KITTEN UPDATE

The kittens are growing fast! They are coming up on eight weeks this coming Tuesday. Friday morning they were not to be found anywhere. We have opened our garage to them as the nights are getting cooler and they were not in there. They also come out when they hear Paul serving breakfast. I was very much afraid that mother cat had led them to the backyard of our neighbor across the alley behind our house and I was right. This was not a good place for them to be as he is a died in the wool cat hater. To make a long story short I found them there and managed to retrieve three out of the four kittens. Got bitten and scratched for my trouble by one of them but I treated the wounds real well and so far nothing bad has happened. The fourth kitten showed up later in the day and now we have blocked the back gate so they can't get out. Here are some adorable pictures taken today and a couple of days ago.

This is Peachy meeting his father Peaches for the first time. Peaches likes to sleep on our side lawn. Peaches has no clue what is going on. Son? What son?

I thought I would try to get a cute shot of a kitten with a flower behind it or something. As you can see, it didn't work.

Yum. Dinner was pretty good.

Now it's time to wash up.

Peachy fell asleep in our garage in the warm sun. This is the first time I have seen him fully stretched out like this. They usually sleep all curled up.

A close up of his cute little face.

Coming up later this week, a post about Friday, October 5 - Lee National Denim Day in support of breast cancer research.

KITTENS !!!

Yes, that is correct ... we have kittens. Four of them. One female and three males. Here's the story.

Back last summer we had a cat show up with two kittens in our backyard. One was rather sick and puny. They were in our back yard off and on for a few weeks and then disappeared. She came back with only one kitten about a month later. Later she disappeared leaving him behind. We did not feed them but we did open the garage so he would have someplace warm to sleep. Finally around February or March Paul felt sorry for him and started to feed him wet food, later adding dry food. We were trying to make him friendly so we could catch him to be neutered (actually we thought he was a she, but we were wrong). Well, lo and behold Mother comes back with two kittens. Unfortunately they were both sick. One had its eyes totally mucked up and closed and the other had one eye mucked up. We called animal control and had them picked up. Now mother stuck around and readopted her first kitten. So now we were feeding two cats but the arrival of mother set us back on our quest to make friends with Kitten. We do call him Kitten for lack of a better name but he is no longer a kitten. We found out there was a three month wait for a trap from animal control and were deciding what to do when it became obvious that mother was pregnant again. Sigh. So coming up on seven weeks ago she gave birth in our backyard. Because we had been providing fresh water and food these kittens were healthy. She kept moving them around to hide them from us which made it difficult to pick them up and play with them and love them so they won't be feral. Between the 4th and 5th week she took them off property which dismayed us because we had no idea where they were. She would come back here to eat and then disappear. She did bring them back in their 5th week and we discovered their eyes were not good. So we have been picking them up and cleaning out their eyes several times a day, especially the orange one and the black and white one. After reading up on line about kittens and eye problems we bought some antibiotic from a pet store and now their eyes are cleared up and bright and shinny.

So let me introduce:

JADE

This is the only female in the group. She had the worst eye problem and so because we had to handle her the most she is also the sweetest. She is very patient as we work on her. Much calmer than the others and loves to be scratched behind her ears. She has the cutest little side hop when she is playing with her brothers and her old brother. By the way, older brother (Kitten) is very good with his younger half siblings.

Next we havePEACHY

How did we come up with this name? Well, we know who the father is - Peaches the un-neutered male pet cat who lives next door. His owner keeps promising me that she will get him taken care of but she never does. Anyway, Peachy stands out like a beacon from his siblings. He had the second worst eye problem and has calmed down a lot due to handling. He is very playful and his favorite sibling to play with is Jade.

Next comes the "twins". We have a hard time telling these two apart. One is Tom and the other Huck. By the way, Jennifer came up with all these names.

HUCK (I think)

Huck has darker coloring on his head. He is the healthiest one of the bunch and never had the eye problem. He is harder to pick up as he always runs and hides from us. We have not had to handle him as much though we do try to love and pet him when it is possible. He and Tom are very playful.

And finally

TOM

He only had a problem in one eye and it was never very bad. He is the big baby of the group and just cries and cries when we work on his eye. He is also very playful and enjoys his big half brother a lot.

They will be seven weeks old this Tuesday and have been eating the wet and dry food now for two weeks though they still nurse on Mother. Mother is very protective and hisses at us if we try to come near her. Kitten no longer runs from us like he use to but he will not let us touch him.

So, what are our plans? Good question. We will probably have to trap Mother and turn her into animal control. We know someone at church who will let us borrow her trap when we are ready. She will never be anything but feral. We will wait until the kittens are more than 8 weeks old, though. Kitten we think can be tamed. We will try to trap him and have him neutered. We really love Jade and Peachy so we will see about keeping them and of course spaying and neutering them. Tom and Huck need a good home. If we knew someone that would really love Jade and Peachy, we would probably be willing to give them up though Jennifer is really attached to Jade. So we'll see. Watching them play is so much fun. Here are some more random photos.



One of these days I'll post about school, Disneyland and Christmas Joy (which I am involved in again this year).