“Well this isn’t an aspect of kitten ownership I’d anticipated!” Sweetie laughed as she held the wriggling Griffin on my lap, wrapped in a towel, as I held his tail and deftly trimmed the fluff away from his back legs and bum.

The kittens are settling in super-well, and Happy is being soooooooo good! He’s still separated from the kittens by a baby gate or a crate, but last night he watched the kittens romp around from his crate and really kept his mind together. I’m so proud of him! We barked a bit and whined a lot, but it’ll become old hat to him soon enough.

As is somewhat expected, the kittens experienced a mild bout of loose poops yesterday. Their adorable fluffy behinds held on to the remains, and the kittens started trotting around with dingleberry bottoms, oblivious as could be. This of course occurred while I was on the phone to my Dad, so I’m trying to hold a kitten in one hand and wipe their bum with a wipe in the other hand, while cradling the phone to my ear with my shoulder.

It didn’t occur to me to interrupt the conversation with, “Hey Dad, can I call you back? The kittens need their bums wiped!”

The kittens are also not particular fans of having their bums wiped with a cold pet wipe. (I use the ones I have for Happy’s eyes. He gets eye goobers when the trees pollinate.) They struggled mightily, and the wipe, I’m afraid to say, did a half-ass job.

So a few minutes later, I had each kitten on my lap, with a pair of blunt-nosed scissors in hand, trimming the fluff away from their bums, just like I do for Happy every six weeks or so.

In my house, grooming isn’t so much for appearances as it is for hygiene.

Sweetie regarded the pink-handled, blunt-nose craft scissors and sighed. “Well, those are forever the cat-butt scissors.”

And so, a new grooming tool was christened.

Fortunately, all was normal in the litter box this morning.