Whisper Wednesday (aka not quite wordless) - Ho Ho Ho ?

Sir, please tell that lady to never to that again...

Christmas at Casa de Gato

This is going to be a fun and photo intensive post.. I hope you don't mind..

I'd like to start out with my Secret Paws gift.  Cat bloggers get together and draw names and I've participated for a few years now.  This year my secret Santa was Stacy from Ms. Stella O Houligan's blog. She contacted me and asked me for an Amazon wish list to make things a bit easier, and I filled it up with things for the foster kittens and a couple of things for Jack... I guess I had Jack on the brain as The Crew would like me to remind you there are seven of them in total and that Muffin is just as deserving of fun things.. (MUFFIN! get off my blog)

Amazon.. you have to love them.. nice big boxes for small items and lots of brown paper for playing with.

See that long box in the middle there, all that was in there was that wand toy.. :) It was really nice to be able to restock the kitten room. Donations to the shelter are so slow this time of year and I generally have to scrounge for good things.

I also got some lovely gifts from friends.. Amy over at Seabasscat.com baked for me!!  YAY!!

JACK! those are human treats!!  back off!  The wonderful Lisa over at A Tonk's Tail.. or more accurately Faraday from A Tonk's Tail (according to the card sent with the gift) also sent me a gift that made me laugh and smile.

Then there was the annual dressing of the kitties for Christmas.. I adore clothes on cats, but I totally respect the cats in their willingness to put up with me. Eli is 12 years old and this is the first time I have even attempted to put something on him... he has come such a long way

Yes, there was bribery involved.. a lot of it.. I like to make it worth their while. Jack volunteered from the wrong side of the door that if Eli wasn't being co-operative he'd happily step in..

Seriously, that boy will do ANYTHING for food.. and love and attention.. he's "freakin awesome'. Muff and Fleurp are also highly food motivated so it went fairly well.. and it made me smile.

I did go down and tried out a few outfits on the kittens.. but we are all ready pretty photo intensive at this point, so I guess we are going to have a part two.

Monday Morning Update

The kittens are growing like weeds.  It is a fine line between giving them enough food to get them through the day and overfeeding them.  I hate it when there is no food left when I go in because I fear they are left hungry, but I'm not a fan of throwing food away either.. *shrug* whatever I'm doing I must be doing something right.  Two of the three new girls are no longer afraid of me.  The white pawed tiger likes being patted, the tiger likes telling me I'm not feeding them fast enough and the black and white girl ... well she would strongly prefer I stop making her like me.  Each time I go in the room it takes five minutes or so of reminding her that I'm not the bad guy, and even then while she will purr when I pat her, she prefers the company of Lena.

The new girls are about two pounds now, so I'm not sure how much longer they will be here.. hopefully long enough for me to come up with some names for them.. I do really suck at that part of fostering.. I really wish I was clever in coming up with names like McFuzzlovin..

I really have no idea why I stress over the names.. so few people keep them.  Maybe next year I'll do an alphabet name theme.. start with A and work my way through and see how far I get :)

I still need to work on the few Christmas posts I need to get up.. Hopefully I will get them done before the new year.. looks like I better hurry up on that..

Merry Christmas Kittens

I thought I would bring some props into the kitten room for a little Christmas photo shoot.. when I found a toy mouse in the Christmas bobble bag. I had to laugh because it was sealed up so it wasn't like some kitty dropped it there by accident, it must have been enclosed when we put them away last year... because we decorate our tree with cat toys..

The little black and white kitten has a thing for Lena.. Lena constantly tells her that she isn't Lori, but I think they are growing on one another..

I still have to post about my Secret Santa gift.. but I will get to that tomorrow..

Merry Christmas everyone

From all of us, to all of you..

Thank you for being a part of my year.

Waiting for Santa

Hey Lena, what's up?

Happy Bear has been telling me stories of Santa.. 

and how he brings a sack full of goodies to all the good kitties.. 

This looks like a sack... 

Did he come early??

Is there anything in there?

Not quite what you had in mind was it Lena.. :)  I'm sure Santa will bring you something you'll love.

I just hope Santa brings me a name.. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah.. as soon as you start letting me see your true spirit young one, you will get a name, I promise.

****

I also wanted to share with you my newest project.. well technically it is the one thing that has been on my todo list since Juneish.. I ran into a recipe for Sticky Toffee Pudding and since that is something I really love I wanted to make it. I had so many dates left over from my 'high fiber low fat' faze  and I wanted to use them and this sounded perfect. I unfortunately let this intimidate me so I put off making it until now. Do not let this intimidate you. The hardest part was chopping up my whole dates into small chunks. I was happy that I actually had all of the ingredients - except the whipping cream to make whipped cream which I decided to forgo.

It was freakin fabulous..

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad..

Elvin, I have a secret to share.. 

Twenty four years ago, on a very very foggy night.. (the mom should have known to be a bit more specific when asking for it to be 'white out' for their wedding) a man and a woman walked down an aisle.  Five apartments, two homes, 11 cats, 2 rabbits, 388 fosters later, one of them is posting photos of cats and an elf on the internet..

:)

Update on the Kittens

After losing Lori, I wanted to bring Lena home to give her time to adjust to life without her sister. When I brought her home she was moble, walking around. She examined the whole room - and part of me wondered if she wasn't looking for her sister - but she was not looking particularly drunk,wobbly or disorientated,  but she was acting odd. She didn't want to lay on me, nor on the bed, nor on Happy Bear, preferring to sleep on the cold hard ground. Seeing her there broke my heart so I picked her up and brought her over to the couch to snuggle. She cried out when I picked her up, it was hard to tell if it was because she was in pain or because I was annoying her. While I snuggled her she seemed to not be able to settle, her legs would jerk occasionally and her whole demeanor really bothered me. When she realized she was laying on me she got up and went to the couch and laid down. I had a feeling I was obsessing so I gave her a kiss and left.

Several hours later when my husband got home there was a loud crash. The new kittens knocked over the barrier I put up in front of their cage. My husband went down to check it out and Lena was still on the couch. She didn't move when the bang happened, she didn't move when my husband walked in the room. This too was extremely concerning to me because that is completely unlike her. She is very fearful of new things/sounds and would have run. I know that kittens who were just sedated can need to sleep but often they will have a bit to eat and I've never seen them this out of it. She was completely unresponsive to external stimuli unless it was directly touching her. I checked her incision and she looked fine, but she did chatter a bit when I touched her rear end like it was little bit painful. I decided to take her temperature and came up with a temp of 103.

I eventually was able to get in contact with the shelter and they agreed that she should see the emergency vet. Sadly vet options past 9-5 are so limited around me, and even sadder (for me) is that the shelter uses the eclinic that I really do not like.  I was sure we weren't dealing with life and death at the moment, but I was so concerned after the fact that we lost Lori, that I could not live with my deciding what to do for her. I needed / wanted a professional opinion.

We got up there and had to wait.. (ugh - so much waiting at this particular facility) and wait.. but eventually a vet showed up and manhandled the living daylights out of her.  I was kinda distressed over it only because I knew what a rough day Lena just had... Any other time it wouldn't have really been manhandling, but this kitten just spent half an hour laying down in an open carrier not walking not exploring not playing after being neutered that morning and losing her sister to a congenital defect.  yeah, I wasn't comfortable with it. I didn't say anything and after we got home my husband - who is generally pretty unobservant to these types of things - said that vet was way too rough with her.

Anyway, by the time we got to the vet Lena had been laying belly up for quite some time and since her belly was shaved I'm guessing that helped vent some heat because her temp was 101.7  The vet said we had two choices, watch her as is or give her a bit of buprenex for pain. I took the buprenex.

Because her fever was down, I decided not to hover but I put her back in the kitten room and when she climbed up on Happy Bear to go to sleep I left. In the morning she was far more alert and took a nibble of some food and ate a few pieces of kibble. Not nearly enough in my mind, but far better than the night before.

Unfortunately I had some family obligations and I didn't fix the dropcam before I left, so I spent the entire day wondering how Lena was doing. When I finally got home I was greeted with four kittens who wanted to eat. Lena was still not as interested in food as she had been, but she was eating enough to sustain her. She also started showing interest in the new kittens, so I decided to let one out to see how it would go, and it went very well. So well that I decided to just let them all out. The little black and white kitten has major infatuation with Lena, and follows her around and does what she does it is so cute. The other two were just so happy to not be locked up any more they spent nearly an hour running around like fools.

I have to say the new kittens are coming around nicely. The tabby - the one who told me to go away and die when she first met me was the first one to allow me to pat her and pick her up (and she purred) now that they are free. I was so sure it was going to be the one with white paws, but she isn't interested in that yet. Confidence building is first and foremost in my mind, and we are working on that every chance we get. It is nice they are so very play motivated it allows me to interact with them... well once they get over the fear of the toy.. 

The new kittens seem very healthy. so far their stool has been nice and solid. The solid tabby does have a lot of flea dirt on her back so she is going to need a bath at some point - probably today since I can get my hands on her. I am always afraid mixing litters since this new litter is too young to test for felv, but I think the good they can do each other far outweighs the small risk of the new ones passing on an illness.

Now.. we need to come up with names..