Cora, Brodie, and Shadow in the wild

I found this video in a random folder on my computer the other day. I thought I'd lost it ages ago and had given up looking, but then discovered it by accident.

It's only a few seconds long, and was taken when the whole kitten-family (plus Mom and one much-older brother) was at the feeding station back in 2009. The kittens would have been maybe 5 weeks old here, as their mom, Coal (the very protective-looking black cat in the video) had only just started bringing them out of hiding to eat. I was not able to get close to them -- I was zoomed as far in as the camera could go while filming -- but you still get to see all their faces for a brief moment.

What I find really interesting is the whole inter-cat dynamic going on here...the 3 young kittens are already doing the same sort of close-proximity silent communication / awareness-of-each-other's-existence thing that they still do now at nearly three years of age. And their mom is so clearly guarding them and making sure that human over there with the camera (i.e., me) KNOWS she sees me.

Then there's brother Radar off to the right. Mostly he's just eating, but even that means something. Radar is a rather unusual tomcat...like his mom, he's extremely clever and suspicious and thus far has managed to evade all our Trap-Neuter-Return events. But he is generally very gentle with kittens, and as the video shows, quite content to eat with them without getting smacky and rrrrrrr-y.

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