Progess Report

The kittens are doing really well. They're happily eating out of a dish, slurp, slurp, slurp. I'm going to mix baby food and kitten food next, so hopefully they'll be over to canned kitten food really soon.

Two of them are no longer afraid of me-- the adventurous tabby boy, and the sweet little grey/white girl. The Moo-Cow still hisses, and the tabby-girl still hides. But it's only been 2 days, so we'll work on that. :)

They understand the litterbox, which is fantastic. Woot! Thank goodness for instinct!!

They need names, even if they're just "foster" names. I considered continuing the Firefly theme (from which Mal and Zoe came), which would make them Simon, River, Kaylee and Wash. Then I thought that since I had a Sam, I should have a Dean (and Adventure Kitty loves to eat, so that's pretty much perfect), but SPN really doesn't have a lot of other names, and most of the girl names would be lousy for cats (and before you ask, no, I will not name one after Ruby.) I thought about naming the girls Viola and Olivia (from Twelfth Night) but an... acquaintance already has a cat named Viola, and I didn't like the association. When talking with Beatrice's Mom tonight, she suggested givign them all Albanian names (which is where her family is from), adn while I'm not 100% sold on all the names, the little grey/white girl is now named Violetta, Vee for short.

Beatrice's Mom hung out here tonight for a good long while, and for most of that time we had at least one kitten with us. Cranky-boy and Scaredy-Girl both fell asleep in our laps (awwww.) When other friends were visiting, (Mr and Mrs Gecko), we had all four out to play-- so very cute, and they're getting braver all the time.

Now, however, I must needs clean up the enormous mess they've made, with litter out of the box, someone has been sick, and just the general debris of kitten care. Then, bedtime.

More pictures are now up in their set.

The Kitten-Hatchery is Open

Yesterday I just happened to check my messages between classes, and wouldn't you know, there was one from my apartment management asking for my help again. Four baby kittens were found on a currently empty apartment's porch, and could I do something about them? I called to find out that their eyes were open, but they were very small. The manager said they were hissing, but otherwise mostly just huddling together. They had them in a shopping basket with a towel.

(Seriously-- when I showed up and found a shopping basket full of kittens? Cutest thing ever. Too bad I didn't have my camera.)

So I promised I'd be there as soon as I could and spent the next lecture trying to re-configure my day's schedule deciding if I had enough supplies at home to start the Baby-Kitten Process again. (What? Doesn't everyone have powdered Kitten Replacement Milk, baby food and syringes (sans needle, of course) in their pantry?)

Clearly these were kittens who had not met humans before as no matter what you do they hiss. The cutest part was when they hiss in between taking sips of milk from the syringe. "sip, sip, slurp, hiss-hiss, slurp, hiss, sip."

I'm not much good at determining kittens' sexes, but my friend F (Beatrice's mommy!) joined me and agreed with my guesses that there are two girls and two boys. All four took milk several times yesterday, and today I got them eating baby food, too (with gusto!) We cleaned out their ears (ew!) and got most of the goop off of their eyes and noses (ew) and gave them baths. The poor things were so dirty that they immediately turned their bath water grey and gross. They will need baths again today, but that's because of the food that gets on them when they eat/dribble.

They're already starting to show individual personalities. The polka-dot one is generally anti-people. The grey-almost-tuxie is the friendliest, calmest, and fell asleep on my stomach last night. The most-tabby one is an adventurer and explorer, and the slightly-less-tabby one is a hider.

One of the office people said she'd probably like to adopt one when they're old enough. Fingers crossed on that. And the office people also promised to help me find homes for these guys.

Here's hoping I can help them grow up and be strong. :)

More of the initial pictures here.