Kittens

We have figured out what the cat, Amber, was going on about. Mewling and yelling at us for the first day or two after our return.
I was sitting in the back yard a few days ago when I spotted Amber heading for the back door carrying something furry in her mouth. I thought, "Oh-oh, she's caught some rodent to present to Marsha." I told Marsha that the cat was trying to bring her something too small to be a rat, to big for a mouse. Perhaps a baby rat. Amber was turned away from the door and so carried her prey back behind some bushes and disappeared.
The next evening she arrived at the front door with a similar offering. Marsha wasn't pleased, initially, but then noticed that the mouthful was, in fact, a kitten. Amber's kitten. She brought it in and trotted over to Marsha's computer desk where she is able to access a deep drawer by coming through the back way. She had been mysteriously preparing this drawer, by tearing up paper in there, for a few days before Marsha departed for Kalamazoo in late February. Now she was using it as her nest. She is a small cat and Marsha wasn't too surprised at the idea of her producing just the one kitten.
However, a while later, Amber requested to go outside again, and when she returned, she was bearing a second kitten. She took it to the nest and now she seems quite contented. She shows up in the kitchen whenever there's any activity there, so she can keep her babies well fed. She apparently has just the two, because it's been a few days now, and no additional kittens.
We haven't named them yet; we've sort of left it up to Ryan and Emily to handle that.