The new kitten is named…

We are happy to announce that Ling Ling’s sister now has a name. After viewing all the suggestions, Michael and I settled on:

<drum roll>

Tiki. Congratulations Peggy, you have the bragging rights for naming my new bottle-feeder!

I really liked the other 3 suggestions as well.

Lane, where did you get the name Esme? It definitely fits the criteria, and I liked it, but I was wondering what particularly attracted you to it? Maybe I can use it in the future.

Sara: Cleo is a lovely name. My aunt had a dog by that name who was recently put down, so I decided that this just wasn’t the right time. Also a name I will file away for a future kitten.

Carisa, I do think Panda is an adorable name, but I think I should use it on the next black and white kitten. Naomi (not my spinning friend, but the foster parent who got my Blaze) named Ling Ling for the panda for obvious reasons. Foxy is also a cute name. I wonder what sort of kitten I would see as a Foxy..?

I returned Lani and Kai to the shelter today. They passed the behavior evaluation, but they need to get the doctor to look at them and confirm that Lani’s lice are dead. The thing with feline lice is that the eggs adhere so permanently to the hairs that they do not go away until the fur comes out. I tried trimming her fur, but it was just so much. It isn’t contagious to other species, and Kai doesn’t have it, so I think it will all work out.

After all that, can you believe that I got even more kittens today? Undersocialized kittens, as a matter of fact. I think that they are less fearful than Lani and Kai were, but not by much. Linnea came over today and named them. Don’t worry, I will have more naming requests in the future, and maybe I’ll make some cat toys to send out to the winner.

This is Moonlight. She started out today in the feral kitten room at the shelter. I told the foster coordinator that I needed a sibling for Wisteria. She mostly cries now because she is lonely, and she needs other cats. The foster coordinator said she needed foster homes for several under-socialized kittens. I decided it was best for all involved that I take an under-socialized kitten home so I could solve both problems at the same time. Wisteria is just so self-confident and trusting that it has to rub off on the other kittens. I put the two of them in the same room, and within minutes Wisteria was engaging Moonlight in snuggling. Linnea visited all my new kittens tonight, spending a great deal of time with this one – I think they are in love now. Poor Moonlight is so bony – she is about 2 weeks older than Wisteria but she weighs less. Linnea fed Moonlight wet food from her fingers and comforted her with petting. After awhile in her Auntie Nea’s lap, Moonlight began to purr. At first it was so quiet I thought I was imagining it. As she sat there, the purr got louder and louder until it filled the room. Yep, this one cracked like an egg.

This ‘fraidy cat is Sunshine. She didn’t seem so bad at the shelter. As a matter of fact, she was in a different room than her sister, Moonlight. She was purring for our foster coordinator, and seemed ok. It was for a different reason that I took Sunshine home:

.

Take a look at Sunshine’s rear right leg.

She is missing her leg from about mid-calf down. It’s kind of a club-foot. She gets around normally and even scratches her head with the abnormal appendage. Sunshine was much more fearful at home and hid in her box most of the time. She came out to go to the bathroom and ran past us so we couldn’t touch her. After I see how her poop looks (I don’t want to make a diarrhea situation worse), I am going to start her on baby food therapy as soon as possible.

The bottle-feeders have gotten to a new life stage today. They are awake for awhile between feedings. They are a great deal of fun to be with because they just look so darn cute! Here are a few adorable baby pictures:

Tiki and Ling Ling are still in need of stimulation to go potty. They hadn’t made number two yet, so I gave them some vegetable oil (0.1mL) at their last feeding to help things along. I thought it was working, but for some reason, I couldn’t seem to make anything come out. Unlike me, my husband is good at getting that job done. He just has the magic touch with the tiny kittens. By day he is a professional finance guy, but by night he is Poop Master Michael!

Wisteria was very helpful in getting her new roommates settled. The bigger kittens now sleep in the same bed as Wisteria. She welcomed them as well as I could ask of a 4 week old kitten. She tries to play with them and to groom them – I think she’s happy to have some new friends. The bottle-babies have their own cage that I lock them in when I am not in the room, but while they are out, Wisteria helps me with them, too. See how she snuggles those two? She also played gently with them, but I think she is teething and got a tad bit rough with the little ones; hence the cage they stay in when unsupervised. Wisteria was also incredibly cute at their dinner feeding-time. Tiki and Ling Ling started to peep for their food, and Wisteria went to their door to check on them. What a sweet big sister! I think all that work wore her out, though.

Tonight I have a special treat! I managed to get not 1, but 2 kitten-tongue pictures:

So help me, I have no idea why I think this is so cute.

Trouble in paradise

Meet Lani and Kai. Their names mean sky and sea, respectively, in Hawaiian. We thought it would be nice to make the “plain black kittens” seem more exciting by giving them exotic names. These two kittens are undersocialized, so they are going to need behavior modification work. I am concerned that they will also contract ringworm given that I still have 3 from the previous litter in the house (but in a separate room). They’ve got at least a month with me anyway given their current state of affairs.

Lani has lice. The nice thing about those bugs is that they are feline specific – people can’t catch them. I do have to keep her away from my cats until the Advantage has killed them all off or I will have a bigger infestation on my hands. I pretreated my cats just in case. She’s made progress since I picked her up on Tuesday. I’ve given her a spoonful of baby food once a day, and now she is ok eating and roaming around the room when I am in there.

Kai doesn’t have lice, or at least has too few for me to notice. He has really shiny, incredibly black fur. Lani is a little brown in comparison. Kai is more undersocialized than Lani as well. He hisses when I look at him. It’s really cute when a kitten that size hisses at you – he is so tiny, yet he thinks he’s fierce! I cannot resist kissing him when he gives me that angry hiss. He was very quick to warm up to baby food, so I am betting that by next week he’s going to think I’m not so bad.

At knit night, I cast on and finished a hat. I think it will fit a five-year-old kid. I just grabbed 2 partial balls of yarn from my stash, cast on 36 stitches onto size 10 3/4 dpns, and knit away. Carisa has a goal of knitting 5 of them – I think I can do that. Shoot, with big needles I can knit a ton of them. I am just going to knit hats until Carisa mails them off. Wow, what a great excuse for casting on tons of new projects! I love it when the world steps in to validate my addictions.

Charity knitting is a great way of getting rid of yarn in your stash that you just hate. Poor Linnea was given a gift of yarn several years ago. I never would have known that could be a bad thing until I saw this pile-o-nastiness. No one who has seen that yarn has liked it yet. And wouldn’t you know it, Linnea acquired this yarn in a big garbage bag. She loaned it to our friend Melinda who made a blanket from this yarn, but still there is a mountain of it left. I think the picture represents 1/4 to 1/3 of the leftovers. The nice thing about this project is that kids tend to like brightly colored things that adults consider hideous. She can make many, many hats and be rid of at least some of it. Maybe some of the others of us in the group should make some hats from that yarn too, just to relieve Linnea of the burden…

In any case, not all of the hats I will make will be ugly by my definition. I actually like my first hat, and I intend to crochet a hat from my favorite cheap yarn of all time. Currently I am planning to pair it with yarn I have leftover from a skirt I made last year before my anniversary cruise to Hawaii. That should make it nice and fast warm.

I’ve avoided talking about this for the whole post, but there is a reason I entitled this one “Trouble in paradise.” Blaze looks awful! I got pretty far on it after I finished untangling all of its yarn. I got to the neckline, used a smaller needle than the one I used for the rest of the body, reduced nigh on 100 stitches, and yet somehow when I cast off I discovered that the neckline is bigger than the rest of the sweater. I am going to graft the armpits closed, set up my explanation of what I found wrong with the pattern, then try to shrink that bugger. I am hoping this is an issue of blocking. Seriously hoping. My husband suggested I stop trying to knit sweaters for myself from patterns. This is my second attempt that went way awry. My first sweater was a pink cashmere/merino thing that was too big for me, but fortunately fit my aunt who happens to love pink. It’s still in the family. The odd thing is that when I design a sweater myself, it tends to fit the recipient well. I cannot believe that I can do a better job than people who have published their patterns. Maybe I really am just that hard to fit.

It’s a good thing that I view failure as a challenge. My next step is going to be to find a yarn that I fall madly in love with and knit it into a sweater of my own design for myself. That one will fit. Period.