In case you weren't aware, I wanted to point out that you can check on the kittens any time you want to via the webcam. You can find the feed up above here on the navigation bar where it says webcam. I also have a link on my fb page for you to watch there if you want.
I bought a month of cloud recording so I have been able to make a couple of time-lapse videos. The first is from last night and the other is from a few days ago.
Now that Michaela isn't scared of everything, I can tell she is getting very bored in the kitten room. I thought I would break out the always loved fishing pole toy and try to work off some of her energy.
To say she had no idea what was going on is an understatement. The toy almost sent her back into hiding, but I went slow and did my best to activate her instincts...
She really only wanted to run off with it, so I let her and it went where some of her other favorite things ended up. This gives me hope that she will enjoy mothering in that basket.. now I have to get serious about getting my webcams back up and running.
Jack was being particularly cute the other day laying on my bathrobe. I bent over to take a photo of him and he decided that this would be an appropriate time to start taking a bath. I actually wondered if he was just trying to be presentable to his adoring public. As I stood there bent over, waiting, all I could think of was this is my life as a cat blogger... (they are phone photos so they aren't the best)
The other day, another Nebelung I met through Instagram posted a video of their kitty meowing. I thought how different it was from Jack's screech. I have been trying to capture Jack's insistent meow ever since but he hasn't felt the need to talk to me recently. Yesterday, he was telling us that it was time for a belly rub, so I grabbed my camera and every single solitary time I turned the recording on he would stop. every. single. time. Finally, I just decided to let the video continue to see what would happen, after a minute I became a little frustrated so I started talking to him. This is what occurred.
Just so you know, this is one of the reasons I love this boy so much.. (too long, don't want to watch the whole three minutes? Jump to a minute in to find where I start talking to him, and just before the two-minute mark is the reason I'm sharing the whole thing)
I had a bit of a scare with Jack about two weeks ago. I found a small little lump on his chest. It felt a bit like a mosquito bite in size and texture. I know lipomas can pop up (Muffin has one behind one of her ears) but with what just happened with Kit I immediately went into panic mode. It was the weekend, of course, and so I knew I would have to wait a few days to see the vet, so I decided to attempt to not go insane and convinced myself it was nothing. I kept checking it obsessively for the next few days. I know this isn't good because it can be irritating, so when it didn't change in the first few days I did my best to not continue to look for it. The last time I checked it was still unchanged. I need to get Fleurp and Skippy into the vet in the next few weeks/month or so, and I will take Jack in at that time and have it documented so we can know when it popped up and keep an eye on it. My boy is 15 years old now.. so these things shouldn't be taken lightly.
This photo pretty much captures the initial thoughts of Max and Trina when I offered them raw food. Max only looks like that because of the flash on my camera, but I could hear him loud and clear wondering what on earth his sister was eating every time he checked out the plate. Watch the video yourself and see if you can't hear him tell you that this is not food!!
Eventually, Max came around to give it a serious try and he found out he really liked it. It's like I know what I'm doing or something.. smh... silly kittens.
I will admit, after they had a meal of raw food, they started to feel heavier for their size. I know it is most likely an accumulation of everything they've eaten over their time here, but I can pretend otherwise.
I have been threatening to give this boy a bath since he showed up here, and last night was the night. My husband didn't understand why I was so insistent that Rupert need a bath because I hadn't let him get too close. Today he spent some time with him and he got a first-hand sniff of what that boy needed one and he agreed.
Not really sure what his issue is. I believe it is mostly urine and a complete lack of grooming. So far all this boy has done is eat, sleep and a little snuggling. He hasn't played with toys, he has licked his paw a couple of times, but he just doesn't seem to have it in him to do a full groom. That's okay, you save your energy for rebuilding your muscles, We'll take care of the smell.
He did really well. He didn't want to be there and that was pretty obvious, but there was no bloodshed - either mine or his - so I'm going to call it a success.
My husband is getting a little better at taking photos.. or at least keeping me out of them as much as possible ☺ I did soap him up a little on his belly where it was the worst; I tried to get the gunk off his toes too. I was feeling bad that the bath was taking 'so long' (it wasn't, I'm just concerned about him) so I didn't get everything off that I wanted, but at least now he isn't as offensive. After the bath, but before the drying I held him in my hand and he just laid there. The bath must have exhausted him.
I felt so bad. I wanted to just wave a magic wand and make him all better.
I used very little soap, that's 99% him. We went back down to the kitten room and snuggled him while he was drying.
I was getting very concerned about him Wednesday night. When I went to feed him on Thursday morning and he hadn't eaten any of his food, but had consumed most of the water and peed five times throughout the night, I wrote to the shelter to let them know. They were concerned enough to ask me to bring him back in to be observed closer to where the vet is in case they felt another visit was in order. When I checked on him on Thursday afternoon I was surprised to see my husband home (he got home a little early from work) and in the kitten room. Rupert was happy he was there but was confused as to why he was not getting all the love and attention he's used to when people show up. He went back and forth between the food bowls having a bite or two and then to my husband to ask for attention. I was so tickled to see him eating that I had hoped that things were getting better.
When I got home he weighed more than he did when I went to work, so I texted the foster coordinator to report and see if she still wanted him back. She said if I was comfortable keeping him then so was she. So, he is still with me, thankfully.
Then this happened.
He is still nibbling his food, having just a bite or two and wandering off, but he will go back several times. He's still drinking a little too much water in my opinion and he is peeing far more often than any cat I've seen in a while, but I'm hoping with the more regular consumption of food that abates.
He's such a cheeky little boy. His whiskers are still ridiculous. I hated, hated, trimming his 'bangs' but I'm glad I did it for his sake. Hopefully, by the time they grow back he'll be eating on a more consistent basis. I also trimmed his claws. He is so underweight that his feet really lack that muscular feeling and have more the consistency of Muffin's arthritic feet. Nothing a good number of calories won't fix I'm sure.
I am not willing to say we are out of the woods. I'm not even sure I'm ready to say we see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm crossing my fingers that we are 'on the path out of the woods' and it gives me hope.
If you remember, the last pair of kittens I had started using my couch to go pee when they showed up. I assumed that they did this because they were not used to the corn based litter the shelter gave me to go home with them. Once I put down a box of plain unscented scoopable litter we didn't have another problem.
I brought these kittens home and set them up with a clean and freshly filled litter box. I was confident we would not have problems this time around because they were older and I didn't have any of that new fangled funky litter for them.
Well the next morning I went to scoop the litter box and find this:
Eight plus hours of two kittens running around a room with food and water.. I found it highly unlikely that neither one of them had to use the box. I looked at the couch and was glad I didn't see anything, but wondered where they had decided to go. Something made me lift up the litter box.
Seriously?!?! How do you go pee UNDER a litter box?!?! I will admit I was tempted to put the box back where I found it and head to work, but I figured it would be easier to clean wet than later when I got home from work and it had dried. So I cleaned it up and put a pee pad down in front of the box and hoped for the best.
This is what I came home to:
The pad had been scraped on to try to cover the poop.. so whichever one of them did it knew enough to cover.. I was about to rip my hair out because I knew it was important to figure out which one of them didn't know enough to go IN the box when Cayenne came over, jumped in the box, threw some litter around and started to poop. Okay, well that answers that - mostly. I stood there what seemed like ten minutes waiting for her to finish when her sister ran over to the box (these girls do not do anything unless it is at full speed - well except apparently pooping) and she went over to the corner where the poop is (because I hadn't gotten to clean it yet because Cayenne showed up) and started to squat to pee.
I picked her up and held her waiting for the box to be free, but she wasn't having any of that. She squirmed and squirmed so I put her down outside the box, and she ran back in the box and proceeded to squat in the corner again, I picked her up again, she squirmed again, I put her down outside the box hoping Cayenne would be done by now, and she ran back in the box again and proceeded to squat.
*headdesk*
Fortunately, by the time I picked her up, the box was free, so I plopped her in the box... which she promptly evacuated, and she went to the back of the litter area near the wall and proceeded to squat there. I attempted to put her back in the box but she was having none of it and ran away under the couch.
Who wants to bet me $10 there is poop under the couch?
The only way I know how to work with this is to cage them, so that is what I did. I felt back caging them both as I had proof Cayanne knew to use the box, but while I was trying to get Cinnamon in the box she squatted outside of the box too, so I figured to be safe, I'd lock them both up for the night.
This is what I came down to in the morning:
Apparently Cinnamon is not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but boy she is adorable! I went home at lunch time to check on them and no one had used the box, but also no one had peed on the floor. Last night it was apparent that they were using the box. *knock wood* hopefully they have learned their lesson.
I was telling my husband the story of how Art3mis reached out and touched me and before I got to the point where I said that I cried, he interrupted me and said: "you cried, didn't you?"
So, now that I have touched her, and she has touched me, what's next? Just how far would that trust extend? How much am I willing to risk losing some blood and push? Apparently quite a bit.
She still growls at me when I walk in the room, and she growls at me when I lay down in front of the couch, but once she sees it is me she stops. I can even talk to her now without being told off which is nice. She is still not a fan of my taking her kittens away from her, but as long as they don't mew she puts up with it - and I try not to keep them out too long. For some reason, all of the kittens calm down once I put them on Happy Bear.
So, I thought I might try to expand on the foot touching. I spent a good amount of time reaching out to her and imagining scratching her ears. I formed the mental picture in my mind and then let the image wander where it would go. I imagined scratching all of the favored spots on my own cats, but we kept coming back to the ears for some reason. I like to believe in animal communication and I like to believe that I have a very primitive ability to do it, so I assumed that scratching her ears would be okay.
But that is a lot of assumptions to risk my fingers on so I proceeded very cautiously. This is what happened in fifteen minutes or so condensed down to a minute and a half.
Last night I tried it again, but I wasn't able to scratch her ears, probably because I skipped the visualization step. I offered her some food and she ate it. I then asked her if I could visit her on the side of the couch - something she has not allowed before. I told her what I was going to do, and then I did it. I moved the baby gate away from the side of the couch, which she has always growled at before, and she just looked at me. I sat down and asked if I could reach in and then I reached in and she did not growl. I reached in further and she just looked at me. I asked if I could touch her leg, and she said she was uncomfortable with that by pulling her leg in toward herself. I talked more about just touching her like I did when I was in the front of the couch and she started to relax, so I asked again. She didn't move, so I slowly reached in, and she curled herself around her kittens. I backed off and asked her again, I asked if I could just touch her leg once, and I waited until she relaxed again and when she did I slowly went in for one more try. She slowly contracted up as I slowly approached, and I very gently ran my fingertips over her leg as she contracted herself around her kittens... so more progress. Nothing huge, but considering just a few days ago I didn't think any of this was possible, it is very nice.
I got home yesterday evening, and after checking in with my own cats, I went to check on Ms. Growlypants and talked with my husband about how things went. He said she didn't growl at him when he went to check on her on Saturday night. She only comes out at night to eat I told him that he only had to check on her once a day since I was watching her on the webcams.
When I went down to check on her surroundings when I got home I was impressed. She didn't growl nor did she hiss. She had eaten a great deal of her dry food and all of her wet. She also produced a nice big healthy stool. I fear that ignoring her is best and greatest good at this time. Sadly I am not sure I can give her that for much longer, as I ache to get my grabby hands on her big fat babies but I will do my best.
I've been thinking of ways to boost the kitten's self-esteem and thus their confidence and one of the more powerful tricks I have up my sleeve is to take the kittens out of the house for a quick trip somewhere else. Last night I thought I'd take the kittens out of the house for a bit, so I packed them up and took them to my office for about forty-five minutes.
They were fairly quiet on the ride in, just a couple of mews. Once we were there Sprite came right out of the carrier and started looking around. I tried to keep their area limited because I didn't want to have to track them down, so I attempted to keep them within the confines of my desk.
I got my computer and turned the music up and sang a bit to them. I tried not to move too much as I feared frightening them and causing them to panic. When it came time to leave I was a bit afraid they had gotten free and were hiding somewhere that I'd never catch them, and then I turned around and saw this.
I scooped up Sprite and put her in the carrier and brought them home. They were just as quiet on the way home, which was nice. Once I got home I went right back to the kitten room and Lemonade was happy to see them. She chirped at them and sniffed them and gave them a few licks and then it was business as usual. Everyone ate some and then it was time to take a bath.
All in all a successful trip.Hopefully, it will help the kittens realize they can handle anything. Time will tell.
September of last year, Lisa of A Tonk's Tail, who works at Hallmark stumbled upon the results of a study on the type of content people enjoyed and trusted the most when online.
Turns out we all love funny videos. But ranked #2 are the "cause" videos: those touching, thoughtful ones that tug at your heart, that rally like-minded people who believe in - well, a cause.
I'd been working on a ton of video projects for work. And they were looking for more ideas. More ways to get the word out, to build awareness about Hallmark and our products.
I'd already been jokingly labeled as "the one who will put a cat in any video she can." (Uhm, gee, I wonder why... Hey, I managed to place cats in at least 6 of them!)
So I asked The Question:
"We have this amazing partnership with Best Friends Animal Society to help find loving homes for shelter pets. One that is connected to our plush dog named Jingle, a homeless dog who found his boy. What if we reached out to people and asked them to share with us what their hopes and dreams are for the future of companion animals? What if that became a video?"
I love it when my vocation and my avocation - my passion for helping homeless animals - align."
She put forth the idea of creating a video about what pet people want and wish for in terms of animal welfare. A lot of people who heard about her idea wanted to contribute, as did I.
I sent in a few short videos of what I wished for in terms of cat care, that cats are no longer disposable, that they all find homes, and as a throw away - because the kitten I was fostering was sitting on Happy Bear - I recorded that I wished every cat could have their own Happy Bear.
Almost fifty people joined in wanting to help and twenty people from all over the US and as far away as New Zealand sent in content. They set in text, audio recordings, photos and videos. The people featured in the video are bloggers, shelter volunteers, foster moms, shelter staff, animal transport network workers, police officers, musicians, artists and even a radio personality in Las Vegas.
Lisa and her team worked long and hard with Hallmark and partnered with Best Friends to get this video made. There was about 20 GB of content to sift through and work into a single coheasive message that would be sharable. I think Lisa and her team did an amazing job getting this together. Sadly it wasn't released to the public until the 15th of December, which in the world of retail is the start of Valetine's Day season and it didn't make sense for Hallmark to promote it. See Hallmark did a tie in with their two well known animal mascotts Jingle® and Bell® which are seasoal products. Fortunately they have been around for a few years, and they'll be back next year, so the video will have another life next year, but in the mean time there is no reason we - as animal lovers - can't promote the living daylights out of this thing. Getting the message out in a friendly happy way (and not like those horrid channel changing Sarah Mclaughlin type of videos)
I am so glad that Hallmark decided to get behind this and I am so proud to have been a small part of it. I want everyone to see it. I want it to go from the third fastest orgainically shared video to Hallmark's #1 video. So watch, share, spread the word.. and hopefully more companies will step and and pick up the mantle of animal welfare and pet adoption and get the word out to even more people.
The other day on Facebook I teased this photo asking: What are we doing with a basket of cat toys and a ladder ????
Well a few of you guessed correctly; Yes, we were decorating the Christmas tree..
I call it the most wonderful time of the year because the toys are dumped out of the basket where they are stored all year. My cats will occasionally dig through the basket, but this is the only time of year where they can be assured the chance to do a review of all of the toys.
Yup, my cats suffer from a severe deficiency of cat toys..
Hum, apparently I didn't share photos on my blog in 2013 and 2014.. I'm kind of surprised by that.. I do really love my tree. I loved it when I hung all of my 'real' ornaments on it too, but it was so much work to unwrap them all and put them all up only to take them down a few weeks later. One of my favorite Christmas time memories as a child was sitting by the tree and looking at the ornaments and this is one way I can give that joy to my cats. I know they don't get it, but they really enjoy the tree. They pull the toys out of the bottom of the tree every day, and every morning we put them back for them.
Don't forget I am sending out Christmas cards, and I would love to send one to you. You can either send me your mailing address via email at connie@kittyblog.net or you can fill out the form here at Postable. If you would like to send me one you can do so at
