On Sunday morning, at about 11, I was weeding the meadow and Rob was loading the weedeater with some new string when we saw Famke leading her kittens out of the garage, their cozy, messy (temporary) home. We knew she was taking them on one of their “educational field trips” to the tangled patch of nandina just behind our next-door neighbor Miss Jackie’s back fence. Famke takes the kittens there every day. I guess she trains them to hunt in this weedy patch.

The kittens wanted to play along the way to the nandina patch, of course. They kept jumping on each other and running about on the driveway in front of the garage.

“It’s scramble time!” Rob said. “We’ve got no other choice but to sit down and watch!”

So we settled down on the warm, sunny driveway to watch the kitten show.

Near our recycling bin, a cinder block was standing on one end, and it looked like a little house with an upstairs and a downstairs.

Well, the kittens started playing in the cinder block. Hattie moved in “upstairs” and started batting Kermit, who was “downstairs.” They kept batting each other and switching places, jumping from one hole to the other.

“Oh, they’re playing in the cinder block!” I cried, delighted. “It’s like a little playhouse with two stories!”

Hermie was lagging behind everyone else. He’d gotten spooked by something and had retreated into the garage again. Finally, he hopped out through the cat door and came running to join his siblings in the cinder block.

“Scamper, scamper!” Rob said, watching little Hermie run.

Famke sat placidly near the cinder block, watching her children play.

“It’s so neat how she’s watching them,” Rob said. “It’s supervised outdoor playtime.”

Famke led the way to the north side of the garage, where the grass is full of fallen pecans.

“She’s playing with a pecan,” Rob observed.

“Usually Famke’s so serious,” I said. “She’s very serious even though she’s probably not even a year old.”

“She must be in a good mood this morning,” Rob said.

Famke was having tons of fun with the pecan, tossing it up in the air and batting it.

Hattie bounded toward her mother and leaped over Kermit as she went.

“Oh, she just jumped over her brother!” I said. “She totally cleared him. That was amazing!”

Then Hattie started pouncing on Famke’s tail, and the two of them got into a playful mother-daughter wrestling match.

“Famke’s playing with Hattie!” Rob said. “She’s really wrasslin’ with her! She’s giving her the old kicky foot!”

Famke was indeed kicking her tiny, adorable daughter in the tummy with both her back feet. It was too funny. Of course, Famke was doing this very gently.

Famke led her children into the dense, shady patch of nandina.

Rob said, “It’s almost like she’s a schoolteacher. She’s like, ‘We can play around for a little bit, but then we have to do some serious business.’”

What secret lessons is she teaching them in the nandina patch? We don’t know, but Famke obviously feels they are very important.

The kittens usually stay in the nandina patch from around 11 until 5 or 6. Famke is clearly communicating to them that they must stay there. She wanders about freely during the day, but the kittens stay put in the nandina patch until Famke comes calling for them, meowing in a special way. I guess it must be a good place to hide from predators because it’s so thick and impenetrable. There’s a bunch of broken stuff in the nandina patch, including broken cinder blocks and pieces of wood with rusty nails poking out. It’s the most uninviting place.

Often Rob and I will visit Famke and the kittens quite late in the evening, long after they’ve returned to the garage. We’ll end up staying out there until 10 or so, playing with the kittens with teasers. Rob loves to play with them with a little toy mouse on a wire. The mouse is so realistic; it looks like a real live mouse. And Rob is so good at puppeteering that he’s able to make it move just like a real mouse too. At first, the kittens were really scared of this mouse toy, but soon they started going nuts for it. They hissed and growled at it, and then they started pouncing on it and rolling with it. Now Hermie and Kermit love to catch the mouse in their little mouths and run away with it, growling.

Pretty much every night we get the kittens all riled up with the teasers.

“They’re going ape shit,” Rob will say.

And then we’ll have to try to get them calmed down. We’ll put them to bed on the old couch in the garage, its cushions covered in soft, warm blankets. I find it so comforting getting the kittens settled down for the night, knowing that they’re safe and sound in the messy but sturdy garage.

On Sunday night at about 9:30, I was in the garage feeding everybody and playing with them. Then I tried to put them to bed on the blanket-rich couch. It was dark and chilly, and I had them all settled down, I thought, but when I shut the garage door and was about to walk down the shadowy, moonlit path to the house, a little kitten—Kermit—came hopping out through the cat door. He wasn’t settled down at all! He wanted to play outside in the dark! Then Hermie came hopping out!

“Boys!” I scolded. “You cannot play outside in the middle of the night! I heard an owl hooting a few minutes ago! Do you want to get caught by an owl?!”

I stuffed them both back in through the cat door (gently, of course), but in one second they came hopping out again! I stuffed them back in. They came hopping back out! This kept happening until I finally carried them inside the garage and put them down next to sweet Famke, who was snuggling with Hattie on the couch. The boys huddled up against their mother, hugging her.

“Good night, little kittens!” I whispered. Then I tiptoed away.