Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

I was planning on doing another Nagano post today, but then again I was planning on doing a lot of stuff that never happened, because....  
On my morning walk in the park today, I came around a curve in the path and was suddenly faced with a huge nasty crow...attempting to fly off with a tiny, screaming baby kitten in its beak!! Quite a shocking way to start the day! I started yelling and running at the awful bird as it rose a few feet into the air with said kitten; luckily for whatever reason it then landed again and pecked at the baby a few more times before flying off to squawk at me from a tree. I could just see myself chasing that damn bird through the woods in order to rescue a kitten.
  I put the baby in my hat for lack of other carry devices...and only then realized that the crying I was hearing wasn't coming from her. Turned out to be coming from her brother, lying a few feet away on the path. Poor kitties! Luckily there weren't any other kittens to be seen, seeing as my hat really isn't all that big.
 After a check at the vet's (he pronounced them fine and couldn't find any obvious injuries from the devil birds), I am now in possession of 2 tiny 3-week-old balls of fur. They're doing all right with the dropper/formula force feedings, but I'm sure they miss Mommy! We're thinking some jerk just dumped them in the park early in the morning since the mother was nowhere to be seen. Apparently it's quite a common thing to do here. I'm of the opinion that anyone who would do that to such tiny kittens should themselves be staked out for the mercy of the crows, but maybe that's just me.
  Luckily for us, the NPO woman who is dropping off our new kitty Mochi on Saturday has agreed to take the kittens at the same time. Otherwise we'd have to take care of them until we could adopt them out...while growing more and more attached every day! I already would love to keep the female, but it's probably best that they're adopted together, seeing as all they have is each other right now. Meanwhile, we're learning a few new things...for example, who knew that you actually have to stimulate tiny kittens to pee by rubbing around that general area?? Oh, the fun we're having here!


                          The Twins...the female has slightly darker ears

                               'Milking' the Kitten...haha

                            The Female I'm Already in Love With

                                  The Male

                        We Hates The Eye Dropper, We Does!