches and screams when mammy moves. Tiny wails of despair as four balls of fluff have to go hunting for tit. Sometimes it isn't the mum moving but their brother-of-a-different-generation trying to squeeze in on the warmth. She's his mammy too. And if he could, he definitely would, even though he's too big a boy now which she lets him know all the time.

Three are just like their mammy and one is darker just like the different-generation-brother.

Truly, I never thought I'd enjoy seeing all that new life so much. It never was my thing. Yet here I am, oohing and aahing over the Wild Cat from Blarney Street being such an amazing parent. Patient, protective... ...she's different to how she normally is. She's given in to being a mum. Not because she chose but because nature demands it of her.

She's given in to being a mum

She turns onto her back so the little ones can reach better. She looks at me looking at her. I assure her it's ok. Much more so than it ever was for her mammy. Would she choose all of this if she could?

She squints at me and I tell her about where she's from, the spring she was born under the oil-burner and how she moved here with her brother, so she could have a better life. Because it's important to know where you're from.

She licks a head and a belly, puts a paw over one and her tail over the other. For now, their only response is to drink, wail, sleep and crawl towards the warmth.

I'm looking forward to blue-eyed and climb-out-of-the-box kittens soon.

There's purring going on.