Thursday, October 6, 3:58 PM. Claire.

Dear Diary,

Daddy came in from harvesting corn and he said he had a surprise for me. He was still wearing his jacket when he came inside. He said, “Do you want to guess what it is?” I said, “Corn?” “No.” “Pinecones?” I asked, because he had his hands in his pockets and there was something else in there that looked like the size of pinecones. “Nope,” he said. “Reach in and see— Gently!”

It was kittens! He had one in each of his pockets and Garrett had another. Three new kittens! They found them out in the cornfield. They couldn’t find their mother anywhere.

They are ADORABLE. Mom says they are three or four weeks old. One of them, I call her Molly, can walk around pretty good. The other two sort of crawl and totter. Their names are Pudding and Chip. I think Chip is a boy but we’re not sure. Molly is gray with a little white. Pudding is mostly white with gray on her legs and ear. Chip is little and black with a white chest.

They’re too little to eat cat food. We get to feed them milk with a syringe. Their ears are tiny! We have to wipe their bottoms to make them go to the bathroom. Mom says they’ll start to use the litter box soon. We washed them with dish soap to get the fleas off. They were shivering! Once we dried them off they were puff balls. Their little meows make me feel sparkles inside.

I still miss Louis Armstrong but I am happy about the kittens.