With Biden announcing his Covid Task Force, I would like to introduce our personal recommendations. They're a bit lacking in education, but they're willing to use brute force and they beat any human in the cuteness factor! (Note that we got two several-minute-long videos of other kittens fighting COVID, but there were inconvenient human bodies in the frame so I leave you with a short one of Inness.)
This is just a quick post to share the view I got when I went to get myself lunch today. They had plenty of kitten food at the time; they just wanted attention. Oh what I wouldn't give for them to be free of ringworm so I could just go in and give them a quick cuddle during the workday! Instead, these guys get to wait until evening to get pets, cuddles, and exercise by wand toy.
It's Saturday, and that means the kittens are eight weeks old! Usually this would mean we would be saying goodbye to this litter of kittens, but because they're still undergoing ringworm treatment we get to keep them for three more weeks. They all saw the vet this morning and they seem to be progressing normally for ringworm kittens. This is great news for everyone!
The porch is finally catified. The shelving is gone and has been replaced with a Litter Robot. We'd originally bought the Litter Robot for our house, but our cat won't use it so we put it in the foster room because the fosters will use it. We can't leave it on because cats need to be five pounds for the Litter Robot to sense it, but we power it on to clean whenever we come in the room and turn it back off before any kittens can get into trouble. On the other side of the room we have three more litter boxes, so there's plenty of places to pee! The fosters also have a brand new floor-to-ceiling cat tree, which Inara and Iggy in particular love hanging out on. The video above shows my partner teaching the others to climb it.
That's about all I have. Today was bath night / deep clean day, so between that and the vet we basically spent all day on the kittens. Good thing they're so cute. ;)
Note that this post was written two weeks ago but somehow never made it up. Enjoy it!
Welcome to the personality post! At five weeks old, we have five individual kittens, not a litter of five tiny furballs we can't tell apart. So, the kittens:
Iggy was our firstborn. Iggy is a total sweetheart. He's a calm, affectionate purrer.
Inness is the second of what I call "the tabby twins." He also loves pets; long back-scratches are his thing, though he he's up for scritches just about anywhere. He also loves to be up high and was the first to figure out how to get to the high parts of the cat tree.
Inara is our little cuddlebug. She was the first to lick my partner's nose and enjoys curling up and sleeping on you when she's not playing.
Ira was the first kitten to reliably use the litter box. He loves to curl up with his sister, Izzy.
Izzy will do anything for churu. She's our punkrock girl. She's not afraid of anything; from solid food to stairs, she does it first.
The kittens are now three weeks and five days old! What's been happening this week?
All the curiosity. Wow, are these kittens curious. They want to get into everything! Weighing this morning was exciting because everyone was getting in the way, including Lassi! The kittens aren't giving mom an easier time, either. I'm not entirely sure how she's managing to eat right now, given the kitten antics seen below.
With the kittens being so active, we changed their pen so that they have all the space from one side of the futon to the other. This makes it easier for us to walk (as long as the kittens aren't swarming our feet) and it gives the kittens more space to move around. Last night we added a scratching post and a cat tunnel to the pen to give the kittens more to interact with. The scratching post was a must because Inness and Inara had taken to trying to climb my partner's leg and no matter what PetMD says, the kittens are not yet retracting those claws and they have sharp little murder mittens.
Alas, I don't have a good video of the kittens playing because it's been too entertaining to just watch and usually involves kittens all over the place, but I can attest to the fact that life is not always insane with them. My partner shot this last video last night and is proof that yes, even three-and-a-half-week-old kittens still tire out.
The lack of posts is because Lassicat managed to tear several keys off my keyboard that we could not reattach and my PC had to be sent in to repair. It's really hard to work with semi-functioning p, comma, and x keys! I spent the last week or so working on my partner's Mac and it was so uncomfortable that I didn't want to spend any time on it if I didn't have to. It's the middle of week four already, but this post will be a storied and visual recap of week two and I'll write about week three tomorrow.
As seen above, the kittens acquired a pen. They actually acquired this pen right after my last post. Remember how I said the kittens were going to start to walk? They started to walk. And they started to walk right off their blankets and right under our feet. After one near-kitten-squash, it was time to set up a pen. There are now no more kittens under the futon and we can worry less about where they are, even as they get more active.
And they got more active. These first two videos were shot last Tuesday.
It was slow mobility at first. Those kittens really reminded me of human babies, especially when my partner was playing waving games with Inara. They got more mobile by the end of the week. This last video was Friday, and I'm going to leave it there.
It's Saturday night and that means the kittens are a few hours hours into their third week of life! Inara and Izzy have officially tripled in weight, and their siblings aren't far behind! Here's what we can expect in the next week:
Some of our kittens are early learners; Inara purred for Katrina earlier, and at least one kitten's claws are retracting!
Okay, maybe this post has an exclamation-point problem, but I'm excited about all the growing.
Tonight my partner realized that the kittens are exactly the right size to fit into a mug. We're not torturing the kittens like this on a regular basis, but I thought it might be a cute way to introduce everyone.
Izzy was born last, so it's only fitting that she come first in our photo series. She's the smallest, but she's gentle and inquisitive. She was named after Izzy from Grey's Anatomy.
Inara currently wins the contest for "loudest kitten." She definitely has a set of lungs on her! She was named after Inara from Firefly.
Inness is usually sweet and calm but he didn't like being in a mug one bit and was very hard to photograph! He was the first to open his eyes and might be my favorite little stripey. Inness was named after a character from the Protector of the Small series by Tamora Pierce.
Ira is our little manspreader. If you noticed the kitten with the arms stretched out in the photo in a previous post, that's him. He was named after Ira Glass from "This American Life."
Iggy, our firstborn, loves being pet! He's the most compliant kitten and doesn't mind being on his back. He was named after (Z)Iggy Stardust.
