Kittens & Keets

The kids and I have been on the struggle bus lately. No one seems to be able to focus. I struggle to focus on writing, and they struggle to focus on schoolwork. When we start arguing during lessons, I know it’s time to take a break from homeschooling and recharge. We typically do this by stopping table time (read: books lessons) and going on outings. We’d hit up the Cincinnati Zoo, the Cincinnati Museum Center, and ALL the playgrounds.

For obvious reasons, we can’t do that right now. The weather has been challenging, too. It’s been very rainy and unseasonably cool here. In short, we’re all feeling like you probably are: a bit out of sorts.

A solution presents itself

Last week while numbing out on my phone, I was trolling the Petfinder app and stumbled upon the Ohio Alleycat Resource & Spay/Neuter Clinic. Their website said they needed fosters for various cats and kittens. My mind started working…

I signed us up to foster cats and/or kittens. We’ve been approved and are awaiting our first fosters right now. You can imagine how often the kids ask me if OAR has texted me yet. I was feeling pretty good. We’d be helping animals, while giving ourselves new purpose and fuzzy goodness. Even my husband, though not an animal person, was okay with the plan.

And yet more weirdness for 2020

Then one night while watching Frozen II (this is relevant because Frozen II is amazing and Anna is my hero), my daughter noticed the parakeets doing something a little strange. Yep, they were mating. Dang it.

A bit of background. When we first got our parakeets, we had two males. George sadly passed away a week or two after we brought him home. We went back and got Tonks, who I thought was a boy. Nope. Turns out Tonks is female. So Fred and Tonks were together in the cage, but I wasn’t worried. They weren’t very friendly with each other (parakeet females won’t mate if they don’t approve of the male) and I was doing all the things to decrease the odds of mating (changing their cage setup regularly, not providing nesting boxes, covering their cage earlier at night).

Well it turns out that Ian Malcolm was right. Life finds a way. So now I’m scrambling to learn all I can about brooding parakeets and raising ‘keet chicks. It seems doable…I think. If all goes well, we’ll have some very cute and tame young parakeets in about two months. Gulp.

I’m just hoping for a happy ending.