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.

Borrowed Babies

I saw a series of shows on TV recently called “Baby Borrowers.” The show is a social experiment. The producers give teenaged couples (18ish years old) a few days in which they must care for infants, toddlers, preteens, teenagers, and elderly people. Some of the teens came into the experiment thinking that child-rearing would be easy. Some wanted children right away and saw no reason to wait. Some just wanted to prove that they were grown-ups.

Even if you never intend to have kids, I think that this is worth watching. I truly believe that many high-school kids who think that having a baby is the answer to their problems will rethink their positions on having children. I’ve never wanted kids myself – I think of them as screaming poop machines – and I got a lot out of it. There are life lessons about relationships, cooperation, creative problem solving… seriously good stuff to be gotten from this show.

All of my babies are borrowed. In most cases, my kittens are orphaned. Even when the kittens have a mom, she generally needs my help raising her babies. The babies tend to be these amazingly wonderful creatures that I feel lucky to have gotten to know, even for a short time. There are so many wonderful things about fostering kittens. Above all though, this stuff is work.

A typical day goes like this:

1. I get up in the morning. I don’t really feel like doing much other than reading my newspaper comics and drinking my tea, but I know there are babies depending on me so I warm up their bottles while trying to attend to only my most pressing needs.
2. I go into the kitten room and see who needs feeding. The bottle babies are all screaming and want my attention at once. I listen to several minutes of hungry, crying kittens while I am feeding one of them who isn’t cooperating.
3. The bottle-babies still haven’t settled down yet because they still need to go to the bathroom. I get out the baby-wipes and rub their genitals until they they are able to relieve themselves. If I am lucky, no one has diarrhea, but that isn’t the norm.
4. I grab the towels that are covered in various forms of kitten excrement and toss them into the laundry. I also grab the heat disk so that the babies have something to keep them warm (kittens cannot thermoregulate themselves until they are several weeks old).
5. While I am waiting for the disk to warm in the microwave, I wash my hands. I grab clean towels and a can of food for the bigger kittens.
6. When the disc is warm I return to the kitten room and remake the beds. At this point I can put the bottle-babies away for their morning sleep.
7. I move on to kittens who need to be helped to eat. This is a messy process, so I make sure I am wearing my scrubs or an apron. It helps to be wearing pants (as opposed to a nightgown or shorts) so that my legs don’t take a beating from kitten claws.
8. I put the wet food on a plate and grab a baby spoon. I attempt to insert said spoon into a struggling kitten’s mouth. The kitten does not want food – she wants a bottle. Too bad. I have to be the meanie here.
9. After about 20 minutes of trying, the weaning kitten catches on. She hates having to feed herself and deeply resents me for denying her the bottle.
10. I bring out the baby wipes again and scrub the kitten because she is covered in food. There are food-prints on my clothes, on the floor. The kitten has food on her entire underside. All of this needs to be cleaned.
11. I let the weaning kitten run off to do her own thing while I look for the broom and dustpan. She and the other kittens have kicked tons of litter out of the box AGAIN, so I have to sweep it up.
12. I find a puddle of vomit or diarrhea on the floor. I check all the kittens to be sure no one is obviously sick. I clean up the puddle.
13. I handle any kittens who just need attention. I snuggle the fearful kittens. I play with the kittens who need exercise. I remind them to eat because they need to get big.
14. I finally get to eat breakfast. It’s been about an hour and a half on a good day. My stomach has learned not to anticipate an immediate breakfast by now.
15. Repeat steps 1-13 every 6-8 hours if the bottle babies are at least 3 weeks old. If they are smaller, prepare to do this every 4-6 hours. If they are newborns, give up all hope. You have just become a slave.
16. If anyone is sick, remember to add the medications (and the ensuing battle) to the schedule.

I have to put the needs of tiny little people above my own. I forsake sleep, food and recreation. I have my heart broken when a foster kitten doesn’t have the decency to survive. And the icing on the cake – I have to give them all away just when it gets easier. Why would anyone do this? I can give you 133 reasons why. Their names are Abbey, Nebula, Orion, Cupcake, Cream Puff, Wisteria, Margo, Caterpillar, Sundae….

Sleeps on Pants

I may have to rename Serra “Sleeps on Pants.” She has this amusing habit of lying on any clothing I take off and put on the bed. She likes pajamas, jeans, whatever I was just wearing…

Serra and I communicate well. Neither of us speaks the other’s language, but we each have a pretty good idea of what the other is saying when we address one another. Serra has several different body language/voice modulation combinations that I can clearly identify. For example, when she wants to play, Serra rubs my legs and runs to wherever she left her rope-on-a-stick toy. The whole time she speaks in a very excited tone with short, desperate meows. When she wants her dry food (grain-free, in case Buttercup decides to try it), she gives me slightly longer meows coupled with the leg-rubbing and a trip to the bag where her food is stored. When Serra thinks I am not home, she sits in the living room and howls a forlorn, deep sound.

When I talk to Serra, she nearly always reacts with an appropriate response. When I walk into the bedroom while she is taking a mid-day nap, I often address her with a “Hi, Serra.” She generally responds with this cute little scratchy “Mama” noise. If I address another cat sleeping on the bed with her, she doesn’t respond. I found it particularly amusing that for the above picture, she climbed on it in response to a statement I made that went something like this: “Hey, Serra, I’m going to dance class so I am changing into more appropriate pants. I know how much you like sleeping on my clothes while I am out, so here are my jeans.” It was so cute, and I think she even said “thank you” when she got there. I love our relationship.

Wisteria is growing up more and more every day. She now understands that the food is for eating. She does best when I let her eat with the big cats, but if I lead her to it, Wisteria will stay at the food bowl now until she is reasonably satisfied. She’s also learned to almost exclusively use the litter box. I think she only misses when she is surprised by what’s coming.

For awhile I had to start her out feeding in my lap. She still associates me personally with food. She won’t eat much, if anything, when left alone with her plate, but when I am with her she scarfs it up. This is probably the most filthy part of her independence training – look at my pajamas! The baby eats with her entire body in the food, then she tracks little food prints everywhere when she goes away.

I’ve gotten a great deal of spinning done this week. I can spin for hours, but the teacher says that isn’t really good for you. I guess it’s like sitting in front of a computer for hours, which I can do as well. I had some fiber that I needed to spin for homework, so I got to my stuff first. I pulled about 200 g of fiber from a few different colored bags of roving I got recently. I chose bright colors that I don’t normally like so that I can make something with it or give it to someone else without feeling too attached to my work. I plan to make this yarn a 3-ply, so I spun about 1/3 of the total fiber. It looks good for someone who just got started, no?

I had to take the fiber off the bobbin since I will be using another wheel next week and the bobbins are not interchangeable. I don’t think using different wheels should be a problem as long as I keep the size of the singles the same and put in the same twist. I put chopsticks in the middle of the ball to keep the core from completely collapsing on itself in case I want to make a makeshift lazy-kate to ply it from. I meant to put a toilet paper tube over in the center of my ball-winder when I made the ball, but I kind of forgot until I had already started. Oh, well.

I’ve spun my homework yarn (work – never!). I just need to remember to photograph it before I take it in to class. We are supposed to ply it this week and dye it! Oh, joy! I love all things fiber right now. I cannot wait.

New skills

It seems that many of us in my household are learning new skills lately. I’ll start with the most exciting: Kai! Mostly, Kai has been fearful of me. He hides behind the toilet when I visit him. He hisses when I reach into his carrier.

I was thinking of moving him to another foster home because he just wasn’t making progress with me. But lo, and behold – Kai loves me now! He started this morning just as surly as normal, but when I scratched his ears, he started to purr almost imperceptibly. I put him in my lap so he could help me with my blog post, and now he’s purring like crazy. He’s also sucking on my t-shirt, but I’m not complaining. The more I rub his ears, the louder he purrs! Congrats little buddy!

Lani is developing her super model skills. She posed for me this morning and I got this lovely shot of her:

I’m still worried about the FIP thing because her belly is still a little fatter and firmer than I like. I’ve seen lots of kittens in my time. They all tend to be a little fat for awhile, and then they get skinny. The fat is usually soft, though, and hers is not. Kai’s is much better, so I think that Lani will get better, too. I would be so relieved to learn she just had an infection. I like her too much to have her put down.

Poor Wisteria is learning about all sorts of new things these days. She has had diarrhea for awhile now. Diarrhea is VERY common amongst bottle-feeders. I have no idea if it’s the formula or the way we feed them, but it is almost guaranteed. The only bottle feeders that survive it are older and bigger. Almost every time I visit Wisteria she is covered in poop, which means she gets a bath. I also have to put cream on her poor, sore bottom. She hates me touching her “there”.

Her life is just completely miserable right now because she is also experiencing the weaning process. Wisteria loves her bottle. I thought at first she just didn’t like the food I was offering her. I tried several types.

She would eat them all from my finger or a spoon,

but just as quickly as she started eating from the bowl she would stop.

I tried feeding her formula from a saucer, but she didn’t want that. I then had the idea to see if it was the vessel and not the food she was objecting to. I made a mush of formula and wet food, cut a bigger hole in one of her bottles’ nipples, and tried to feed that to her. I was finally successful. She’s been consuming food that way since yesterday. I moved her to a bigger box and added a litter box and food bowl to her space. She still hasn’t really touched the food, but it’s available if she wakes up hungry. She only uses the litter box about half the time as well, but I think she might just be fastidious enough to get the hang of it when the diarrhea goes away.

I, too, have been expanding my skill set. I finally started to spin yarn in class. My first yarn from the wheel was not nearly as good as my first yarn from the spindle. Every time I read about spinning, it is always advised that you start on a drop spindle. I don’t know why – it is a very different skill. I was excellent at drafting on the spindle, but my hands were in a different place and had to do something different for the wheel, so it didn’t translate. It took me longer to get the right rhythm.

On Monday I worked on my homework. We were given two different (natural) colored pieces roving to spin. Next week we are going to ply it. In any case, that went incredibly well. I was able to spin while – get this – talking on the phone and watching TV.

Get a load of the singles I made – I am impressed with it myself. (Oh yeah, did I mention I am re-learning Calculus, too?)

I only have 2 bobbins, so I think I am going to spin some of my own roving before making the second singles for class. I have a week and incredible enthusiasm, so I figure that it’s doable. I separated about 175g of roving in 4 colors for my own project. You know, I really need to invest in a niddy noddy (a tool for winding yarn off of a bobbin into a skein) soon…

Serra likes my spinning, too. She just had to take her turn after I left.

And finally, today is Buttercup and Wesley’s birthday. They turn 7 today! Hold cow – I am the mother of 7-year olds. How did that happen?

From Hovering to Hoovering

Two of my adult cats are food motivated. Around 8:00pm every day when we open their can of Wellness and divide it out on their plates, Wesley and Buttercup are hovering near the kitchen counters. They get underfoot and nearly kill us, and they meow like this is their first meal in days. They both have been obese and are now merely a bit overweight, so they aren’t starving. I think Wesley isn’t even in it for the food, to tell you the truth. He just likes to be fed. He’ll take 2 bites of the food after it goes down and walk away seconds later. Buttercup generally stays at the bowl, hoovering every bit she can stuff in so she can barf it up a few minutes later. She’s gotten better about it in the last year or so, but she does tend to eat too fast.

Wisteria is a bit like that with the bottle. She now flails and howls until I’ve gotten the nipple into her mouth. Even then she has to hold the bottle with one or both of her front paws, I suppose so that I can’t take it away until she has finished.  She only stops for a breath, then starts snuffling around for the bottle again.

It has been such a sad thing to her that in the last few days we have started the weaning process. She has pretty good teeth right now – I’ve been bitten in her attempts to eat wet food from my fingers, and let me tell you, it hurts! I have to make sure that Wisteria is hungry so that she will try to eat big-kitten food in lieu of the bottle. She will eat the wet food from a spoon and she can be led down to the bowl. She eats for just a few seconds, though, and then steps in the food on her way to look for the bottle. I make her try for about 15-20 minutes, then I let her have some KMR. She thinks I hate her now, but that will pass. It’s funny how they go from “that’s not food” to “I can’t wait for my next meal”.

I had to take Lani and Kai in to see the doctor this week. The two black kittens got sick and their bellies seem to be full of fluid. We are concerned that they, too, have FIP. Apparently it (like the ringworm) is also an epidemic this year. None of the kittens who have come down with FIP have lived in the same room, nor did they live here at the same time. They didn’t catch it from each other. It’s baffling and quite sad. We’ve put Lani and Kai on antibiotics. They are more lively now, but their bellies are still firm. I am hoping that it improves and turns out not to be FIP.

I took little miss screamy pants (I got my wish for more noise) to the shelter when I took the other two in for their checkup. Everyone there adores her. Untold numbers of people handled her until she passed out. It was good for me because I didn’t hear a peep out of her until late that night. Boy, when that girl gets adopted, she will be so spoiled! I wish it were going to be that easy for the others. Their fur color alone makes it unlikely that they will be adopted quickly. It’s a shame because Lani is quite affectionate. Kai needs some work, but he’s going to be great, too.

I am hopeful for my black kittens. They eat well (the 2 of them eat more than all 3 of my adult cats) and gain a lot of weight every day. Lani is still bright and friendly, but Kai tends to be quiet (but that may be because of his socialization level). Keep your fingers crossed that they get better.

Comings and goings

Cupcake was the healthiest kitten I’ve ever had. When the others caught a URI, she was unfazed. The other kittens caught ringworm, and she never even got a smidgen of hair-loss. She was healthy, fun-loving and affectionate. So it comes as a surprise that, as of a few days ago, she is dead.

The shelter I volunteer for is the city shelter. They have had a partnership with another privately funded shelter in the city for many years now. This partnership allows the city shelter to transfer its overflow so it doesn’t have to euthanize for space. Cupcake was sent to the other shelter because Biscotti had eye boogers, marking him as a possible URI case. Since the others who were with him were exposed, they had to be moved to the private shelter as well. The city shelter really can’t afford to treat sick kittens, so this has worked out in general.

I have a much harder time tracking my kittens when they go over to the other shelter. I used to volunteer there, which would have made it easy, but I no longer go for reasons I would not like to discuss here (although the following story does illustrate one of my reasons). I have my friends look out for my babies in my place. I am glad I have these people because I would never have known otherwise. Apparently, Cupcake’s belly started to fill with fluid and she developed a fever. It came on pretty quickly, so the other shelter ran some tests. You see, they expected she had FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitus). I know that the other shelter has a few misunderstandings about FIP. They think that if one kitten in a litter gets it, all will get it (we’ve almost never had more than one kitten in a litter develop FIP at the city shelter). If the kittens are genetically related, the other shelter will kill them all. I had to get the city shelter to make the private (and might I add, very wealthy) shelter promise to return the other kittens in the litter or at least wait and see if they, too, develop FIP before killing them. They gave us a line about genetically related kittens being nearly guaranteed to catch it. We had to prove that the 3 kittens in that group were not genetically related and we told them our postition on the matter. The other shelter was ready to just make a few assumptions and kill them all, but my friend and I saved Biscotti’s and Milkshake’s lives that day. Why so quick with the killing, I wonder?

Back at home, I had more kittens to deal with. Wisteria learned that the bottle is her friend, and now she asks for it a little more often. She’s still pretty quiet, though. She was constipated for about 4 days. I gave her 0.1mL of vegetable oil, and a few hours later she passed a really hard (like dried pasta) poop. I gave her one more dose that night, and she passed a few more. It’s a good thing, because constipation can be just as deadly to a kitten as diarrhea. I figured she needed more bulk in her diet (she just sprouted teeth, too), so I’ve started adding a tiny bit of wet food to her bottle. I also gave her some KMR 2nd step (it’s like rice cereal for kittens) via a syringe. It seems to help her bowels keep moving. Most kittens are like a poop vending machine – put in a little milk, tickle their tummies, and out pops a turd. Wisteria is more difficult than that. Some kittens just are, I guess.

I had some overnight guests this weekend. These little boys were about 24 hours old when I got them. You can see in the picture of the brown kitten that he still has his umbilical cord attached. A mother cat left a few kittens in some construction machinery, so one of the construction workers brought them home so he and his wife could raise them. It didn’t take long before they realized that these kittens were way too much work for them to handle (they cried for food every 2 & 1/2 hours, which is more than any other kittens who lived with me needed), so they contacted our rescue group. After the way the Stars turned out, I decided I didn’t want to take kittens that small again. It just takes a lot of resources and the chances of their survival are slim – I’m thinking less than 5%. Fortunately, there was a cat at the shelter who was due to give birth any day now. I cared for them in hopes that they could be added to the litter, but I had to pass these kittens to another foster parent because we had a few unexpected things come up this weekend.

Lani and Kai are still here as well. Lani is getting friendlier by the day, and Kai has learned to at least tolerate us – it’s progress. They are growing like weeds. This is a welcome change from the last kittens. Some of them really held out there.

I started my spinning class this weekend. I am enthralled, to put it mildly. I got to take an Ashford Wheel kind of like this one home. I’ll include a picture tomorrow. I had to cover the thing up because as soon as I got it home, Serra figured she should make friends with it. It isn’t mine, so I have to be extra careful that she doesn’t hurt it. My homework assignment is to practice treadling. We didn’t get to spin this week because the teacher thought that learning to use the treadle and draft yarn was a lot to do all at once. She is ok if we try to spin this week, but she didn’t show us how, exactly.

I learned a lot yesterday. The teacher showed us new tools and the rawest of materials for spinning. She had a fleece that she divided up for us to take home and wash. It’s kind of easy, but I think I felted the grey one a little. I’m not sure how – they were all in at the same time. I should have gotten a picture of them before I washed, but maybe I can get a shot next week at class (I forgot my camera this time- crud).

We all were given a few pieces of skirted (washed) fleece to practice carding and making rolags (pronounced roll-logs). The bright pink stuff at the bottom is something she gave us to blend with the white stuff so we could practice blending. I’ll get some pictures of the process when the fleece I washed at home dries.

I was pretty proficient at carding. I made rolags like they were going out of style – the teacher decided that I needed more fleece to take home so that I wouldn’t get bored before our next class. I truly love this whole process. I think I was born in the wrong era. Oh, well.

I daresay I am a natural with this fiber making jazz. I showed the teacher the ball of yarn I made recently with the drop spindle, and she was genuinely impressed. I like that I have found a hobby that I have some natural talent for. Now I just need to buy a stinking house so I have room for a wheel. Sigh.

Nebula

Every year I fall madly in love with one or two foster kittens or mother cats. I can’t help it – it’s in the nature of my job. I have to care enough to keep them alive despite crying, vomiting, diarrhea and other nasty things that happen to kittens. I can’t watch a human being puke without retching a little bit myself, but if a kitten barfs I just pet him until it all comes out. As you might imagine, my feelings for the kittens necessarily turn into love.

On Tuesday I met my first major kitten crush of the year - Nebula! Isn’t he handsome? He is just learning to eat kitten food and use the litter box. He’s catching on fast, but he’s not there yet. He is really soft and almost felted. We think he’s going to be the long-haired matting sort.

Little Nebby is living with the Constellation Kittens. If you were keeping count, Nebula makes 8. He is right in between the Star Kittens and the Constellations in every way. Thankfully, Lyra and Orion really step up to the plate and keep him company. In the morning one of them is always snuggling with the little fellow. Argo was a little afraid of Nebula at first, but when he discovered that Nebby gets milk in his wet food, Argo decided to make friends (because friends share, right?). Leo doesn’t really notice the newcomer.

Nebula has proven incredibly easy to wean. He wasn’t really interested in the bottle when I first took him in. I offered him a mixture of KMR and wet food fed through a syringe, and he gobbled it like his first meal. At the next feeding we syringe fed him and lowered the syringe to the food to get his focus downward, A few more of those sessions and he started looking downward right away. Lucky for Argo, Nebula eats best when he has a partner. I don’t think it will be long before Nebula starts eating with the big kittens. He still gets a little confused, though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swDrv3r1EW4

Orion is the smallest Constellation, so Nebula views him as a playmate. He actually tried to jump on Orion from behind! His reflexes just weren’t quite there yet.

I still can’t get enough of pictures of cats with their tongues out.

The Stars are still hanging in there. They are putting on a great deal of weight – they grew nearly 20% their first day. All of the umbilical cords fell off as of yesterday. They have gotten colicky lately. They can scream for hours and nothing I can do will console them. It just serves to remind me why I never wanted a baby of my own in the first place. I got a tip from searching the internet about putting Gripe Water in their bottles. I am not sure if that is what did it, but I haven’t heard as much screaming since I started adding it in.

This is not the most in-focus picture, but this is how I generally saw the kittens before today. This would be why I am now dubbing them the “screamin’ demons.” I still love them, but man are they loud!