Lula and the kittens are at the shelter

Ok, I failed.  I realized that with Ollie in one room, Skippy in another, with my own cats and the rabbit and everything going on in my life, I just didn't have the time to properly socialize the kittens.  They are all hissy and spitty and while I find that freaking adorable, I know that does not make good kittens, so I brought them in and told them I was overwhelmed and so they kept them.

I told her what was going on with Skippy, and she suggested I keep him another week.  He had a bad day on Thursday with the congestion and the watery eyes, and so I started up the medication again, but it immediately disappeared and he's been fine since.  She suggested that I leave him a week with out medicating and see what happens.  This just delays the ineveitable, but it gives me a little more time with him.  Oddly enough he became quite pissed off at being at the shelter.  Growling and defensive.  This is not going to bode well with my soul when he goes back..

Ollie is so angry with me.  he does NOT like being medicated at all.  He seems to be enjoying being alone - in so much that he's not crying out, or begging at the door to leave.  When I open the door he's sitting on his bed and looks up at me.  He didn't want to eat his regular food - nor did he want a plain peice of chicken we offered, but he did eat some canned food and one of the two pieces of freeze dried chicken I gave him.  He also ate the few pieces of dry foods I put in there as well.  I hate this, hopefully he'll be back to being his PITA self right quick.

Skippy went for a walk, and picts

Well I have been feeling that we haven't been paying enough attention to Skippy, so I thought I'd give him a treat and see how he liked going outside for a walk. I got out the harness and tried to put it on him. He didn't much like it until I explained that it was going to be fun, and we'd get to go out, and then he settled right down and he let me put it on. I took him outside, and he was generally ok. He did freak out once, but then he settled right down. He enjoyed rolling around in the grass and acted pretty much like it was cat nip :)

He also found the fun in sprinting. And MAN is he fast!! So basically he had two modes, laying down or lighting fast running. I was a little concerned as the harness hasn't had that much testing, and I didn't want him to break out of it (cause I'd never catch him if he decided to sprint down the street) so we came in. We spent our half hour (MANDATORY!!) cuddling and then he started exploring the bedroom again and being silly. He's currently hugging DH's foot.

The newbies are growing like weeds. I swear they have tripled in size since their birth. Their eyes are slowly opening, and they are starting to test out their legs..

love the tongue


Here are the orphans the morning of their adoption. Their new home says they are doing beautifully, adjusting nicely and dealing with their older cat very well. They also apparently haven't stopped laughing since they brought the kittens home.

Its official

The orphans have gone on to their new home.

I brought them into work with me this morning - not having fed them, and man they were terrors. I always liken fosters who reach that adoptable stage as two yr olds at a birthday party, and no set exemplified that more then these guys.. (probably shouldn't say that as their new owners do have the address to this blog :D)

They were sweet, and they are adorable, and now they are gone.

That leaves me with just Skippy and Lula and her brood (just.. ha ha ha)

Orphans at the vet

Oliver, Anne and Annie are at the vet to be neutered..

they were a little mad at me this morning because I forgot about the appointment until I was about to put the food down for them to eat.. very mean of me to offer food and then snatch it away before they could get any.

Lula will be glad when they are gone, she is sick of being locked up.

Kittens at work

Brought the kittens back in to work again. This was an interesting trip. Seems they forgot all about being here last time, as it took them a while to warm up again. But soon they had, and they could NOT be contained. Last time they spent the entire trip on my boss' desk, but this time they were running all over the office. Oliver even figured out he could use the cubical walls to climb up on a cabinet he wanted to get on. He is the only other one besides Skippy to realize that could be done. Skippy climbed the entire wall though and ran across the top of them ;)

Click photos for larger versions


I left them in the carrier for a while since the boss was on a conference call to the home office (who would not appreciate the pitter patter of little kitten feet)

They then spent some time wrestling on my boss' desk.. what is it that caught their attention?


they then got some chicken from the property manager :)


Then came the running and the mayhem, and since that doesn't photograph well there isn't any of that. But soon they decided to settle down. First on my boss' desk,

Then on mine


This photo shows you just how orange their little feet are from standing in their food for so many weeks


Don't you just want to zerbert this kitten's neck?


I think this is my favorite photo of the day


and here is a great shot of Anne's eyes and how blue they still are

You catch more flies with kittens than with honey

Just so you know :)

Being the dog days of summer, once again my foster room has been swarmed with flies. How they get in? I have no idea. Why they want to be in there? no clue really, unless they are smelling the deposits in the litter box and think kitten poop is the bee's knees? (do flies like bee's knees?)

so for the fun of it I brought down a paper plate with a little honey on it. Flies completely ignored it. However, the kittens LOVED stalking and pouncing on the flies. So.. kittens are a better fly catcher than honey.. albeit a bit unreliable, and their pouncing skills leave a LOT to be desired.

Last week I noticed a flea on one of my own cats. Muffin tends to get fleas on her face. Not sure why. Maybe I'm just more able to notice them on her since she's white. I played ignorant and hoped it was an only child until late last week I saw another one on her, and one on Anne. *rolls eyes*

So I went to the shelter and told them the kittens have fleas, and I was sent home with frontline. Enough to do the kits and four of my own kitties. I have enough to do the rest, I just haven't gotten around to it yet, because once I started dosing my own crew, half of them took off for hiding places yet unknown by Mom. I'll end up having to do one a day (hopefully) and if I'm smart I'll start with Eli, since if he figures out he's on the hitlist he will find his space ship and go home.

I also mentioned the odd reaction the orphans had when I dewormed them last week. They became quite pale and went off their food. I was concerned enough to force feed Annie, but by the time came around to bring them to anyone for a check up they were back to their perky selves. The manager was a little concerned by that, and so I didn't deworm them yesterday but gave them the flea meds instead. I'll deworm them probably tomorrow, since they are supposed to get it once a week for three weeks. I also weighed them, 1 lb 10 oz... so probably Labor day weekend adoption :)

Lula has yet to give birth. I ask the manager when she came into the shelter - so I would know when she went past her last possible due date. She came into the shelter on the 9th, so if she got pregnant that morning she wouldn't be due until Labor day. Labor day?? arrgh. I don't want to wait that long for kittens!! I don't feel any kitten movement - which is usually a sign that she's about ready to pop (because there is no room for them to move) but considering her history, I'm watching her like a hawk for ANY change in behavior or attitude. I'm so scared they are dead or are about to be. but then I still panic that (live) kittens might have died overnight too. Lets just say I'm overly cautious.. (you say paranoid like it is a bad thing)

Yesterday I spent extra time in the kitten room. Usually it is play, feed, clean and gone, but I had some free time and a book I was reading, so after cleaning I sat down on the couch and laid down to read. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. Lula curled up (well as much as an obnoxiously pregnant cat can) on top of the sofa above me, Oliver sprawled out on my leg, Annie curled up in the crook of my knee, and Anne laid down on my arm, and spent way too much time gazing up at me as if to say, "You are the most wonderful thing, thank you" :) It was just too cute.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Lulu or is it Lula?

I think the name given to this kitty is Lulu, but I think I'm going to call her Lula, and if perchance any of her kittens make it, I'll name them after the Plum Series novels by Janet Evanovich
It is quite humorous to go to the kitten room now. Lula has no interest in the orphans, but Annie and even Anne think that she needs to be intimidated by their massive size. Oliver is ok with her, and doesn't pay her much mind.
This was Annie's more adventerous spirit. Most of the time she's back arched fur out. Lula couldn't care less. She likes exploring the room, using the scratching post and stretching her legs. I keep her in the cat condo while I'm not around to supervise, because I don't want her giving birth anywhere but in a contained area.

Gratuitous Kitten Shots:

The orphans were tested

and they came up negative. :) onward and upward for them.

And once again I went to the shelter I came home with a new kitty. Lula is a very pregnant cat who came into the shelter and got ill before they could spay her. They vaccinated her and gave her antibiotics, so the question of the health of the kittens is very much up in the air. *shrug* Hopefully they will be ok.

Orphans at work

as promised, photos of the kittens when I brought them to work...

Anne:


Anne & Oliver:


Annie taking a kitten nap:


Playing with office supplies:


Wrestling:


Winding down:


Their possible new mom and dad:

Orphans at work

Well I took Oliver, Anne and Annie to work last Friday, and it went surprisingly well. They were a little more freaked out than I expected, but they adjusted pretty quickly and spent most of the morning hanging out with my boss on her desk. They are a bunch of charmers. Oliver much more so than the girls. He is a show off and a lover. When I go and feed him he runs right up to me, and licks my ankles and rubs his head in my hand. He also likes to flomp over and show me his belly :)

I have quite a few photos, and I need to upload them and post them. I'll get to that in the next few days.

They are going to get tested later in the week. Either Thursday or Friday afternoon, depending on how things go. *crosses fingers that they come up negative* They are so healthy, they have to..

Dirty Kittens

Oh the bother of orphaned kittens. It is great that they know how to eat on their own, but I wish they would figure out how to eat with out getting it all over their bodies. They need to be bathed daily.. and this is why



and this is them getting baths...




and this is the little girl after her bath...

Yippy is incorrigible

Yip was growling at Skippy, so I set her up in the cage on the lower half. Well she found out that if she climbed the side of the cage and pushed aside the orphan's litter box she could get up on the second level.

When I first walked back in to check on them, she was sitting there with the orphans looking at her like she was a god.

I grabbed a clip, and clipped the towel across the small hole under the litter box, and hoped that would work (but I'm sure you figured out by the title of this post it didn't)

I picked her up and put her down in the room and she immediately started growling at Skippy again. *sigh* So I grabbed a four pack of canned food and put that over the hole and reset everything and went out to exercise. Two minutes later I checked back in on them



So I tried to think what I might have that might work, and remembered the NIC cubes I bought for my rabbit to make her a cage. I took one panel of that and laid it down over the hole, put the canned cat food over that, and the litter box on top of that... and after an hour she was still on the lower half of the cage, so hopefully she's still down there. She is still growling at Skippy who keeps doing the happy dance in front of her. He wants to be friends. If anyone can win her over it is Skippy.

Gratuitous orphaned photos:

more on the Orphans

Well they are eating food very well. Well, at least they are getting most of it in them. They still don't quite get the fact that if they walk through it it gets all over them - so they are getting daily baths. I so want to get a video of bathing them, but hard to do with only two hands. Maybe next week.

So here are them all covered in food. and yes, I so very much need names for them.

07/09 fosters

Well I did it again. I have three more kittens. And not just kittens, but orphaned kittens - that I need to take to work and feed often.

One boy (black) and two girls.

One of the girls has a lump on her side-ish area. I think it is a hernia, but I very well can be wrong. I've sent photos to the shelter and will let them decide what they want to do.

Now, for the cuteness...