Kea & Everest arrive!

Two new kittens have come to visit! Everest is the tabby and Kea is the half tabby, half white. Her coloration is fascinating.

They have a ways to go to grow into their names. They are supposedly 3 months old but are a bit under 2 lbs, so we are trying to fatten them up so they can be spayed and neutered.

They love to play with each other and are quite friendly after settling into the kitten room. We did notice a sore on the side of Kea's mouth and have mailed the humane society to ask about it. It doesn't seem to slow her down in eating or bother her at all.

They also both eat dry food. Hooray! We are giving them wet as well to encourage weight gain, but if they are eating dry on their own I don't have to mix the dry in with the wet.

That's about it for now. So far, they've just been cute, adorable, slightly small kittens.

Busy days with many people

After having half a dozen people or so come in on Saturday to play with them, the kittens were quite tired. So was one of our friends who usually works night shift, but got up early (for him) to come see a guest from out of town. He laid down to take a nap and three of the kittens joined him.

The kittens have behaved basically the same with all of the guests--Chester climbs all over said guest (including trying to go up the inside of a pants leg at one point), Jamal purrs very loudly, Lily wanders over to say 'hi' by squeaking, and Jackson watches from a little ways away.

We even had a slightly under a year baby come see the kittens. The kittens were not quite sure what to do with the baby, staying a couple feet away and watching this new introduction intently. Chester eventually sniffed the baby's feet and the others decided the baby wasn't that interesting and went back to chasing balls around the room. The baby does have a happy noise that resembles a hiss, and Jackson was not pleased when she happied at him (he hissed while backing up--we picked him up and pet him for a bit and put him back down and there were no more problems). The other kittens just cocked their head at the strange noise. If you have a young child, Chester is probably the best choice. If you have a baby/toddler, I'd strongly suggest a CAT instead of a kitten. For children, the oranges should be fine, and Jackson would be fine with a quieter child.

KITTENS!

I didn't realize it had been over a month since we posted. That's because it's been over a month since we had a foster. While it makes the blog a bit slow, it's a good thing overall since it means CCHS hasn't had too many sick cats.

However, it's kitten season, and so it was just a matter of time.It's been a long time since we've had little kittens so we were pleased to get the mail. They came into the society very recently at 8 weeks old--old enough to be adoptable, but a couple were a bit under the 2lbs needed for spay/neutering so they are in foster for a week or so to bulk them up.

That's what we knew yesterday afternoon--we thought we were just getting four kittens with the normal dietary supplement med who just needed some time. Their full exam this morning turned up other problems--one kitten has an eye infection, they all have congestion and diarrhea. So we're home with 3 bottles of liquid and one cream. I'm not surprised they are congested--picking them up they don't feel like they've been cleaning themselves, which we see a lot with stuffy cats.

Jackson is the black and white kitten with Jamal who has the eye problem. The pair of oranges are Lily (the only female) and Chester. We took the collar off Jackson since we can easily ID him and he was scratching at it a lot. The orange kittens will keep their collars until (if) we can spot coloring differences that are easy to spot.

While they've spent most of the day asleep we do know somethings about them already. Lily is adventuresome and has no fear. She was first out of the crate and went exploring and is already studying the door. The others seem a bit more reserved, but they all like people--at least I had them all trying to sleep on me at one point and when they were meowing at Jon for attention whenever they woke up.

No, it is NOT cute.

Darth Vader is a good example of why little kittens need to be raised properly. We think (though we can't prove, as we don't know his history), his raising had one big mistake.

It's "cute" when a 1 month old kitten tries to bite when playing. It's "cute" to wiggle fingers and watch a 2 month old kitten try and pounce on them.

It ceases very rapidly to be cute when that little tiny kitten becomes an adult, or even an 8 month old kitten with full sized teeth. It becomes harder to correct the older the cat becomes and can make them unadoptable.

Vader is a playful kitten. Unfortunately, he wants to play with our hands--mainly trying to pounce and bite them. This is not appropriate behavior, period. Fortunately, he seems to be careful and doesn't bite hard. Since he does seem to distinguish humans from other things he bites, we are hoping he's still young enough we can teach him proper behavior.

The basic theory is two fold. We stop playing with him and hiss at him if he tries to bite us, and we try to wear him out playing with proper toys.

He was not impressed with the balls or box with holes & toys inside. All our mice were long since headless, so we stopped by the society today to pick up a variety of toys. We now have a couple sticks with toys on string, a mouse, and a couple stuffed animals.

We're finding he's not quite sure what to do with the toys. I'm not sure how much experience he has with them. He bats a little bit at the toys, and watches any of them that are moving, but I almost feel like we're teaching him how to play with toys. Which, we might be, I suppose. We also propped one of the string toys up so it dangles in the room to encourage him when we aren't involved.

I hope we can shift him from biting us to biting toys. He is otherwise a very sweet kitten--and has an impressively loud purr that goes off a lot.