Addition and Subtraction

Your favorite knitter/foster parent/blogger/insane do-it-yourself-er is finally back. The whole floor, trim, and most of the touch up painting is done, done, done. I feel so much better now.

I had a serious case of start-itis near the end of the flooring project. I think the stress and chaos of living in a construction zone made me want to escape, so I just kept starting new yarn projects. I even obsessed about plans to make a crocheted sock – my mind was racing with thoughts about how to construct the thing and how exactly I wanted to do the ribbing – to the point that I had to get out of bed one night and start crocheting. I guess when a muse takes notice of one of my ideas, she won’t let it go until we get into action. I think it would be most helpful if we took inventory of what is on the hooks and needles again.

Knittin’

1. Crocheted Sock – I am going to turn this one into a class. Unlike knit socks, I consider crochet socks to be an advanced beginner project. Yes, the hook is small (but you could make a worsted weight sock with a slightly bigger hook), but you only really need to know how to single crochet to start a sock. In my class I am going to teach skills like increasing, decreasing, and even how to crochet to fit. Socks are really great for teaching technique.

2. Mr. Greenjeans Cardigan – I really need to start layering now that I live somewhere it snows. It seems like a cardigan is the easiest way to get started.

(All of the following will be Ravelry links)

3. Two-in-one socks – I tried this technique, but it was so slow going that I had to admit I hated it. I separated the socks and began knitting them separately. I am much happier now, but I did learn that my gauge is much tighter when I knit double-stranded.

4. Robert’s Boot Socks – These are going to be much like kilt hose, but at the same time more plain. Robert is my brother in the Marines. He wanted a good pair of thick socks for hiking, and he really liked the pictures of some kilt hose I made in the past, so he asked for some. The thing is, I started it using Cascade 220. Somewhere after I made the first 20% or so of the first sock, I realized that I should have used a superwash yarn because the hiking will most likely felt the things. Does anyone know if Cascade Superwash comes in khaki?

5. Cat Couch – I started working on this project for the cats again when I started teaching classes. I really owe them something nice, and I now I’m starting to owe them lots of nice things for neglecting them. I am such a bad mom.

6. Beaded Deep Space – This is a Christmas project for a friend. I do hope to finish it for this Christmas, but it may have to wait for next. The long floor project robbed me of quite a bit of time.

7. Colorado Gloves – I am actually thinking of turning these into mittens or fingerless gloves. I realized that the fingers make it way too slippery to wear the gloves while knitting or driving, and they wouldn’t be nearly as warm as mittens.

I also took something out of my project list recently – the Earl Grey socks. I know now, without a shred of doubt, that I am allergic to alpaca. Sometimes when I help a client at the store, my throat starts to itch and then swell up. Every single time I ask the client what fiber she is using, it turns out to be alpaca. I was seriously crushed to learn this because alpaca fiber is incredibly soft and warm – as a matter of fact, it would make a great winter blanket. In the end, I rehomed this project and some unspun alpaca fiber to my friend, Julie. I know she’ll take good care of it.

Kittens

In the time when I was absent, the kittens continued to grow and change. Goose made weight, and I had to return her earlier than I expected. She is incredibly friendly. Too friendly. Every night since I got the Twilight kittens, she got to sleep with us. In the middle of the night Goosie would wake up so happy, purring and rubbing her face against mine and Michael’s. While it was perhaps the sweetest way to wake up, it was still waking up. Multiple times a night. I was a wreck.

I was completely flattered that Goose loved us so much.

Lambie is still with me. She had a lesion on her muzzle that looked suspiciously like ringworm. Since the shelter I currently volunteer for puts kittens with ringworm down (they are working to change that policy, just slowly), I had Lamb’s spot checked. What a mistake. She is still with me because the test came back positive even though the lesion cleared up within 3 days. As anyone who reads my blog regularly should know by now, no ringworm has ever cleared up that fast. Ever. While the vet agrees with me that it is probably a false positive due to cross-contamination, they have to wait until Lamb has a negative test to release her for adoption. The test takes 2 weeks for a negative result. I am leaving for a trip before that test comes back, so I was distressed. Fortunately, the shelter vet has a plan – they’ll treat her with lyme-sulfur and put her up for adoption with a note that she was possibly exposed to ringworm. It means she will be in a cage by herself, which makes me really sad. However, she is a black kitten. Nice as she is, people are superstitious about black cats, and the older she gets, the less adoptable Lamb will be. I cannot stand the thought that my baby will be overlooked because her coat is the “wrong” color. You could do a lot worse than Lamb. Lambie loves to give kisses, and she really loves yarn-based cat toys. And face it – she’s beautiful.

That Duck character – well, where do I begin. I’ve loved other foster kittens. I loved Carrot, who found a perfect home right before I left San Francisco. I knew when her new mother started to speak to me that Carrot was meant for her, the only person good enough for my baby. I loved Margo, a black momcat whom I fostered long before I started this blog. She has bright orange eyes, and she used to pull your face to hers with her paw so she would kiss you. She also had this pure joy that you couldn’t help catching. I loved Roman, the first foster kitten that I really had to fight to keep alive. He died in the end, but I thought if he lived that I might not be able to let go. I also loved Gareth, who survived Panleuk with some brain damage. He didn’t seem to have a good flight instinct when a situation was dangerous. He also couldn’t figure out simple obstacles like glass doors. He got into my entertainment center once, through an open glass door. The other door was closed. As Gareth tried to get out of the closed glass door, he started to panic. He threw himself against the glass, not noticing that there was  a way to freedom just inches away. He also panicked if he was alone. It was heartbreaking to realize what he was going through. I would have kept him, too, if a woman hadn’t come along who inquired about him, left the adoption center to really think through what she was getting into, and came back completely prepared to love him the way he needed.

Duck is like the others I’ve loved. He’s handsome. He has a very gentle personality, and nothing really bothers him. He has the innate joy that Margo had. I went through a lot to save him. On October 1, Michael took Duck to the shelter. At 4:00 that afternoon, after his neuter surgery, I adopted him. That’s right, I adopted my first foster kitten. I managed to resist the charms of 183 kittens, only to be suckered in by Duck. Save for a fight he started in his carrier the moment I signed the papers and handed over the adoption fee (Duck was recovering from the anesthesia, and we think he’s a mean drunk), Duck has continued to be the same, wonderful baby cat he always was. And now he’s mine.

The Twilight kittens are all still alive. I truly thought that Renee, at 197g and at least 3-4 weeks of age was going to die, but she is still alive. She’s still tiny, but she is bright and friendly and gaining weight, just a little at a time. Edward and Bella are alive and thriving, as are Jacob, Emmett, and Rosalie. Alice is struggling, but I think even she might survive. She looks awful, but she gains just a little weight most mornings. There will be more photos of them in the future, but they won’t be with me much longer. When we leave town, the kittens are going to other foster homes. They are off the bottle, so the healthier ones can go to any foster home. The little ones will need special care, though. These poor kittens came to me with giardia (I know, what a surprise). When the meds didn’t clear up the infection, the doctors found clostridium in their stool. This is another disease that people can catch, but not as easily as they can catch giardia. You might know other forms of clostridium: botulism, food poisoning, and tetanus. It is also responsible for lethal hospital infections, under the name of clostridium dificile. I think this may be what killed so many of my bottle-feeders in San Francisco. Luckily, there is a treatment – an antibiotic called Amphoral. I think I like that drug, given that it seems to save lives.

So, I believe that you are now caught up. If there is something I missed, please mention it in the comments so that I can be sure to update everyone. Feel free to raise your expectations to the previous level

Moving too fast

The world is moving to fast for me. I kept thinking that I had plenty of time to do things, but when I started scheduling all the last get-togethers with my friends and trying to make plans to see and do all the things I need to before I leave San Francisco, I realized that I am not going to be home for much of the remaining time we have here. We have practically 2 solid weeks of travel coming up, mostly business trips for Michael. One of them happens to be in Florida, so we will go see Lane and Jen when we get there. Another trip is to Denver, the same week we are closing on the house (just like we planned). It just feels overwhelming right now. I just thought there was more time. I think I lost  a lot of it due to sickness. Gotta love air travel.

I mentioned in my last post 2 things I needed to do that were the most pressing. I have done neither. To be fair, the Wesley thing resolved itself. I believe that he might have been lonely since the kittens and his parents went away. Every time he got the chance, Wesley hung out in Michael’s or my lap for the first few days after we got home from the house hunting trip. It wasn’t long before the little guy was himself again. The car thing will have to wait until I get home and am <gasp!> foster kitten-less.

We brought Carrot home the day we got back. I called her new mother the next day and arranged her adoption and Carrot was spayed on Tuesday (yesterday). Tomorrow, my sweet Carrot will leave my home for the couple who was meant to have her all along. I kept her tonight because the poor thing hadn’t yet recovered from the anesthesia. Her eyes were dilated and she freaked out around my cats. Carrot couldn’t walk a straight line, and she would lie down next to her toys so she didn’t topple when she reached for them. About 10:00pm she started to become the Carrot I know and love. She jumped onto my lap and rested her head on my heart. I think it must be her way of saying “thank you for taking care of me.” She’s going to be just fine in her new family. Despite the pull I’ve felt to adopt just one more before I leave, I know it just isn’t meant to be. <sob>

I do have the other 4 kittens to distract me from my grief. The boys have all made weight, so I am taking them back to the shelter every day to try to get them adopted. Esme is about 170g away from being ready herself. The only problem: she has ringworm. At least I think it is. It glows under the black light, but other foster parents who looked at it thought it could be chin acne. It really is presenting unusually – there is no fur loss, but there are a lot of dark, crusty scabs like pimples on her chin. Either way, I washed her and they boys with Malaseb and lyme/sulfur dip to hopefully stop the spread of the fungus. I have a suspicion about how they caught it.

It seems a certain Carrot doesn’t understand that she is not a baby and can’t play with the little ones.

The little ones do look great, though. Ernest is fluffy and handsome. Emo has the same fluff and sweet personality as Ernest. Esme still steals her daddy’s heart. And Widget is action man! He really knows his way around a kitten toy.

Over the weeked I had a spinning party. Only 3 of us from the spinning class I took last summer could make it, but we had a great time. As a result of the party, I got custody of this:

(a drum carder) which turns this:

(loose fiber)

Into these (kindly modeled by Carrot, who went all kid-in-a-candy-store on me):

(fiber batts)

which turn into this when I spin them:

I haven’t yet had time to make any more fiber batts, but I have to transfer custody of the drum carder to Naomi while I am out of town, so I had better get to it soon. It’s just that I’ve been busy.

Later that night I went to a party for a friend from my knit group, Celia. She was celebrating her birthday with her father, Jack. I learned that Jack was the Poet Laureate for San Francisco not long ago. That’s kind of cool in my book.

And finally, I finished the dishcloths for my contest winners. The pictures aren’t in the best focus, but you can look anyway. Which ones will you get, Sara and Anne-Catherine? You’ll never know until you open your mail…

Here are the Ravelry links in case anyone wants the patterns:

Kitty Love

Moon Gazing

All Tangled

In bed

I took several photographs of something that happened in my bed this afternoon. Wanna see them?

Serra loves kittens.

Serra’s behavior has improved dramatically since I started letting the kittens roam the house full-time. Sure, the kittens have ringworm. Sure, my cats have been exposed to it now (Serra’s the only one who contracted the ringworm, for the record. Buttercup and Wesley seem immune after 2 months of exposure). Sure, my house is completely covered in ringworm. I’ve decided I just don’t care any more. The more I tried to contain it, the more the ringworm just kept coming back. I would go a whole litter or 2 without getting more of it, but as soon as I took some of the kittens in for their vaccines they would contract it at the shelter. I have had steady ringworm since Patch. These are my last litters here, and most of the furniture exposed to the ringworm will no longer be accessible to the kittens in my new home. The point is that Serra stopped biting me and chewing my knitting since she got babies to care for. Plus, I spend a lot less time bleaching the kitten room these days. It’s worth it.

Since I am no longer obsessing about fungus, I am moving on the better things. I am working on the dishcloths for the contest winners, but I suspect that those are coming with me on the plane Sunday. Maybe I can mail them from Colorado. I am finishing up the kilt hose I started a long time ago.

I also made a swatch for some gloves I plan to make now that I am going to live in a climate where it snows. I am trying not to start the gloves before I have the dishcloths, kilt socks, and a scarf my aunt commissioned me to make for a friend completed. I just know that since it is forbidden, I want to work on it more. I may have to bargain with myself – I can only knit an inch after I’ve met a goal (i.e completed a dishcloth, knit 2 inches on the kilt socks, knit a few inches of the scarf…).

I think the reason I am really so hot to make the gloves is the yarn. It’s a handpainted 100% merino wool  sock yarn from Malabrigo.  It is labeled as #853 abril, but as you can tell, it’s much darker than the website shows for the same colorway. I know this was a test skein, so maybe that accounts for the discrepancy between the colors on the website and my particular skein. Anyone who has touched Malabrigo yarn would know why I want to knit with it.

I sent the itty-bitty kitties to their babysitter today. I am going to drop off the 3 bigger ones at their babysitter on Sunday morning, right before we head out on our plane trip. It seems surprisingly lonely with only 6 cats in the house. Never thought I’d be saying that.

Sprout got spayed today. I thought she would be loopy from the surgery, but somehow I’ve forgotten how quickly kittens recover from early spay/neuter. Sprout came home feeling great! She explored the house, marked Wesley, Serra, and me as hers, and she’s sitting in my lap right now as I write. The incision is tiny, as you can see from these pictures:

I hope that Sunday is the last time I ever see Sprout again. I believe that her babysitter will be taking her to the shelter to try to get her adopted. Now that she can go home on the same day as the adoption, I believe she will be a more attractive choice to a potential adopter. If an adoption doesn’t happen while I am gone, well, we will just have to keep trying when I get back. I love Sprout, and I want her to find her forever home soon.

Long Time Passing

I’m sorry I’ve been a little absent from my blog of late. I didn’t mean to, it’s just that sitting around in my pajamas has been nice. I got Lady to turn around and become the most affectionate kitten on the planet. Sprout started letting me pet her while she is sitting in the middle of the living room floor. Half the kittens contracted ringworm (Carrot and Sprout). The ringworm got out of the kitten room for the first time ever and now Serra has it, too. Whee!

As we all know, Michael and I went to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. His maternal grandmother turned 80, and most of the Alvarez family descend upon Michael’s mother’s house for the event. This would be many of the family (minus me, because I was asleep with a fever. Stupid flying.).

There were two turkeys to feed everyone, and one cake (decorated by Michael’s mother’s fiancé’s daughter – whew!) for two events. Mike’s (the fiancé) parents were having a big anniversary at the same time as Michael’s grandmother’s birthday.

By the way, I am not vegetarian. I know that it might be expected, given what I do and where I live, but no, I eat meat. I won’t even tell you how we celebrated Thanksgiving with Carisa and Ryan when we got home.

As any good knitter should, I packed way more knitting than I could ever realistically complete for this trip. It snows in PA, and if the plane got grounded, I just didn’t want to be without entertainment (disregard the Nintendo DS in my purse…). I brought one mostly finished dishcloth, a scarf I am making for a teacher in my Scottish Country Dance class (pretty much all of them are getting knit gifts this year, thanks to my knit group), two balls of Noro Silk Garden for a Two-row Noro scarf, a ball of my handspun, and a giant ball of Lily cotton yarn for as many dishcloths as I could crank out. I think I also took 3 pairs of knitting needles (which all made it in my carry-on luggage with no hassle from security).

I cast on the Noro scarf on the way to PA. I knit on it whenever I sat down.

At the Iachini grandparents’ house.

(From left to right: Grandpa Iachini, me, Michael, Grandma Iachini – also a Barbara, Vinny, Ami, Danny, and Julie. The young ones are all Michael’s siblings.)

In the kitchen at Michael’s mom’s house.

And in the bed while I was trying unsuccessfully to get a single, full night’s sleep.

It took me about 2 and a half days of free-time knitting. I gave it to Julie when I finished.

I also finished half of this thing (the scarf for the teacher)

and the unfinished dishcloth. I cast on another on the way home.

Maybe I did need all that knitting after all.

Get along

I finished the Crochet-Along blanket. I really need to learn to limit the number of Afghans I have in progress. Ideally, I’ll only have one going at a time. I don’t like the feeling that I haven’t finished anything in a long time, but I do like having large projects, so a mix of long-term and short-term projects in my queue would help my need to accomplish things.

On the bright side, when I do finish a project, I know it’s appreciated. Despite the fact that I did not make the afghan for him, Wesley snuggled up on it the minute I placed it on the sofa for photographing. It took forever for him to get off of it (I don’t have the heart to remove a cat from an afghan when it clearly means the project was a success), so when it was available again I took the afghan somewhere less attractive for the cats so I could get a cat-free picture.

Wesley has been into everything lately, come to think of it. He keeps leaping over the fence when I have the kittens out. In general it wouldn’t be a big deal – no one has a cold or anything at this point. It has become apparent to me that Patch’s ringworm is not going around either. Seriously, none of the other cats have come down with it. I’m stunned, but I’m not letting my guard down. The next time their immune systems get weakened (through vaccines or surgery) I fully expect an outbreak.

The problem with Wesley jumping the baby gate is that he doesn’t like the kittens to touch him. Whenever a kitten loves on him, Wesley makes this pitiful whine  that sounds a lot like “Mom, she’s touching me.” What Wesley really wants is the food that comes with the kittens. You see, Wesley has been on a diet. At the last vet visit, all my cats had gained weight. Buttercup gained a whopping 2 pounds. Serra gained about a half of a pound (putting her at 17.5 pounds). I think Wesley gained about a half pound as well. The cats have gotten cranky about being on a diet, so they’ve tried to steal food at every opportunity. It’ll get better when the cats get used to the new food limitations. In the meantime, Serra has gotten swatty now that she’s always hungry. She hits my ankles pretty hard when I am near the dry cat food bag in the kitchen. That child…

At least the kittens are happy with me. Patch and Sprout are enormous. The ringworm is down to just one or two glowing dots, and I am not entirely sure that the dots aren’t fuzz. Ringworm glows neon green, but sometimes towel lint looks a little yellow-green under the black light. I am going to aim for a Wednesday return to the shelter. He is SO ready to be adopted. He’s almost 4 pounds, he’s as friendly as can be, and he wants to play all the time. Patch is going to be a great cat for just about anybody. Sprout still needs a patient home, but even she has come to the conclusion that I am not here to hurt her.

The smaller kittens are still hanging in there. Carrot is really thriving now that she’s not sick anymore. She’s clean all the time now, and she’s beautiful! Carrot purrs all the time, and she loves to have her tummy rubbed. I am so thrilled that she’s okay after we lost all of her siblings.

Annie and Lady have been a little less well-off than Carrot. They have been steadily losing weight for at least a week. I think Annie is down about 50g, but Lady is down over 100g. They have been eating, but they’ve had diarrhea, so I doubt they are getting much nutrition. A week of Flagyl didn’t help, so I moved on to Albon. After a few days they still had diarrhea, so I added Amoxil, which sometimes helps. I’ve also started giving them fluids. Last night was the first one, and they maintained their weight this morning. I think I will do it again tonight for good measure. I also gave Lady a few drops of a vitamin supplement that Wesley has taken in the past. It smells good, like bacon, so I kind of hope that it makes medicine time a little less bad for the little ones. I feel just terrible medicating Lady because her fearfulness has returned. She still wants to sit in my lap, but the meds do not help her fear of being held. That said, maybe the baby food treat she gets after her medical treatments are the reason she still likes me. Poor babies!

Bent over on a rainy day

I was planning on writing more cute and new kitten stuff, but I realized there isn’t much that is really exciting (per se) to tell. After the last few weeks, I’m just a tiny bit glad to be saying this. I usually figure out what I am going to say on a day like this by sorting through my pictures and telling the story that my camera has illustrated. The picture above is the only one that stood out.

I spend a lot of time bent over. Sounds dirty, I know. It gets worse – I spend a lot of time on my knees trying to shove a nipple into someone’s mouth, too. And we won’t even address my obsession with the things I find in the litter box.

Linnea came by today (she does live downstairs, after all) and I couldn’t answer the door because I was covered in kittens. I had to have her let herself in to my house while I sat on the floor with at least 5 of my 8 little guys snuggling in my lap. Pumpkin jumped up to see who had come to visit her, but lost interest when she realized that she had a deposit to make in the litter box. The rest were totally content to warm my lap. While I was on the floor with the kittens, I noticed that there are crumbs all along the underside of my kitchen counters. Crud, now I can’t pretend that I don’t know how dirty my house is.

Today is the new grey girl’s first day without a bottle. I did as Toni asked and weaned her, but there is a catch – she will not eat unless the food is “good” by her standard. That means pure Wellness, no Science Diet mixed in. She, like many of the other weaners (see, that’s another thing – I spend my day coddling weaners), still gets terribly excited when she sees the bottle and threatens to undo the whole week’s worth of work transitioning her to solid food.

I let Carrot have a sip from the bottle occasionally. For such a sickly thing, she really has developed a strong ability and desire to defend her food from other kittens. When Carrot was suckling from the bottle, Patch walked up and started to lick the drops of milk that oozed down her chin. Carrot slapped him hard! Patch is pretty easy-going, thankfully, and just cheerfully continued about the washing/stealing a treat process.

Speaking of Patch, I have to have a stern talk with that boy. The ringworm on his chin is gone – no more glowing under the blacklight. The ringworm on his paw, however, is not going away. I couldn’t figure out why until I saw how he behaved after a treatment. That little booger just ate all the meds off the affected foot! I know ringworm goes away on its own, but not for months. I am toying with the idea of putting a cone on his head for a few hours after I treat his paw. I thought about putting Bitter Apple on with the cream, but I don’t want to discourage him from cleaning between his toes – that is the paw he covers his poop with, after all. That boy…

Tonight I am planning to wash the kittens who I plan to return to Toni in the lyme sulfur dip (to prevent ringworm). I am not convinced that it actually works, but I suppose it is better to give it a shot than to introduce ringworm to her house. I think I may dip Pumpkin and Sprout, too. I really hate to do that to Sprout, but I plan to return her to the shelter soon, and since she is a wee bit undersocialized still, she may be there for awhile. I wanted to return Patch with Pumpkin, but sometimes I have to move kittens on despite what I want for them. I don’t know, maybe I’ll just send Sprout back alone. Undersocialized kittens do better in the shelter if they are alone anyway. They get lonely and it forces them to seek out some human contact. These decisions are so hard!

While kitten season is winding down, knitting season is getting a bit more pressing. I plan to knit and crochet a lot of Christmas gifts. I’ve been making headway on my Crochet-along blanket. I had gotten so behind because of all the kitten deaths that I am pretty sure everyone but me has finished. Ok, I know that’s not true. I’ve been participating in the Ravelry forum for this blanket, specifically in the “Who else is RIDICULOUSLY behind??” thread. Others share my pain.

I am off to work on the blanket and forget about the crumbs under the cabinet. It’s raining today, so it’s not like I have a desire to get out of the house at all. Ah, winter in San Francisco.

Another year wiser

Today is Michael’s and my actual birthday. At about 1:00 this morning we realized that Michael is no longer a 20-something. He’s 30. That means only 2 more years until I am no longer a 20-something. I think I need to have a midlife crisis about then. My family is not long-lived – my maternal grandparents and paternal grandfather died at 67, but my paternal grandmother is still alive at 75.

I’m not really that obsessed with age now that it isn’t exactly limiting me anymore. Well, OK, it’s no longer acceptable to go trick-or-treating without a kid at my side (where is my niece when I need her?), I can’t play in the ball pit at McDonald’s (really more of a height issue, but only barely in my case), and going naked in public is a bit more controversial now. But what do I have instead? I get to adopt cats and care for kittens. I don’t have to ask someone for money to buy yarn. I can drive (but whether that is a good thing or bad thing is debatable – I am terrified of driving). I get to plan vacations. I think I like getting older.

It’s great when the kittens get older as well. Pumpkin, Patch and Sprout are old enough and big enough to go back to the shelter now. I may have to wait a little longer because of Patch’s ringworm. The ringworm is healing, but I managed to get a shot of it under the blacklight. The camera has a limited capability to pick up things like this, but if you look closely at Patch’s paw you can see the tiny green spots (click on the picture). Here’s a quick lesson for you: ringworm glows neon green, doxycycline glows bright yellow, and bodily fluids glow a duller shade of yellow.

Patch is looking less like a kitten now and more like a cat. He is long and lean and all the trouble I never asked for. He’s given up on leaping the baby gate for now, which is great because I am not so sure that I want to try to get the ringworm out of my carpet. His new favorite sport is trying to climb into the crib to see the new baby kittens.

Carrot is looking more grown-up now. She’s putting on a lot of weight and her diarrhea is gone, gone, gone. She gets a few supervised, Carrot-only eating sessions every day so I can be sure she doesn’t lose weight. I get less worried by the day, but I still look out for her. Now if I can just get her clean…

Tubby Tabby is really looking good these days. Check her out, trying to slip me some tongue! She still loves to eat, so I set her as an example to the new guys and the freshly weaned. Tabby may be ready to go back when Pumpkin and Patch get returned simply because she eats so much. She, like Carrot is the only survivor in her litter. I guess a it’s called a “healthy” appetite for a reason.

Pumpkin and Annie are still going strong. They are both just lovely kittens with a gentle but playful demeanor. A friend of mine wants to adopt Annie when she gets big enough. I still have no takers for Pumpkin. I think that she and Patch would make a great pair – just sayin’.

Sprout is coming out of her shell just a little bit, probably because of her fondness for Carrot. I tried to stick Carrot in the crib with the new kittens for the first night they were here, and Sprout climbed into the crib to be with her. I noticed that Sunshine and Moonlight, also semi-feral kittens, seemed to develop a fondness for the really tiny ones. It fascinates me, really.

As for these new ones I was talking about?

This one is a kitten that Toni wants me to wean. I am the only foster parent whose heart is hard enough that I don’t feel bad about taking the bottle away. The biggest help was when I let her spend time with the bigger kittens. She saw them all run like mad for the food, and I guess she thought she didn’t want them to get something she didn’t have. To be fair, she has the same reaction to the bottle when the other kitten (who is much younger than she) is having a meal.

This little bundle of everything cute is Minitab. He is also a loaner (I believe Toni wants them back when she comes home). I called him Minitab because he just looks like a miniature version of Tabitha. He had diarrhea for about 36 hours, but I managed to get it to go away by putting a little Recovery in his bottle along with some canned pumpkin. I also started him on Flagyl.

So, for now I have 8 kittens of various ages. The flow into the shelter seems to be abating somewhat, but kitten season is far from over – I expect to have at least some kittens until the end of December. I tend to be one of the first to get kittens and one of the last to finish for the year. I love kittens.

Jesus H. tapdancing….

Crap, crap, crap, double crap, and crap again. I noticed Patch was missing fur on his chin. I rolled him over and ran a blacklight over him. He has ringworm on his chin and paws.

I just got 2 new kittens, and someone is planning to give me more tomorrow. I was supposed to bring my kittens to Pet Pride Day to get them some exposure. Maybe the asymptomatic kittens can come. Fudge.

After the week I just had, I don’t need this.

Expensive plastic bracelets

I believe that I have mentioned before that I don’t have the greatest health. I have many mysterious symptoms that come and go without any rhyme or reason. Doctors often can’t explain major events that have happened to me. I am starting to believe that I am a hypochondriac, despite my many doctors’ suspicions that I am actually not faking anything.

On Thursday, while I was waiting for Michael to come home with the black light, I had chest pains. I’ve had them before, and my endocrinologist thought they were muscular. It’s always just left of the center of my chest and tends to radiate to my left shoulder and back. The thing is, this time, the pain was worse. The first wave hit, and it was pretty mild. I sat here in front of the computer, surfing the internet, waiting for them to go away. Then the next wave came on so strongly I had to call Michael, interrupting a meeting with his boss. He rushed home from work and took me to the hospital, despite my protests.

At the hospital, they tested a lot of things. With chest pain, the first thing they do is an EKG to check your heart. I sat there with little electrodes and sticky conductor tabs on various parts of my body just to hear that my heart was “working great.” The doctor then came in and asked a lot of questions, like “Does it hurt when you breathe in?” and “Does putting pressure on it make it worse?”. The answer to both was no. Actually, the pressure made it better. I was feeling like I should have stayed home rather than wasting money on an unproductive trip to the hospital. Then the doctor said he wanted to do more tests – a CT scan. They hooked me up to an IV, injected contrast dye into my veins, and took a computer aided x-ray. This is in addition to a prior, regular x-ray. Still nothing. Why did I subject myself to this when I was already feeling I wasted my time? Well, the doctor said that there was a chance the this was a pulmonary embolism. Consequences? Death. Since I had a history of this sort of pain before, and asthma, and since I am on birth control pills, this actually seemed possible. One blood clot and it’s all over. Alas, the doctor could find nothing.

After all that, the doctor said that my chest pain was unexplainable and that I should take ibuprofen (a higher dose than the bottle recommends) when I feel the chest pain starting again. I could have done that on my own. So what did I get out of it? Expensive plastic bracelets.

I did manage to come by the black light to check my kittens for ringworm. The brand name on it was hilarious! As for the ringworm? It was just my imagination.

It might be back.

Ringworm. That nasty little fungus among us that we can’t seem to eradicate. It might be back. Barnacles! Here’s what happend:

I noticed for the last few days that several of the girl kittens had dark wax in their ears. I cleaned them out, but then I started noticing that more kittens had it. I folded back Ling Ling’s ear, and inside was this coffee-grounds like substance. I immediately suspected ear mites, but I was uncertain because the kittens did not have smelly ears, they did not shake or scratch their heads, and they seem in otherwise good shape. I decided to take them in to the shelter vet today, and she confirmed that they did indeed have ear mites.

“They have ringworm, too,” the vet told me. I told her that I thought it was actually food-face. Every time I come in to see the kittens, they have lots of food stuck to their faces. For some reason they can’t seem to get the hang of the after dinner face bath that the older cats do. When I wash their faces, fur comes off with the stuck-on food. Besides, ringworm doesn’t strike just one kitten at time, and Wisteria and Moonlight looked impeccably clean…

But then I got home. I let the kittens out into their room, and picked up Wisteria. Then I noticed that she has awfully thin fur between her eyes and her ears. No one else is missing fur, but now that the idea has been planted in my head, I am worried. It all looks like ringworm. Even if it’s not. I asked Michael to pick up a blacklight somewhere on his way home from work, so I’ll know in a few hours. These are going to be the longest few hours I’ve waited in a long time.