So... it has been a year

 I can't believe I haven't posted here in just under a year. smh.

For the past three years I have said multiple times - mostly at hosting renewal times since this blog is costing me several hundred dollars a year - that I need to get off my own host and move back to free blogger, and the guilt of not doing that has been kinda weighing on me. It doesn't help that since losing Jack and Muffin I just haven't been in the mood. It used to be so fun to blog, recently (okay for the past two years) it has seemed more like a chore; something I wasn't very good at (I see people who have been doing this for far less time being far more popular) 

Since I recently had to renew - and with a few other life changes - I am going to try really hard to get off my own hosting and back on to blogger. The problem is Blogger isn't making it easy.  I have several thousand posts and they don't let me start at post one, nor do they let me jump to any certain page anymore, so have to scroll through all of them to make the appropriate edits to get my images uploaded and off my server. I have a feeling that I will be severely editing my blog and simply removing a lot of old posts.. especially those from 20 years ago that no one looks at (nor should they, oh they were horrible) 

I'm guessing this will start Nov/Dec.. but we'll see.

I have been fostering for the past year.. Here are the ones I can tell you about:

August 2023: Luna (mom black), Lily (mom tabby), Lotus, Lunaris , Lilac, Lotus

I was asked to foster two kitties that came from a home with too many cats, and they came with four kittens. No one really knew who belonged to which cat, so we just put them all together.  Since cats are communal when raising kittens, it generally isn't an issue as long as there are enough resources, and that held true for this bunch.

Lilac (black w/ white paws), Lotus (the boy.. short hair), Lavender (Tabby), Lunaris (longer hair) 

Lilac was three to four days older than the others.. and I think she was Luna's kitten

These kittens were very active, so there aren't a lot of photos of them as they got older.. but here are a few.

November 2023: Willow
I was jonesing for a kitten fix and reached out to the shelter about an hour before Willow showed up. Initially they said no then emailed me asking if I wanted to take on a bottle baby

She was a great little kitten who lived in the bathtub of my master bedroom until she was old enough to eat on her own. She went a few weeks with some pretty horrid diarrhea but we finally got that under control

Willow was with me through most of January.. I probably held on to her a little too long, but can you blame me? I was tempted to keep her, as she was flippin adorable, but any new kittens I keep need to NEED me.. and that simply wasn't Willow.

April 2024: Lakely and her kittens:



Lakely came to me pregnant. She was quite nervous when she arrived and while she was friendly, she wasn't communicating with me very well. I tried to make her feel comfortable in the foster room but she was a bit overwhelmed with everything... or maybe she was just in labor as the next morning we had three new kittens.. two girls and a boy (who was all black). Oh they were cute... 

Lakely only wanted to keep them contained in the tube scratching post - she was not the only one over the years - but it was difficult to monitor the kittens so we spent some time trying to get her to accept other spots, but she didn't want to. I got her to move to a bigger location only to have her decide after a day that it was too much.  I had them just under a week before they started with diarrhea.  I pulled every trick in my book but it would not stop. I couldn't get the medication that would stop coccidia quickly so we put them on Albon hoping it would be enough, but it was not. They failed quickly.  I returned them to the shelter so they could have more hands and eyes on them (as I had to work most days) but after a couple of days there they passed. I didn't get to know them at all. I was going to name them Squam, Silver and Ash.


May 2024: Bambi and her kittens.

Bambi was a very young mother who was a bit nervous in the foster room for a few weeks. Because of the previous litter I didn't feel comfortable putting her in the bathroom despite the fact I disinfected it three time and steam cleaned it twice. I simply didn't want to risk it. This meant she had way too much room and she kept putting the kittens in the closet with the litter boxes and other weird places until I put in the doll pop up camping tent. She liked that.

The kittens were all really sweet and loving. They came with names that I used except for Thumper as the others seemed to follow the theme of Bambi with Honey and Bee.. so I changed his name. 

Bee came really really close to staying with me. She was un-bee-leavably cute and sweet and licked me and snuggled me hard, but I knew there was a serious chance that we were facing some major life changes and it was not fair to anyone to add another cat into the mix. Thumper and Honey went to live with my friend Kathleen, who lives in Maine, and Bee went to a friend of their family, so I have gotten updates on all of them. they are all very happy and doing well.  Bambi was not happy in the room once the kittens gained full autonomy so she went back to stay at the shelter a few weeks before the kittens left in July.

And then my world broke.. but that is for another post..