Twilight of the Twilights

All kittens are back at CCHS and up for adoption. Looking at their available pages they apparently had several litters come back at once.


Jacob the exploratory and noisy.


Esme needs a lot of attention. She won't ask for it, but she was much calmer and a better kitten when she was getting lots of attention both with a toy and from people.

Edward the kitten who loves to sniff toes and people.

Bella who is simply adorably fluffy. Not the brightest of the kittens, but has excellent balance and usually near the middle of what's going on.

Alice who is very sweet, but I'd avoid putting her in a high stress house. She has more problems with stress than the other kittens do.

Busy weekend

It's been a tiring weekend for the kittens. A friend of ours was visiting and elected to sleep in the cat room. They thought it was great--both overnight and the futon being down with a pillow on it during the day! He also ran them a lot, so they spent a lot of the time sleeping when they had the chance!

He's much more up for being kitten furniture than we are. He couldn't quite get a third one on his back without starting a scuffle, though--which since we hadn't clipped their claws in a while got them summarily back on the floor!

We did clip their claws again. They put up with it, but it is definitely a two person job. Their climbing our jeans was much more comfortable afterwards. It doesn't seem to slow them down at all for running or jumping, but it does cut back a little bit on the scratching and is much more comfortable for the humans.

Today we picked peas before the rain, and set the empty pea pods in the kitten room. Jon's parent's cat loves to chew on pea pods. The kittens didn't do that, but Edward did pull them one by one out, and Alice managed to dump a bunch at once--then they all had new toys to bat around.

They're all well over 2lbs at this point. They'll be heading back tomorrow morning to the shelter and we expect them to stay. An adorable litter!

Kitten adventure!

The kittens had an adventure. We put the kitten-sized harness on them and hooked up a leash, then took them for a walk around our living room. Since they'd been trying to escape down there anyway we thought we'd let them explore in a more controlled manner.

There was much fun and the kittens took to the harness fairly well. With kittens we do have to keep the leash behind their head or they think it's a string to attack! Jacob was a bit unsure of the entire thing, but the harness is a little small for him--he's a lanky cat which not all harnesses take into account.

We didn't take them outside for multiple reasons. We didn't carefully fit the harness to each cat so were not confident they couldn't get out of it. We (and CCHS) firmly believe cats are indoor pets and should not be roaming around outside unsupervised. Since we don't know if their new homes will want to take the cat out on a leash, we don't introduce them to the outdoors other than through a window.

If you do want your cat outside at times, it IS possible to train most cats to a leash. Then they can go outside safely and without bothering the rest of the neighborhood. Most of the dangers to a cat outside are eliminated when you are around--you aren't going to let them eat a dead bird or run in front of that car. They also won't eat the songbirds your neighbor has worked hard to attract to their yard. A friend also just moved into a house where there was a large cage in the back with climbing trees and sunning space for their cats, and a cat-door from inside to get to it. I've never seen one before, but the cats probably loved it!

Anyway, look, kitten on a leash!

Out! Out! Out! say the kittens...

Kittens are doing well. They are running amok, but did take a few minutes out to snuggle with Jon. A couple of them are over 2 lbs and the rest are very close. They have consistently been gaining weight for the last few days. They are still basically refusing to eat dry food out of the bowl, but they eat what I mix in with the wet--at this point I'm mixing in about the same amount of dry as there is wet. I have started a second water bowl also because they are drinking it so fast.

They decided the kitten room is old hat and they want something new. Trying to bring food in yesterday I had to chase 6 kittens down the hall (yes, we only have 5.) So far this morning there have been 2 escapees. I put the baby gate up, which usually slows them down enough we can get in and out....one only got partway away after that. The next few days are going to be interesting!

Unfortunately, their litter box problems haven't cleared up. We're running 3 little boxes--which might be low for 5 cats but for 5 kittens it's at least one over. Since they all have to be cleaned every day this is taking a lot more time than normal. Until they get their problems worked out, though, they make such a mess of the box they need all 3 to be comfortable going overnight. Poor Esme is really having a rough time of it.

Sometimes kittens just have diarrhea for no apparent reason. It eventually goes away. For everyone involved's sake, we hope that happens soon.

Twilight litter

Well, I've mentioned them and talked about them, but here they are one by one. They are doing better--they have started an upward trend in weight gain even if it's not as consistent as I'd like. They are still making an utter mess of the litter box, unfortunately. We have an antibiotic to give them. The lab says sometimes the biology of the gut gets out of whack, but otherwise they're running out of ideas other than time to fix it. Since they seem to be overall going up in weight it isn't as large a concern as it was. We still need to get them actually healthy, but they are growing again.


Bella: Long haired gray. Very much a fluffball.


Jacob: Shorted haired black. Very active, very vocal.



Esme: Short haired tabby. Has been lethargic recently. Likes to lay atop things.




Alice: Long haired tabby. She was one of the hissers when we first got them but has turned into a very sweet kitten.

Edward: Long haired black. Loves people.

Twilight saga

It's been an exciting weekend for the kittens. We took them in on Saturday afternoon for treatment for the most common cause of diarrhea. Their weight loss had slowed by Sunday but not stopped and the litter box was getting worse. The fecal sample also came back negative, but we made an appointment for Tuesday morning since the problem was clearly still going on.

Monday just confirmed they still had something wrong. The diarrhea started showing blood as well (kittens are cute...a lot of caring for them isn't!). I fed them extra food in the afternoon, which is why some of them didn't lose a lot of weight that evening since they were still trying to digest it. That night we did spot something moving in the litter box--ah-ha, worms of some type.

Some types of worms they'd already had the first treatment for, since it's done automatically. The second half of the treatment isn't due until tomorrow. We were supposed to take them in on Thursday, but since we were in this morning we have the doses sitting on the counter and will give them ourselves. They hadn't been treated for tapeworms because they'd shown no sign of fleas. However, tapeworms are notorious for not showing up in fecal samples, and fit the symptoms. So, they got shots for those today.

The CCHS's lab's opinion is they've been treated for about all the parasites that would be causing the problem, so hopefully the next couple days the kittens will recover. They'll be happier and so will we--healthy kittens cause less of a icky mess of the room, though they do tend to knock stuff around more.

On the bright side, all the kittens like people and run over to say "hi" to anyone who comes in their room. They didn't mind the nearly 1 year old that hung out for a while either. They all like climbing on people, most don't mind being picked up. We're still working on Alice and Esme to be calmer about being held; they put up with it but we'd like them to be more relaxed and calm. They are making good progress!