It's been about a week since I've posted and that's mostly because I've been having trouble getting decent video of the kitties. It turns out that active kittens are hard to video. It's even harder when you've just started filming and mom decides it's grooming time (see video below), which happens a lot, and your phone keeps switching from video mode to photo mode and you manage not to notice. Thus, the above still, which was supposed to be a video.

Kismet has reached the age of play! He doesn't seem to like wand toys; he's much more comfortable with anything that's on the ground. He likes to play with the plush rat (pictured above) and a plush treasure chest that we have in there (both filled with catnip), but he also improvises with basically anything that he can get at. The litter box. The blanket edge that comes off the futon onto the floor. My water bottle, if I forget it on the floor when I'm feeding Shadow. Mom's tail (see video below). Anything he can get his paws around.

Did you notice I'm using "he"? That's because Kismet is finally old enough that we could examine his genitals and determine his sex! You tell what sex a kitten is by the shape and space between the genitals, and because a young kitten's genitals haven't developed much yet, the younger the kitten the harder it is to sex them. However, Kismet has finally developed enough that we can stop playing guessing games and be confident in the fact that he has male genitals. Now, we don't know whether kittens have gender and if they did whether Kismet would identify as a boy cat, but we're going to use male pronouns for him. Pronouns don't mean the same thing to a cat.

Next on the developmental road map: getting Kismet to use the litter box and weaning him. His side teeth don't seem to have come in, or they hadn't two days ago, which means he can't eat meat quite yet. When he can, the trick will be feeding him without Shadow trying to eat the food.

Speaking of Shadow, you can no longer feel her ribs when you pet her! She's still happily hunting flies and she's also playing with Kismet (when she's not grooming him), which I take as a really good sign. She's spending more time on top of the futon instead of behind it, though she does still like that behind space. Also, she's a purring machine! Her purrs are loud and can be felt through her side. It makes petting her extra rewarding.