Foster Love!

Nimue is already spayed and has attended her first two Adopt a Pet events.  She has done surprisingly well with people.  She's not all snuggles, but she allows people to touch her for a minute or two before she gets anxious and decides to growl.

And the girls have their very own Petfinder listings now.  They're not spayed yet, so they are not exactly ready for adoption, but we hope to get that done before the month is out.  Hopefully someone will fall in love with them online and we can speed things along.

Charmin and LuceyLot comandeered a shopping bag full of fabric for their napping spot last night.  I couldn't resist.

I've now enabled comments from LJ Friends only for this blog.  If you have friended me and still can't make comments, please send me a message through my profile.  I don't always keep up with who has friended me on a regular basis.

I'z Going to Eat U for Dinnerz!!!!

Lucey is really beginning to come into her own in regards to playtime and silliness. Charmin's still quite a bit ahead of her in the silliness dept, but Lucey is nearly as fast tearing across the apt as Charmin is and she scraps just as dirty when they wrestle. And as you can see, she's a bit of a biter when it comes to vanquishing a foe. She gets that from her mother.

As you all know I am Way behind on my picture posting for these darling kittens. They're growing like weeds.  Unfortunately Live Journal has changed the way they want you to add pictures and the old html code doesn't want to work properly, so you're getting a condensed version of the Many pictures I took.

LuceyLot!


Charmin!

I just caught Miss LuceyLot TEETEEING in the Litterbox!!!!!!!!

Yaaaaay!

I had figured she was doing it as there weren't anymore puddles on the floor, but since I knew that Nimue was disposing of the poo once we were over the evil diarrheas, I just couldn't be sure.

But I was in their area and Charmin took a potty break and then shortly thereafter Lucey joined her. I was so excited I did the "teetee in the potty" song and dance. Yes, there is one! Any of you moms to Human children know you have one too.

And just to up the cute ante, after Lucey teeteed, she made a Huge show of covering it up. It was some sort of digging game in which she dug and covered and rolled over and dug while on her side and then leapt up. Silly girl. I wonder if this came from her mother's propensity to fling litter far and wide when she's in there.

In other funny litter news, Charmin will use the little box in their area, but much like her mother, she prefers to go use the Big Kitty Boxes in the regular cat closet as soon as I come home and let them out of jail/the bathroom. Those girls sure are silly.

So much has happened in the last two weeks its rather hard to find a place to start. I guess firstly we'll start with the bad news.

Where once there were four kittens now there are two. Little Miss Matchstick passed away on the 1st of October. I woke up and she was normal, but by the end of my getting ready for work she was fast sliding down into a Very worrisome state. I've taken care of many kitties through this shelter and only once before have I had cause to classify a cat as "lethargic and on death's door." Matchstick was the 2nd cat ever I was that worried about and it happened so quickly. I dropped her off to the shelter director on my way to work knowing it would take a miracle. And by around 1 pm I got the call that she didn't make it. We don't know the cause of her death, but we think she just was unhealthy to begin with and wasn't able to absorb any nutrients. She never had any signs of the reason we lost the 2nd kitten.

Which brings me to the 2nd kitten. On Sept 26th, the evening after my last post, Charmin started having some motorskills problems which progressed to very little movement. Our Shelter Director came by to check it out and we decided Charmin needed to spend some time with her to get put on antibiotics and have some extra fluids. Then around 24 hours later both Sir Lancelot and Guenivere started having diarrhea. I picked up some Albon for their issue and crossed my fingers that I was simply dealing with the one symptom and not more of what Charmin was going through. Sunday it was still just the one symptom so I had hope. Then Monday morning Guenivere was lethargic and very hot to the touch. I made arrangements for our Shelter Director to get her from me at my work. Over the next several days there were ups and downs with both Charmin and Guenivere and just to be safe I put both Matchstick and Sir Lancelot on antibiotics.

By Sept 29th, Charmin was improving quite a lot and Guenivere was making very Small strides, but we were hopeful. That night Charmin actually came home to stay. She was mobile and simply needed her antibiotics which I was already giving to the other kittens, so we hoped she'd begin nursing again and continue thriving. We got our wish. Guenivere, however, stayed with our Shelter Director so she could receive the care and bottle feeding she required. On the day we lost Matchstick so unexpectedly, I actually received good news of Guenivere improving to a point where she was walking and her bowel movements were even attempting to improve.

By Oct 3rd, Little Guen had improved enough that we were going to try a weekend at home with Mama Nimue. Her mobility was improving so much and she actually attached herself to Maizy, so hope was still looking better and better. Unfortunately that was short lived. By Sunday morning, Oct 5th, Guenivere was back to being lethargic. I tried to bottle feed her multiple times, but I wasn't having any luck and I could tell she was uncomfortable again the way she was acting. Since I was in the middle of filming work at my home, I couldn't rush her over to the Shelter or to a vet. The Shelter made arrangements for someone to come pick her up. Guenivere stayed with our Shelter Director and was up and down with improvements for the whole next week. But by the 8th, things were looking dire. I stopped by the Shelter to speak with our Director that evening and to drop off my extra key for a fellow foster who was going to tend my herd while I was out of town for the weekend and she just looked terrible. She was still getting fluids and antibiotics and Albon and everything else we could do for her, but she was not improving. Then the next day I saw her again before I packed up for my trip and she had literally just passed away before I arrived.

So we're down to one original kitten from the litter and one orphan. I guess two kittens was going to be the number no matter what. We sure miss those sweet babies anyways.

But there's Good news!

Sir Lancelot and Charmin are eating whole food! They both get KMR and Wet food twice a day and they're eating like crazy. They're still nursing of course, but they're getting lots of food in their tummies! Charmin even tries to eat the dry food in her momma's bowl from time to time. I wet down some of that for her and Lancelot in thier own separate dish from the wet food and they do eat some of that at times as well.

Anyways, as a result, they're growing and playing and beginning to roughhouse. Charmin's favorite game is "vanquish the human's leg." And Lancelot tries to hold her own wrestling with Charmin. Oh, and Lancelot is Most Assuredly a Girl! So henceforth I will probably be referring to her as Lucielot (Loo-cee-lot), or Lucey. I was supposed to change her name to Morgana if she was a girl, but I just can't do that now that I'm so attached to her as a Lancelot. Lucielot is a good compromise and I'm pretty positive that it's odd enough to be Original for the shelter, which is hard to come by these days!

Nimue is doing well. She's getting more and more comfortable in the apt with the other cats every day. Maizy is still the devil and gets slapped from time to time, but I can't really help that. Nimue met a little girl the other day and bonded with her, which was a SHOCKER! She used to live with a tiny child who supposedly terrorized her, so I was watching really closely and listening in case I needed to deflect a slap in the face. But she really wanted to smell the little girl's face so she just jumped right in her lap and leaned in. It was funny, we were conducting an adoption there for a fellow foster and the whole apt gasped when it happened.

I think that's about it for a full update. I DO have pictures! I just need to get it together to upload them and post.

Well, this evening the real food adventures of Charmin and Matchstick weren't as successful as this morning. I need to keep working on them. Matchstick knows she wants to eat any food on my finger, including my finger, but she hasn't made the connection yet that the food is in the bowl. She also hasn't discovered the litterbox yet. I need to teach her how to climb out Somebody tinkled in it this afternoon though. I can only guess that was Charmin as I witnessed Matchstick tinkling outside of the box on my lunchbreak home.

But in addition to food and litterboxing there is another development. Charmin is "running". I put that in quotes because it's sort of a pounce, wobble at the moment. But the point is that she's moving faster on purpose and that's Fantastic! I think she may have even attempted to play with some fuzz. She's the middle child of the group, almost a full week younger than Matchstick and almost a full week older than the original litter. But she's the most advanced health and skills wise. Matchstick is just a touch behind. Although Matchstick is trying to socialize with the Torti Girls, Nabisco and Taquita. Part of me is amused because it's the Attraction of the Tortis, hehe, "Torties Unite!" But then again, Roz and Dunbar Flee in Utter Revulsion at the sight of any of the kittens coming their way, so it could just be that the Torti Girls are the only ones acceptable. It is cute, though. I caught Matchstick shadowing Nabisco a minute ago.

I have so many pictures to post I'm just going to have to wait until the weekend to wade through them for posting.

There's so much going on with the kittens its Insanity!

First, we have a 2nd orphan. Wednesday the shelter brought over a little torti girl who had refused bottle feeding, had refused at least one mother for nursing, and refused being syringe fed. So we tried her with Nimue. Of course she decided she liked Nimue. She's 3.5 weeks old, so she's got teeth. Nimue is adjusting to that. Her babies are only 2.5 weeks old and so she wasn't prepared for that. Charmin is 3 weeks old and she is only just now getting teeth to break through her gums. Her name is Matchstick. Little Matchstick is doing pretty well with the rest of the household. I'm proud of her. She drank a little water this morning out of the water bowl, but she's not yet shown any interest in the cat food. I'm going to see what I can do about that this weekend. Maybe if I douse some food in KMR she might show some interest in it. I'm supposed to be coming up with a better name, but I kind of like that one. ( And here she is: )

I have a LOT of pictures from the weekend, including a Nabisco "look at me!" dance. I wish I had time to put them up today. Maybe tonight during Heroes commercial breaks.

But I couldn't let the day go by without posting the latest news and at lease One picture. My foster cat is a foster mom. Yep, Nimue took in an orphan. Just one, her name is Charmin. She was named before she got to me, so no Arthurian connections. She's 2.5 weeks old, so about 5 days older than Nimue's real kids.

( So, here's Charmin: )