Kittens, a cow, and horses

Today, I'm sharing several animal pics.

There's a sad story behind the first two pictures. A few weeks ago, one of our neighbors found 4 tiny baby kittens trying to nurse on their dead mother! Shimon, our next-door neighbor brought them to his house, put them behind his gas tanks (where they were fairly well protected), and began giving them diluted milk. He informed us, and we began feeding them cat food, as well. He also bought some dried milk especially for baby cats, and we tried giving that to them, as well. One of the kittens was very weak, and so we brought him/her into the house to try to save him/her. Unfortunately, we did not succeed.

The remaining 3 kittens are doing well, though, and are eating regular cat food with no problems. A little later, the kittens moved from behind Shimon's gas tanks to our yard, where they hide in the pipe that drains water from our roof (when it rains). This is a perfect place for them -- they're well protected, they're further from the road, and the pipe opens out right under our etrog tree, which provides some shade for them, as well.

One of the kittens has really taken a liking to me and is not shy at all. He (or maybe it's "she", since we really can't quite tell the gender yet) comes running to me and LOVES to be held and petted. I decided to name him "Moti", which is a Hebrew word that used somewhat like "sweetie" in English. Here's a picture of Moti sitting on my lap on the steps right above their pipe:

Here's a picture of the other 2 kittens. The one on the left is slightly lighter in color than the other 2, so I call him/her "Bahiri" (from the Hebrew word בהיר Bahir, which means "clear", but it also used to describe lighter colors). The one of the right, who is basically indistinguishable from Moti except by his/her behavior, is "Shai", a popular Hebrew name but, of course, also a play on words, in this case, on the English word "shy", which is pronounced the same.

Yesterday morning, we heard a cow bellowing. When we looked out, we saw this cow near our yard. Although you can't see it in this picture, she looked a bit pregnant. Maybe she was getting near delivery, but she later wandered away, so we really don't know.

In recent weeks, David and I have been trying to walk more. Just on the outskirts of town, there is a great paved path (called a טיילת tayelet in Hebrew). It's about a mile long. We usually park at the far end, and then walked both directions, since this puts the more uphill direction first. Along the tayelet, there is a large fenced area and a group of horses is somewhere in it. Sometimes, we can't see them at all because there are many trees, but very often we do see them, in different areas along our walk. Here's a picture of them that I took yesterday. You can see the horses in the foreground, including a brown baby next to his brown mother in the lower right. In the background, on the right, is the edge of the Ibikor neighborhood of Tsfat. And the picture also gives you a little idea of this beautiful area we have to walk in!