Meet the Naughty Foursome!

The naughty foursome!

Here they are! Presenting to you the Naughty Foursome - the 4 little kittens that have captured all our hearts at home.   We are completely enamoured by their playfulness, their idiocies, and their antics. Our girls have give them names - the slightly fat one is Moksha Gundam (has nothing to do with the famous scientist and hope he doesn't turn in his grave at this atrocity!), the curious and inquisitive fellow is Holmes, the silent one is SJ (expands to Silent and Joyful- I seriously don't know how my younger daughter gets such ideas!), and the last fellow who has a squeaky voice and mews squeakily is, well, Squeaky!  

Mommy with the kittens

Less than a month old!

They were born on 11th Oct 2015; their mother who we had named Mommy used to visit our place frequently to have a cup of milk.  She decided to have her next litter in our home and thus started our association with the foursome.  Sadly, when the kittens were less than 4-weeks old, Mommy got bitten by a dog and died.  The kittens were not yet ready to drink milk from a cup; so we spent the first few days feeding them with a syringe.  Luckily, they quickly learnt to lap up the milk from the saucer.

Milk being fed through syringe

Now, they are nearly 2 1/2 months old, - healthy, sprightly and with a voracious appetite.  As my younger girl says, "Oh, they are so lucky.  All they do is eat, sleep and play the whole day!"  Their playful antics are a treat to watch; and sure to draw a smile from even the most hardened heart!  Any small thing that rolls, moves, swings or shakes is their toy and needs to be played with.  A bottle cap, a small piece of coconut fallen from the tree, a spool of thread, a straw, shoe-lace - anything is fine.  Or even if there is nothing, they playfully pounce on each other, bite the others' tails and roll around, have mock fights and thus learn the art of hunting and duelling. 

Playing with the straw!

Father cat trying to help his kitten

  They have now learnt to climb the grill and jump to the neighbour's place.  Their father (at least, he looks like he could be the one) visits them sometimes and watches their antics.  He once tried to teach them how to get down the grill, mewing to them gently and prodding them to step down. 

Clean-up time

It is amazing to see their natural instincts kick in.  Despite their mother not being around to teach them, they have learnt that dogs are not friends.  They run back into the house if they spot a dog near the gate.  Or make themselves look bigger and menacing to scare the dog.  They also clean up after they go potty or take a leak - they pull the mud over their poo. After every meal, they spend some time cleaning their faces and licking their bodies.  

They still have the need and desire to feed from their mother.  The female kitten (Squeaky) becomes the de-facto mother and the other three pretend to be suckling from her.  It amazes us to see this and we realize how young and child-like these kittens are!    

Here are a few more random clicks of them. 

Lined up for the feed!

Tyres are FUN!

Father Bushy extending a helping hand!

Enjoying the warmth of the sun-light!

Playful fights - gates don't matter!

Don't know who is enjoying here - Medhini or the kittens?

I have to clean myself now.

Me too!

Flowers of the Vegetable Kingdom

FLOWERS-  Just hearing the word brings to mind pictures of beauty, colour and fragrance.  The brilliant symmetry, the amazing designs, the wonderful shapes, and the perfect colour-coordination  - they are truly an ode to life and living; nature at her creative best!

Potato flowers

Flowering indicates the start of the plant's life-cycle : flowers to fruit; fruit to seed; and seed to a new plant, thus completing the full-circle. A flower signifies the onset and progress of life, it holds promise and embodies all the aspirations that the future has in store.    

For a vegetable grower or a horticulturist, the day the plant starts flowering is a day of celebration.While we know several flowers in the floral kingdom, little do we stop to admire the flowers of the vegetable world. 

Pumpkin flower

As I walked into the green patch on my terrace, I was awed by the beauty and brilliance of these flowers that slowly and magically turn into vegetables.  I was able to capture the few that were present.  There are many more beauties out there, attracting the bees and other pollinators and giving us our daily supply of vitamins and minerals!  Here's looking at a few of them.   

Green brinjal's flower

Flowers of the Lemon plant

One more of the gourds!

 

Radish flowers

Basil plant flowers

The ubiquitous tomato flowers

Possibly cucumber, not sure

Purple brinjal flower

Snake gourd's flower - ethereal beauty!

Flowers of the chayote - chow chow plant

The making of the mountain cake - Mt.Kili

The Kili Conquerors - celebration time!

I wanted to commemorate my daughter's, nephews' and husband's immensely challenging feat of climbing Africa's highest peak - Mt. Kilimanjaro -that stands 5895 m tall.  I wanted to bake a cake that resembled a mountain - definitely a lofty aspiration for a novice, trial-and-error, at home baker.

I assembled a chocolate cake in layers to give the rounded mountain effect; coated it with chocolate icing, and placed an up-turned ice cream cone to form the peak. Finally, I added a slight drizzle of caster sugar on the peak to give the appearance of fallen snow!

 So here are the pictures that tell the story of the mountain cake! 

The first layer of chocolate cake

Covered with chocolate icing

Second layer (a smaller circle) placed on top of first 

Both layers covered with the icing!

Topped with a square piece of cake and ice cream cone on top

A drizzle of powdery snow!

Mt. Kili - standing tall at 5895 m

Cooling in the refrigerator!