What to look out for in a new kitten

We just got two new kittens today. They are, as required, cute and cuddly, with claws.  All the things you would expect in a kitten in fact. Including wee.

Being new members of the household, they had no idea where the litter tray was, so one of the first things I did was put both of them in it. Unfortunately they had come from a house with approximately 35 other cats in it, and they weren't exactly used to an area which didn't smell strongly of cat. The smaller one, called Gimel, was particularly lost. Rather strange, as she seems to be the boss of the other kitten, Fermat, and our current cat, Tabitha.

Gimel was on an explore. Unbeknowst to us, she was on a mission. We thought, aw, she's looking round the house, how nice. Her thought, where's the loo.  I am sure you can see where this is going. Unfortunately, we failed to see where she was. 

We were all in the utility room, me and Peter taking clothes out of the washing machine, Gimel looking at the new fun places to explore. Then she came across an old washing up bowl which had been used as part of my let's paint the kitchen thing. As an aside, the kitchen is currently half new plaster, half new plaster with white contract paint on it.  I'm not sure whether it's luck or unfortunate that contract paint is water soluble. It certainly is cat's pee soluble.

The cat saw this bowl and climbed in it. She sniffed, and seemed to find it to her liking. Then she started to pee. Peter saw this, and grabbed her. Hand's up all those who have seen 3 men and a baby, in particular the scene where Tom Selleck is holding a small child, who decides that is the tie to empty her bladder. Ok imagine the child is a kitten and Tom Selleck is my husband. Hmm. Hold that thought...

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... Ok, back. So, there was Peter, all six foot of him, with a small kitten peeing from a great height onto the floor. We looked, we laughed, then we put her back on the floor. Well, there wasn't much else we could do.  Unfortunately, by now she had white paint on her paws. This we noticed when we decided we needed to check that she was ok. We could easily track her across the kitchen floor (not that much of a problem, as it's just bare boards), along the hall, (nice pine flooring, not to hard to clean). However the front room, where she decided to take up residence, contains a nice turkish rug of Peters. Luckily, by this time, most of the paint had worn off, so the carpet is safe.

At this point we returned to the washing, vaguely laughing at the absurdity of it all. That was when Gimel decided that a pee was not all she wanted to do in the bowl. So now we're down a washing up bowl. Cure more white paws.

I am slightly more aware of the actions of kittens than Peter, so I had closed the door between the kitchen and the hall. Then when she entered the kitchen I had her trapped! Well, you'd think I had. I managed to obtain the scruff of the neck of a now much lighter kitten, and take her over to the sink to wash her paws. You know all those internet sites which tell you how to wash a cat. They are wrong. All of them. It's much much worse than that. Ok, I overstate, I only have three scratches, but you try washing and then drying white paint off of the paws of a black cat.

Score so far, kittens 1, humans 0.