I have grandcats!

A friendly stray kitty showed up in our backyard near the end of January. She fit right in with our backyard (feral) cats, and we let her hang around while we talked about finding a home for her. After several weeks she started looking rather chubby--yes, pregnant! 

My guess is that her previous owner observed some mating activity and dumped her. VK (or Vicki, as we sometimes call her) gave birth on March 23. The first picture shows the babies the day they were born.

This next picture is the kittens today...

And my MIL had the cute idea of putting the kittens in an Easter basket:

I've been weighing them every day and will post a chart of their weights soon!

The red tabby is the biggest and I've named him Thor. There are two plain gray tabbies, one gray tabby bicolor, and one black kitty.

I'm not absolutely certain of their genders so far; half guessing here. The lighter gray tabby is Dorian, the dark gray tabby is Dougless, the bicolor is Elke, and the black is Luciano. The bicolor is spoken for by my friend Laura Dabney, so I was thinking of her as "LK" for Laura's kitty. Since I think that one's a girl, I decided to call her Elke. The black one has the loudest meow, so I named him after Pavarotti. Dorian got the name because he's gray.  Dougless, because she's dark gray (DG). Thor, because he's so honkin' big.

On the day of their birth, Dorian and Thor tied for biggest with 4.1 oz each. Now Dorian is the runt! He was so far behind his siblings that I started supplementing his diet last night. I'm giving him goat's milk with a syringe. He was the biggest gainer today, so I'm hoping he'll be okay. He seems healthy and perky, just slower to grow.

The kittens' eyes are starting to open; Thor had one eye partly open yesterday, but the other is still firmly closed. Luciano has both eyes mostly open as of today. They're still mostly just eating and sleeping, but they creep around a bit more than they used to. Their legs have gotten sturdier and they feel more substantial, but they are still tiny, helpless creatures.