KITTEN LOVE Part 1

KITTEN LOVE Part 1

The first journal of rescuing & raising three abandoned kittens & all that implies.

8/19/14 Tuesday: As I pass a bushy planting, I hear loud but tiny mews. Aladar and I are on our dog walk at our favorite location—Paramount School Park in North Seattle. After one 20-minute jaunt around the walking path, we are returning to our car. But three little kittens in a box have caught our attention. They have some large pieces of dry food in a cardboard bowl made from an instant noodle container. The biggest kitten is already getting over the side. I know if I don’t take them, at least that one is a goner. 

                   Kittens in a Box 

    I ask a woman who is about to leave with her kids if these are hers, concerned that some other kittens might already have escaped. (Most litters are larger than three.) She is worried too, but says they aren’t hers. 

    Looking three to four weeks old, the kittens still have blue eyes. I take them home, give them a blanket, and cover the box to avoid escapes. Our vet doesn’t have an appointment…“Not today.” Desperately, I ask the receptionist how much and what to feed. She kindly proffers, “Milk Supplement mixed with canned kitten food.”

    I rush to PetSmart, frantically grabbing a clerk who “gets into it” and helps me find the right stuff, including a bottle set. At home, I discover the kits don’t know how to eat anything from a plate—just look at the juicy mixture and walk away. Time to bottle feed. They resent the bottle nipple until it gets past their teeth and the milk starts to come out. Then, like most babies, they become dreamy-eyed with food in their miniature tummies. They look thin.

                   Thin looking kittens need to eat 

    Elizabeth is the mid-sized one—gray and white with eyes that met mine when I looked into the box. She’s Elizabeth because she’s calm and people-oriented, reminds me of a friend by that name. The other two are black, orange, and white striped—pretty too.

    I coat a fingertip in milky food paste and bring it to noses, get some in mouths. Soon, the biggest one, Miss First Out of the Box, is eating from my finger—as much as possible. Next, the runt, and finally Elizabeth.

    By the second feeding, a couple of hours later, the largest kitten (two times the size of the runt) is lapping the wet mix noisily. That’s the way to go!

    When Brad comes home, I greet him at the door—both hands behind me. “Pick a hand,” I say. He does and sees a kitten. “Pick the other one,” another kitten. “Now pick the one on the floor.”

    “What have you done?” he says, and I tell him.

    “Well,” he grins, “You’ve finally become the crazy cat lady you’ve always wanted to be!” This isn’t completely fair as we both came to the relationship—27 years ago—with a cat. I’ve only had more than one cat for the short periods of time when I bring in a new young one to be the replacement for an elderly one. These three will replace our current elderly cat whenever she chooses to go, plus help us contend with the loss of our elderly dog.

    I leave to teach an evening writing class…and return to a full Kat Kondo in a Sharp “home mini-component system” box. The lid tabs are extended and taped up to make an extra ten inches of height, crucial for the escape artist cat. I toss aside my book bag and, in full work outfit, start comforting, feeding, cleaning faces with a damp towel. No rest for the wicked—or us!

    I tell Brad, we won’t do this if he isn’t entirely onboard with it. He smiles and says, “Christmas came early this year. That’s how I feel about these kittens.” Sigh of relief.

 8/20 Vet visit racks up what it will cost—shots, spaying, worming. So many things to go into and happen to these tiny bodies. And, whew, they must be trying to talk me out of them with this lengthy list.

    A woman at the vet’s office offers to take them—with wistful eyes—and everyone is giving me perks for rescuing them and keeping them. That’s nice, but I know it’s not out of nobleness.

     

   At home again, we need names for the runt and big kitty. “Vivian” hops to mind for the big one. In The Young Ones—a British TV show, Vivian is a head banging punk anarchist with a spiky red Mohawk and chains. He comes in by going through the wall.

    “How about the runt?” I ask Brad. “Rocky!” Brad is excited, “Like Rocky Horror and Rocky Balboa, but especially Rocket J. Squirrel and Rocky from her rocky start.” Rocky looks like a round-headed little bat with big ears. All the girls have striped stomachs—like Halloween skeleton outfits.

    Now that the kittens are housed and eating, I’m determined to get the litterbox training going. 

    Even as small as they are (R—7 ozs, E—9 ozs, V—13 ozs) and as young (three to four weeks), kittens are often quite quick at picking up this skill once weaned from mom who just licks them clean till then. I’ve been doing this with a washrag—daily mama bath with rag, not tongue, but none of them have yet had a poop—probably they were taken directly from the nursing mother—poor thing, not knowing where her babies went. I’ve heard that the mamas mourn and search for their kits for days.

    So, I take these tiny girls in to watch my elder cat pee, and then put them into the box where they can smell it. I demonstrate scratching in the sand, and Vivian immediately digs that idea while the other two are baffled and wander around this confusing habitat.

    The second or third time in the box that night, and Vivian triumphantly scratches and scratches, then squats and pees, then covers it. The others stare in awe. Vivian clearly is a genius. By evening, everyone has delivered at least one pee and E has even done a poop. Yay! Things are going so well; they’ll be in college by the end of the week.

                   Kittens in Litterbox Learning 

    A small litterbox (lid of a Tupperware container) is conveniently placed at the end of their sleeping box.  

 

8/21 I awake with an itching red swollen finger and am reminded of my mother-in-law’s experience with Cat Scratch Fever—sheesh. But I have no fever, headache, etc. that the internet says I’d have. Just an awful looking finger. The itch retreats in all the watery work of litterboxes, kitty blankets, and dishes. Vet has us feeding four to five times daily. Kits want one in the middle of the night. (Vet says they get low blood sugar if they go long between feedings, so a night feeding it is.)

    E is licking her right front leg a lot. I wonder if this is the others nursing on her as they do with us. I teach my Thursday class and regale them with kitten photos and stories.

    At the end I ask my EMT student about my finger. He warns sternly about animal bites but thinks—as I am—that when I pulled a couple of weeds, I got an allergic reaction to them. In the evening, I call the consulting nurse who guardedly believes it’s not an infection, but an allergic reaction. Calamine and hydrocodone cream do not make it stop itching or get less red.

    Kits are peeing, pooping, playing (the three “p”s) and purring (a fourth “p”).

8/22 At 11 am, right before I need to leave for a class and to pick up a student, I notice E’s right front leg has a puncture wound like a bite, maybe a lickerette from stress? Immediately, I separate her, but she squeals in the carrier. I decide to bring her to class, to show off and comfort. When I get to the student’s home, I note another puncture wound on the other side of her leg. How did I miss that? Did another cat bite clear through her leg? This becomes an emergency. I drop the student off at the bus to go tell the group I won’t be there—go ahead and read and discuss your work.

    Can’t get a vet appointment for a few hours. Each time I look at the cat’s leg, it looks worse. I see white stuff—pus? I think so, or bone? At the vet’s, we all discover—not a bite or licking but maggots forcing their way out—creating huge holes in her little arm. The vet extracts three of them and gives the cat a penicillin shot. The cool vet tech, Jenna, makes her a tiny cone collar so she can’t lick the wound.

                 Elizabeth with a collar

    E & I come home in a bit of shock—a painful and difficult day. I swaddle her in a light kitchen towel so she will calm down and not try to remove the cone. The swaddling always works, even with older cats, but, of course, I must hold her all night in it. It’s not something to leave her in or to secure around her without supervision. She spends a night of intermittent drugged sleep and struggle to get to lick her wound. I warm compress it, as instructed, a couple of times.

    I hope this is the kind of early bond that will make our relationship especially close.

    When I’d brought the trio home, I’d begged their pardon for whatever mistakes I’d make or pain they’d suffer while with me. I had no idea some of that pain would come so soon.

                  Morphy on Window Sill

8/23 A weekend makes everything easier. B & I work hard to get the whole pet scene in shape. Our elder cat, Morpheus, has been unhappy—hissing when she sees the kits & refusing to come in to eat or have her meds. We decide she has to spend some quality time in the back half of the house where she’s available for food and medication & can feel safe & in charge of how she interacts with the new kids on the block: V, E, & R.

    The old dog (14-year-old border collie-lab named Aladar) ignores them but carefully doesn’t step on them & enjoys getting bits of their left-over baby food.

    We go shopping for kitten stuff—a beautiful cat apartment made of black wires as big as their box, but they can see out. B puts it on the large footstool where we can watch them wrestle with each other and sleep.

   We dangle toys between food, box, and play in the kitchen times. We lay out a king-sized sheet to cover the kitchen floor & an extra towel for feed dishes. Four times a day or more, the girls have open feed—which has become really noisy—and lots of playtime hiding under and behind everything. They love the small box the canned kitten food came in. What fun! 

    While we watch them from the couch, B says, “Now I get this ‘old ladies collecting cats’ thing. It’s better than watching TV. Who needs Comcast when you can have Calm Cats?...or not so calm!”

 

8/24 E’s leg almost healed—magically fast. My finger, on the other hand (pun intended), is still red, itchy, and swollen—ah for the healing ability of a baby again!

    I’m still feeding the runt by hand & bottle a lot. She gives up trying to eat from the saucer so easily.  At night, I find my own vitamins untaken. We’ve bought a lot of prepared food too—just not enough time for everything, & besides, we’re taking vitamin CCT (Cute Cat Time). I call the consulting nurse again, and this one thinks I should take some Benadryl, so I do but my finger remains red, especially a bump near the knuckle.

8/25 B stays home to play with kitties. We compare their personalities & cute sleeping postures. Their personalities have been evident from the start: V—so bright, adventurous, high strung—loves to hide and jump out to stalk. A bully with her sisters, though she does back off enough to make it fun play. E—the human-oriented one—sweet, less scratchy & spiky. R—the slowest to start but so grateful. She purrs every time she’s picked up—a sweetie too.

    I see another doc who says I have a spider bite on my finger. My intuition immediately agrees. A big relief—no infection, no Cat Scratch Fever, only another American Aggressive Spider that must have been hiding in the weeds I pulled.

8/26 No Brad today—kitties lengthily in kitchen—food, play, box all available. Kittens wormed today—first dose.

    I haven’t said yet that right at first, I decided these kittens are my 65^th birthday gift to me. Also, they are my last cats. If they live fifteen years, I’ll be 80, twenty—85. I don’t want a cat to outlive me and get booted from their home or whatever.  So tired. Why did I think I have enough extra time to take care of kittens?  Dummy!

                 Exhausted Elderly Kitten Mom

8/27 They are climbing everything, starting with me…the paw-over-paw method. V was halfway up the kitchen bookshelf when I noticed this morning. Cashier at Petsmart suggested mixing some yogurt with the Milk Supplement. (The cats noticed it and were initially put off, but since Rocky has diarrhea from wormer, seems like a good idea.)

    Tonight, I gave them one dish with mixed food and milk replacer and one dish with only lumps of baby cat food (very soft—no chunks), and they ate easily from that. More strides to easier cats.

     Introduced them to my novel group. I’m getting a lot of mileage out of saving them plus how adorable they are. Watching V with the two smaller ones reminds me of bullying issues. V is the leader of the pack for sure—training them, keeping them active. She is the most nervous as well as the most aggressive—reminds me of a bullying kid in a class of mine.

                  Elizabeth as a Tiny Baby Cat 

    While the kits sleep, I grab the time to work, cook, clean, pee. Reminds me of having a baby & so they are. They just get independent far sooner!

8/29 It’s starting to look like this will be Three Little Kittens and a Small Cat book. Morphy is only six pounds, but still six times bigger than Vivian. B asks if V ever meets my eye. Seldom. While Elizabeth did right away and all the time, & Rocky, less but she does.

    Vivian stands her ground with Morphy in the kitchen today.  The two little ones were in the back underneath the pan holder next to the stove. Morphy hissed & V trembled a little but didn’t move back even a step. Finally, Rocky ran out like a baby to smell the lovely pheromones on M’s collar. (Yes, there is now a pheromone collar as well as spray & diffusers.)

                  Kittens on me and my angry cat tee shirt

    M missed her thyroid transdermal dose yesterday, but I nabbed her this morning. I think she’ll be having the iodine radiation—which will mean no daily stuff to do with her—so she can do some “hiding” outside. It was serendipitous that I met a dog-walking friend at the pet store, and she was raving about having her cat treated with radiation, instead of surgery or medicine.

    V is up on the counter helping me write. She does things like a cat now, while R & E fall clumsily like kittens when dismounting from my lap where I sit on the floor with them in the kitchen “nursery.” Instead of falling, V stretches out her back legs to catch herself. Her legs are a bit longer, but she is also confident those legs are up to the job.

    The kits are climbing my legs—pants, long nightgowns, almost all the time. I lift them & give them a cheek rub or mouth buzz or rub my chin on their ears & foreheads making the little mama cat noises. Often though, I just lift my leg enough for their feet to leave the ground, then they drop off. That’s like a mama cat too. (I learned to do these things with Morphy. She was a feral kitten rescue who nursed on my neck until she left tiny “hickies”—an old-fashioned word for kiss bite marks.)

    Rocky often can only struggle with my foot or sit on it. She, of all, seems to see me as a protector, which I have had to be as she is so much smaller. Of course, E has had extra caretaking over her leg problem—not all fun. So, V gets taken off the others or out of trouble situations—a lot. 

    Ways they could get hurt come to my mind all the time—watch out when closing doors, fridge, drawers—lest a tiny tail or head get caught. Vacuum cleaner—especially the hose—Watch out!

    We just had a “crawl on me” time where I do things to make them feel bonded and like I’m the boss: pet them in a way that pulls them close to my side, pet heads especially like they are being washed—also use a washrag like a tongue to keep bottoms, tummies, feet, and food-covered mouths tidy.

    R is on the counter now, helping me write and eating extra. I did this last night too. She needs to bulk up to the others, and she’s all for it.

    A bit later—she, R, just climbed up the inside of my pant leg. It’s brilliant. She’s thoughtfully using the inside of the pants material with her soft back to my skin. She’s scaling me as ably as the others but without the pain! Now lifted up, she’s enchanted by the peanut butter smell on my mouth, sniffing from a distance. Her eyes slowly blink & close—sleepy kitten.

    I heard an expert on TV say that there are two ways to know if a cat loves you. One is the “slow blink.” He advises that you return the slow blink too. I’ve noticed I get this from cats, dogs, and babies when I use the soft voice and call them “sweet little kitties” or puppies or babies—depending on which I’m currently holding. This must be a form of the “whispering” training phenomenon.

    The other way you know if a cat loves you is they give you nose kisses. All the kittens have done this with me now—V just today. All other behaviors, she has modeled for the smaller kits. This one E did first, then R. V’s first nose kiss had a bit of a jab with some teeth in it at the beginning, a clumsy nose kiss but well intended.

— I’m cooking and cleaning with R zipped in my hoody. She’s lying on a fold I’ve turned up to create a little hammock. We’re making spaghetti sauce and collecting empty cat dishes. Morphy is asleep on my pillow—her favorite spot, so some normalcy for her.

    I don’t want readers of Kitten Love to think that I’m stopping my life to play with cats. I’m still actively working as a writer, a teacher, an editor, blog and web segment host, etc. as well as being a Domestic Goddess (as Roseanne Barr put it).

    The receptionist at my chiropractor appointment today suggested the Animal Shelter for inexpensive spaying, and we wondered if shots would be cheaper there too. The kits will all need to be spayed at the same time. With $985 for M’s radiation (plus other required appointments and blood tests), I need all the help I can get.

                  Rocky in Brad’s Pocket 

    This experience is full of serendipity though, from finding them to all the helpful people and that great way this is affecting Brad, & our relationship. I am admiring his observation skills as always. He has consistently talked about seeing the “different perspectives” on everything & it’s true, he has something surprising to say about most everything.

    Sign now on our front door “Use the Back Door!”  We’ve found that we can keep M trapped in the house if we enter through the laundry porch, closing the outside door before opening the one to the kitchen. That was one of Brad’s clever ideas back with a previous cat intro issue. I might as well tell you, this three kittens thing has some back story.

    My mom had an indoor cat—a big angry Tortoise Shell called Jellybean.

                  Jellybean on Rug 

    By the time Mom died, JB was peeing all over and scratching Mom and terrorizing visitors...except for me. I used some of my cat “whispering”—played with her, took her to the rare vet appointment, and actually rather liked her. 

    So, after Mom died, I scooped JB up, took her home, & changed her life: She lost twenty of her 32 pounds, became friendly to visitors and the dog (thank you, pheromones), had her first experience walking on grass & being on a harness and leash. She rode on my shoulders wrapped around my neck. The only problem was that she was accustomed to being the only cat.

   Still at twice my cat’s size, she had plenty of “tortitude”—it’s a real thing; Google it. Pheromones helped, but Morphy was getting discouraged fast. Repeated dashes at her by the black and orange JB were enough to make M stop coming in the house. Then, as now, we captured and held her against her will. We set up an area for her on the back porch and laundry porch, but the advent of cold weather forced a decision: M had been with us for ten years, so she won and sadly, we let JB go. I’m still proud about the changes we were able to make in her life. She was absolutely an adoptable cat by the time we’d had her for three or four months.

    So Morphy has baggage…& so do I. These babies don’t outweigh her, but V is like JB—stands her ground & goes on the offensive.

   The cat expert says there should be a cat box per cat, plus one extra. Oddly, some might say tragically, we have five cat boxes: one large, one medium, one small, one Tupperware lid—rectangular, and one clear plastic container’s lower half. Plenty of boxes to play all the “Litter Games” as Brad is calling them. At one point, when all three were in the box, E & V were both kicking a lot of litter onto R who was turning into a kind of litter snowman.

    Brad says, “I tell people, ‘You just can’t believe it. It’s like cartoonish. Everything they do is just the cutest possible thing they could do at that moment.’”  He says this as I am sitting with R & E asleep in my lap, their cheeks pressed side-by-side so their faces make a heart shape. Then E puts her paw across R’s neck, opens her eyes, & gazes sleepily at us—absolutely the cutest thing they could possibly do.  

8/30 It’s Saturday, and we awaken to NORMALCY. We trapped M inside again as her appointment for blood tests and to be approved for radiation is today. But she awakens us with her pre-kitten purring by our heads in our bed—lovely.

    In a few minutes, the kittens are scratching at their box and meowing—but they made it through the night—no sounds, and though smell of a box needing to be scooped greets us, they have waited till our usual rousing time of 5 am to do this. In the kitchen, the three eat up a whole can of kit food—no milk replacer needed. (We’re not such babies anymore!) Even the runt stays last to get the extra she needs.

                  Three kittens eating on the floor 

(The banana in the photo is for scale—not part of a kitten diet.)

    This coming Tuesday, we will have had the kits for two weeks—so they are now five to six weeks old—according to the vet at the Aurora Vet Clinic.

    After a bit of play around my feet and getting recognized, they retreat to the box next to the stove. V nose kisses me repeatedly. They are munching on the cardboard sides of the box merrily. Less than two weeks in, and all of us are in our groove—the dog now gets breakfast next to but outside the kitchen doorway. I’ve put a trifold to block the kitchen entryway, instead of their bulky hard to move wire crate. The trifold even folds back like a door and is held in place by a small end table—a great place to set things that need to come in and go out of the kitchen.

                  3 kittens comfy in a box

    NORMALCY—I actually got to make French toast, eggs, and ham this morning—not that anyone who lives here needs those, but it’s heaven even to be making tea or using the bathroom in the midst of so many needs! I think the kits might be ready for some older kit food, plus even some kitten dry food—maybe!

                  Blue-eyed kittens in larger cat shelter

    We took a photo of “kittens in a cage”—not a fifties movie about teens in juvenile hall. “Juvy” we called it. 

    Brad bought a laser pointer. OMG. V beating up so much on E & R. Toys help deflect that. We’ve also been giving V some breaks alone in a different box.

Next is KITTEN LOVE Part 2
Learn from My Mistakes!
Part 2 is all about Day 13
Part 3 is Crazy Cat Ladies and Why We Are
For more Kitten Love: The Trilogy go to https://www.amazon.com/dp/1514859718

Paperback is $3.77
eBook is free on Kindle

Ariele M. Huff hosts Sharing Stories, creates Writing Corner, gathers poems, and edits them for Poetry Corner. She teaches online, ZOOM, and Skype classes; edits manuscripts; authors books—over 30 on Amazon; and publishes herself and others on brands Candy Bar Books and Band Aid Books.

SHARING STORIES is a weekly column for and about the 50 plus crowd living in the Puget Sound region. Send your stories and photos to ariele@comcast.net. Tell local or personal stories; discuss concerns around aging and other issues; share solutions, good luck, and reasons to celebrate; poems are fine too. Pieces may be edited or excerpted. We reserve the right to select among pieces. Photos are always a plus and a one-sentence bio is requested (where you live, maybe age or career, retired status, etc.).
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