Still Life, With Cats

Aside from Cartwheel, who is a special case, we’ve been foster-kitten-free for nearly an entire month. The last batch went to the center and were adopted in early November. Since we were traveling for Thanksgiving, we knew that, aside from any emergency short-term care, it didn’t make sense for us to take on a new litter, since the rescue would then have to find someone else to keep them while we were gone. So the morning after we got home, I texted the foster coordinator and said “Bring on the kittens!”

Say hello to Winter and her six babies: Christmas, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Solstice, Hanukkah, and Yule.

Momma was taken in by a very kind person, who looked after her while she gave birth, while simultaneously working hard to find a rescue group who could take them in. She did a fantastic job of keeping momma and babies happy and healthy, so now it’s our turn to finish up their journey before they’re ready to be adopted (likely in January).

* * * * *

Is it wrong that I am finding Santa’s dark side of gift giving highly amusing?

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

A couple months ago I was called to the center to pick up a super tiny little kitten, only about a day or so old.

She’d been found, abandoned, in someone’s back yard. They tried feeding her but she refused, so they brought her to a rescue, in the hopes that someone else would have more luck. It was clear she was brand new – still had the umbilical attached, and her eye slits barely visible. She was a tiny little thing, but apparently her lungs were well developed, because that wee baby was LOUD.

I took her home and named her Feuilletine (it’s a baking thing, go look it up) and tube-fed her a couple days, until she finally decided that latching onto a bottle nipple was a more acceptable method of obtaining food.

Her eyes opened and she grew.

And grew

And grew.

She hit the super chompy stage that all kittens reach, so we got her a playmate, Praline.

She and Praline became the absolute best of friends. They charged around the house together, regularly chomped on each other’s faces, and were constantly snuggling during naptime.

Today these two adorable buddies were adopted, together.

And I am so happy. This is why I foster, so that they can grow up and thrive, and go on to fill someone else’s house with purrs and snuggles and love.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

This morning we finally put up the tree. The box itself has been sitting in the living room for the past week but we just haven’t had the time or energy to deal with it, especially since Richard has been sick. But this morning I had to get up early anyway to change the incontinent kitten’s diaper, so I cajoled him to wake up with me, and after the round of our usual chores, we finally set it up.

Guffaw was extremely helpful.

He had to make sure we’d assembled it correctly by inspecting from the outside…

…and from the inside.

We’ve ordered this year’s ornaments, so there’ll be an update picture early next week. We’re still finding ping pong balls and googly eyes from last year’s decorating scheme, since Guffaw made it is his (successful) mission to remove Every Single Ornament from the tree, and I suspect this year’s theme will have similar results.

Tis the season for Holidailies.

This morning when I went to check on the foster kittens currently residing in our bathroom, one of them was dying.

This isn’t the first foster kitten I’ve had die, and I know it won’t be the last – when you take on the fragile ones, you have to go into it knowing that not every little one will make it. But it is hard. Every single time. Because I second guess myself. I question everything I have done. What did I miss? What was the magic bullet that, if I’d only seen it in time, would have saved them?

Sometimes it’s because they’ve been sick (there are horrible things that wee little kittens can get, and there is only so much modern science can do) and sometimes it’s because they were too compromised before they ever came into our hands, and their little bodies just didn’t have the strength, no matter how much care and medicine we provided. And those deaths are hard, even though I knew the reason, because my goal in fostering is to save them, not to lose them.

But this little one – this was one of the ones that are the hardest. Because there weren’t any signs. Just…alive one night and dying the next morning.

There are so many things that can go wrong during development, and I know, logically I know, that especially this time of year, when the momma cats are on their third litters and their bodies just aren’t capable of giving those poor babies everything they need anymore, that sometimes those little bodies just aren’t capable of making it anyway.

But logic doesn’t matter when you’re holding a tiny, frail body in your hands, watching them die, doing everything you can, knowing that it won’t matter, but doing it anyway because maybe, just maybe, this time it might be different. Just this once.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies

What do you do when it’s February and you have committed to making a thing a day, and you have a bunch of random cardboard boxes plus a giant roll of duct tape and minimal construction skills but lots of enthusiasm?

You build your cats a tank, that’s what you do!

And then if there happens to be, in the house, a cat named Sherman, you *know* what the next step had to be.

You’re welcome.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

In September of 2009, fresh from the loss of both Tangerine and Sebastian within the space of just a couple weeks, Richard and I went to adopt a kitten. We’d seen a picture of Ingrid on Petfinder, and fell head over heels in love with her from that, but knew that she would need a friend. When we went to the rescue to meet her, there was a little black and grey tuxedo floof who was pretty cute, but already pre-adopted, and two little grey tabbies, who were careening at top speed around the room, literally running sideways on the walls. We picked one of the little grey tabbies as the second kitten, and we can’t really claim to have been all that surprised by what he turned out to be.

Rupert was extremely active, and also extremely intelligent. Every time we didn’t think a kitten could get somewhere, he would find a way. That first Christmas he scaled the tree like it was just another giant toy, and ever since then our ornaments have been the self-placing kind. He could jump incredible heights – to the top of the fridge in kitchen, to the top of the curtain rail in the bathroom – there was really no such thing as a Rupert-safe zone. We invested in a number of cups with lids, which we referred to as Rupert-safe cups, because when he was younger he absolutely delighted in tipping over water glasses. A friend mentioned, based on her own grey kitty that Grey Ones Are Trouble, and it became Rupert’s calling card. We used to look at each other over those first few years, and jokingly comment that he would calm down when he was older. It was only in the last few months that he ever did.

He turned twelve this past August, which doesn’t seem old enough for anything to happen, but life doesn’t always work the way we wish it would. Suddenly things started taking a turn for the worse. Without exploratory surgery we won’t ever know with 100% certainty that he had GI lymphoma, but all the symptoms fit, and it was clear what we had to do. The vet came over this afternoon to help him go.

We’re going to miss you so much, Boo.

Why yes, decorating a Christmas tree with a whole bunch of lightweight plastic ornaments in a house with a quartet of extremely energetic kittens who all like to scale the tree and view ping pong balls as one of the Best Toys Ever was a BRILLIANT decision, why do you ask?

I’ve picked up at least 20 so far and I keep finding more as I walk around.

Last night when we were decorating, Guffaw was going absolutely crazy, charging up and down the tree and smacking ornaments off as if we’d basically given him the Coolest Toy Ever (which, admittedly, we did). So I have a feeling that every morning we’re going to have to make the rounds and collect and rehang a whole bunch of ping pong balls (or else alternatively we could just put them in a bag and then perhaps by the time the tree needs to be put away again for another year, he might have single-handedly (single-pawedly?) removed all the decorations for us.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.