Surprise!! (and an unlikely happy mother's day)

Friday we had some severe storms in our area. As I went down to my house to eat lunch, I got a call from Debby (our riding instructor) that the storms were moving in and that we needed to get all of the horses in from the pastures. Naturally, I brought my two horses in as well. They normally stay out 24/7 but in cases as this I bring them in for more shelter.

I put my horse, Bear, in one of the open stalls and put King in the foaling stall next to him so they could still "talk".

(Bear)

The storms were scary, but thankfully did no damage. Later on that evening, I went over to check if the doors to the barn had been opened back up to let air in after the storms. I walked in to see Bear standing in his stall looking rather sad. I walked up to him, thinking that he should have plenty of hay to munch on for the rest of the evening, and looked in his hay manger. I saw that it was filled with hay.

At this point, I was becoming a bit concerned because my horse has never turned down hay. About the time I was starting to think there was something seriously wrong with him......

I heard....

"mew".... "mew"....

I opened the stall door and lifted up some of the hay... what did I find?

KITTENS!!! SURPRISE!!! No wonder Bear wouldn't eat his hay, it was mewing!!!

Of course this meant I had to move him to another stall away from his buddy (he didn't like that at all and now he thinks the kittens are more important than he is), but I knew that Momma Cat (Happy Mother's Day!) would come back to take care of her kittens and there was no way I was going to move them. So, Bear got the raw deal (at least I gave him another manger full of hay!)

We already have six kittens in the main barn that are about a month old (guessing? they just started eating hard food and drinking water vs. nursing this week.) Now we have 10 kittens altogether. Hopefully the kids at the barn will be able to talk their parents into getting a new pet when they are ready to find new homes! ;)