meet marmalade + jasper

so a few hours before jeff & cris, lucas & wren left for the airport on monday, they took a walk in the woods & encountered two orphan kittens. actually, there were 3, but one of the siblings was dead. lucas named one of the two marmalade (as in orange marmalade, which i've lately been addicted to, eating it on ezekiel bread toast every morning), and the spunky one just seemed like a jasper to me--a good southern name (and, i admit, i've been blazing through the "twilight" saga lately. josh has, too, but he probably wouldn't admit this). here they are, snuggled up to their hot water bottle mama:

: warming up in josh's jacket, while he feeds heron breakfast :

josh and i aren't cat people. (we aren't dog people, either. we're people people. and i'd be a goat person if given the chance) but we're nurturers, or becoming more so day-by-day, so what else could we do but take them in? they may grow up to be great companions for mom, but so far she doesn't seem very into that idea! i wonder why? could it be their poop on the bathroom floor, the bottle-feeding every four hours, their need for constant cuddling to keep them warm & emotionally thriving (though they're feral & thus quite dirty still...), the nipping at her heels whenever they're loose in the house?

i took them to the vet today & found out that they're older than we thought. they're five weeks old, so they're already moving into solid food, and i no longer need to bottle feed them every 3-4 hours. i was beginning to think my life for the next few weeks would be entirely consumed with feeding THREE babies (including heron)!