It's Saturday, and that means kittens will be four weeks old in a few hours! Don't let little Izzy up there fool you; their fifth week of life looks to be shaping up to be a troublesome one. We've taken down the pen beause my partner thought the kittens needed more space and when I went to fix myself breakfast this morning I could hear extremely loud mewing coming from the foster room. Inness had managed to box himself in between the folded up pet stairs, the humidifier, and the futon and couldn't figure out how to get himself out again Thus began my morning. 

Inness also managed to pee in his mom's food bowl last night. He seems to have figured out "I scratch in stuff and then I pee," but he didn't realize that mom's food was not the appropriate place to go. I caught him in the act, cleaned up the entire mess (bowl, floor, puppy pads, towel, the works) and then my partner proceeded to toilet every single kitten over the litter box. Not that it worked because I found pee on the floor again this morning, but once I moved the litter box to where they keep going and I scratched his paws in it, Ira went in the box! It was very exciting as a foster parent. So far he's the only one, but hopefully he'll teach the others! (Like Inness, perhaps?)

Oh, Inness. Growing up and getting into trouble. But how can we be mad at you when you curl up in my elbow and sleep so peacefully?

So life is exciting. Further excitement last night involved the clipping of the claws for the first time. Remember how I said they claws aren't retracting yet? Oh, they're retracting. They retracted very well when the kittens didn't want my partner clipping them. However, my partner is amazing and managed to clip everyone's claws, including mom's. The kittens are no longer breaking our skin with their claws and they're so much more pleasant to socialize.

So what's in store for this next week, besides litter box training and socializing?

• More teeth! The kittens are actually all ahead of schedule on this one, since they have their canines already and possibly premolars. It's proving very hard to actually look in their mouths but my partner felt teeth back there.
• Running! Playing!
• Reliable using of the litter box! (We hope. We pray.)
• Initial interest in wet food!

Izzy is actually already eating some of mom's wet food to supplement her diet of mother's milk. She's managed to push mom out of the way a couple times when she's wanted food, which I'm taking as a good sign. Izzy is the smallest, so we want her to get as much food as she can.

In other news, getting video of kittens playing is hard. I learned this with Kismet, but it's even harder when there are five kittens and you can't decide who to focus on! In lieu of a video, I present to you "Ira on a log," a story in five stills.

 

The kittens are now three weeks and five days old! What's been happening this week?

• First teeth!
• Pointed ears!
  
• Walking!
• Playing!
• All the curiosity! 

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.

Want to watch the kitties in real time?

My partner set up a kitten cam! It's nowhere near as nice as being in the room with them, but it does allow us to spy on the kittens whenever we want. I've been timing my morning kitten weighings this week to "when they're not nursing" so the kittens get all the nutrition Mom will stand for them sucking out of her. 

Want to watch? Click the link here or in the right-hand menu.

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:

• Open ear canals!
  
• Kittens walking more than crawling! (If wobbly at first.)
• Purring!
• Claw retraction!

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.

Since we started fostering I've taken to taking meetings from the cat room. I find that just about everyone loves kittens, so showing them off gives people a bit of joy. Yesterday, Lassi proved that if the meeting is important, maybe that's not always a great idea. Our little mom proved that at nine months old, she is still very much a kitten herself. After zooming all over the room, she found her way into the bag of cat toys we haven't yet introduced. I moved the bag. She found it again. She grabbed a toy. She held on to the toy. She would not let go of the toy, even though I could not get it out of its packaging without scissors. Note that I do not keep scissors in the cat room. 

I freed the toy as much as I could and let Lassi have it for the rest of the meeting. What else could I do? I needed to concentrate. 

Meet the Multipet Safari Wand. We received ours from the KitNipBox subscription box, which I am mostly unimpressed with other than actual cardboard box's usefulness as shredding for the compost, but it seems one toy out of every box is a winner.

The video below is Lassi with the wand that evening, after it had been freed from its packaging. We're still learning how to play with her and a five-foot-long string of catnip.

I am happy to announce that Lassi and her kittens are doing well! We're no longer worried about Lassi's health and all the kittens are gaining weight and developing on target. Of course, I must apologize - we were so wrapped up in worrying about Lassi that I failed to post about kitten development during their first week and a half. A quick Google search provides many websites about kitten development, but I like The Kitten Lady's Determining A Kitten's Age, Ally Cat Allies's How Old Is That Kitten? Kitten Progression: At-a-Glance, and PetMD's Kitten Development: Understanding a Kitten's Major Growth Milestones.

The kittens are now eleven days old. Here's what we've missed:

- They received colostrum from their first milk to build up their immune systems!

- Their umbilical cords fell off!

- Their ears started to unfold!

- Their eyes opened!

- They doubled in size! 

Of course, all the kittens are developing at different speeds. We saw this most dramatically with the opening of the eyes. Take, for instance, the following two pictures:

Both of these pictures were taken Saturday morning when they were a few hours shy of a week old. Iggy, on the left, hasn't yet figured out the whole wide-eyed thing. Inness, on the right, totally has. Both of them had definitely figured out the mid-air squirm, though!

I promise I'll manage the weekly development update from now on! Until then, I leave you with a line of kittens. (They were in even more of a line when I first saw them, but Ira and Iggy moved in the amount of time it took to grab my phone and snap the picture!)