We’ve named the new guys! We went with the cookie-name theme this time around (at the suggestion of a few readers), because they’re so cute you could just eat ’em up.
The black and white boy is Hydrox (since Oreo’s long been used), the other boy is Keebler, and the girls are Lorna Doone, Milano, and TimTam. I haven’t assigned a particular name to a particular girl just yet, but that will come in time, I’m sure.
(Oh, and they’re apparently Lynx Points, not Tabby Points. Thanks, those of you who told me. I have very little practice in identifying Siamese mixes!)
They’re doing well – it took several days for the Wonkas to latch on to the bottles and drink properly, but most of the Cookies latch right on as soon as you get the nipple in their mouth.
The only down side is that we didn’t treat them with Advantage as soon as we brought them into the house Monday evening, because with getting them fed and settled, it just slipped my mind. Then Tuesday morning Fred noticed a flea on one of them. I immediately put Advantage on all of them, and by the end of the day had found about 10 dead fleas. I used the flea comb on them and didn’t find any more fleas actually on them, but plenty of flea dirt. I’ll keep using the flea comb on them once a day until I’m confident they’re flea dirt-free, but I think we’re okay.
I have NEVER dealt with fleas before, can you believe that? I was a little freaked out and washed all their bedding in hot water immediately, scrubbed down their cage, and the floor around them. The good thing is that the floor in that room is hardwood, so there’s no carpet for fleas to hide in.
If you have any suggestions on what to be on the lookout for, flea-wise, I’m all ears! I’m changing their bedding every time we feed them, and haven’t found any dead fleas since last night. I think we’re okay, I don’t think they were infested with fleas, just had a few of them.
On the up side, they seem to enjoy being combed with the flea comb!
That’s Hydrox in the middle.
“Hellew.”
“I HAZ A COMPLAINT! I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE FOOD AT THIS PARTY!”
Oh, his little face KILLS ME.
Even when they’re this tiny and can barely move around on their own, I STILL can’t get a decent shot of all of them!
“HELLO HI I HAZ A COMPLAINT!”
Do the stripey little tails just knock you over DEAD?
I told Fred last night that the Wonkas are at that just perfect age – they’re old enough to use the litter box (there have been no accidents in several days – and that last accident was Mike peeing on a bed that seems to look JUST like a litter box to him. He’s peed in that same kind of bed before.), they can eat on their own, and they’re THRILLED to see me walk through the door, but not yet DYING to get into the rest of the house.
And they’re still small enough to pick up and hold in two hands!
If I were the one who adopted him, I’d totally name him Kramer. Except that “Gus” is such a perfect name!
Mike sucks you in with the cuddly cuteness, and then demands that you pet him FOREVER.
::snik:: (He was using those fearsome claws to grab for the tail at the top of the picture.)
I’m not sure what Gus is listening for – perhaps the sound of the ocean?
“Hey! GUYS! She’s handing out the pettins, and you can’t have any! She’s only gonna pet ME. She said so! HA HA!”
Love them Wonkas.
We had a bit of a scare last night. At around 7:30, I suddenly couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Sookie. She and Terry like to hang out around the back door, but they haven’t figured out the cat door (most kittens don’t; they usually need to be taught. Before they went to the adoption center, Lafayette and Bill both figured it out, which I suspect means they’re geniuses. Jake and Elwood would dearly like to go outside, but don’t understand the cat door. When they get a little older, we’ll put collars on them (we have an electric fence around the back yard to keep them contained) and let them go outside.). The last time I saw Sookie, she was by the back door, and once I realized it had been a while since I’d seen her, I began to worry that she’d figured out the cat door, figured out how to climb over the fence, and was gone.
We checked all her usual places – Fred’s desk, the dining room chairs, the bed upstairs. Nada. I started looking in less usual places – under the couches, in the back of the hall closet, in the closet in the guest bedroom. Still nothing.
And then suddenly she just appeared on the stairs. I don’t know where she was, but she’d apparently found someplace to curl up and sleep, because she was only half-awake. It’s possible she was in the hall closet, tucked way back, sound asleep, and I just hadn’t seen her when I looked.
We were very relieved, to say the least!
Would you look at that face on Elwood? He’s all appalled, like “EXCUSE me, this is MY chair, and I was SLEEPING!”
“I shall never tell where I was. NEVAH!”
“Yeah, that’s right, we’re snuggling. You got a problem with that?”
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Previously
2008: These kittens = exactly what a cranky woman needs.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Cleanliness is next to Sugarbuttliness.
Oooh, them fleas can be pesky problems. Erm, please allow me to take this opportunity to highlight hartz would be the worstest thing to use to tackle the problem (not that you’d use it anyway of course, the Cookies are way too young for flea extermination chems).
Robin, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the True Bloods’ adoption chances. And we loves the Wonkas! And of course, your own stash of kitties is wonderful! =)
Calsifer: Thanks for the link! I don’t remember reading that in the past, but I know that Hartz doesn’t have a very good name in the cat community. When I was looking at flea remedies yesterday (and ended up buying nothing!), I gave the Hartz products a wide berth.
Sorry to hear about the flea problem – we had that with Virgil. I would always comb him with some damp paper towels and a zip top baggie handy because if there was a live flea I found it was easy to trap them in the damp towels and zip them in the baggy so they were trapped. They jump really fast and the wet towels were easy to grab them with (dry they could get away). We were told not to use any flea stuff on him because of his age (although at my vet they use Frontline so it is probably different with different brands and formulas). I hope they don’t get on anyone else in the house. We were lucky because we never had many and they never got on the older cats – we did give them frontline at the time. I was afraid they would come back this spring but there has been no sign of them.
And the thing with Sookie totally reminds me of the first day or so with Barney – he found a great place to nap under the night stand in the corner of the master bedroom – I didn’t think a kitten could even fit under there – I knew he had to be somewhere in that room, so I called and called and then all of a sudden he was just there – it took me a couple days to figure out where he was coming from (I finally heard him moving around) – they just find the tiny little places you would never think of to hide (well, ok, once Floyd hid in a blanket that looked like it was just in a pile with no cat – that was the time we spent 20 minutes trying to find him for a vet appointment – that one made me feel like an idiot).
I love that every group seems to have a complainer – it is pretty hilarious. And how the heck are you going to tell the newbies apart – they all look identical to me. That one is going to be interesting for sure!
Please wrap up Gus and all the Cookies — the care package to end all care packages — and I will send you my address. PS, don’t tell my husband.
Okay, so I’m still sad you aren’t updating Bitchypoo on Wednesdays…my morning is not the same without a guffaw or two.
But, those Cookie kittens are about the sweetest things ever! I love the spotty one!
Hydrox reminds me of an Amish man with a half beard! 🙂
I love saying The Wonkas and the Cookies. It makes me laugh. The only experience I’ve had with fleas was to comb them and immediately plunge the comb into water if there was a live flea on it. Otherwise, the advantage should take care of everything – it will kill fleas on the kitties and anywhere the kitties lay – which is where they are hiding anyway. The biggest thing with the fleas is that they can cause tapeworm if they are ingested. That’s how I usually found out that my roommates cat had fleas – she would drop the sesame seeds. ick!
be warned, the hiding issue seems to be something that a particular cat will do. One of mine will disappear, and we will look EVERYWHERE. we check all the screens (ours are indoor, thanks to the busy street) we check every single hiding place we can think of thoroughly, and nothing, and just when hubby and I are starting to panic, he shows up just sitting and watching us, like he’d never been hiding at all. And the worst thing is that his brother wont help us look!
I’ve never seen ‘Hydrox’ cookies before. Sounds like a bizarre name for a cookie. 😛
But, a kitten named Hydrox, on the other hand, is the sweetest thing ever. And you could call him Hyde for short 🙂 Cute!!
Amy: Right now we’ve got the corners of two kittens’ ears marked – one with orange, one with blue. Of the other two Lynx points, one has a distinctive blotch of pink at the tip of her ear, and the fourth is the boy. When they get a little bigger, I expect I’ll have figured out a difference in their looks, but they’ll likely need collars before they go off to the adoption center!
Paula: Ohhhh, don’t tempt me. I think I *have* your address around here somewhere, don’t I? 😀
Aimee: “Sesame seeds” made me laugh – because it’s too true!!!
Kate: When Kara was our foster (before we adopted her), she suddenly started disappearing, and we’d freak out, and then she’d just reappear from out of nowhere. Finally, we discovered that she’d been climbing up the fireplace in our front room – there’s a ledge there, and she’d climb up there and have some alone time!
kittykye: Hydrox was the original Oreo! (Link here) I’ve never actually had one myself, but according to my husband, they were far superior to Oreos.
Now that you’re sending out care packages, can you please send Veruca to me as well? She’s still quite tiny and I bet my husband won’t notice one more cat…or I can convince him that he’s just seeing things…or pretend that she’s always been there and he’s getting forgetful…the possibilities are endless! I would have asked for Gus and Hydrox as well, but I see they’re being shipped to Paula!
Is Sookie’s nose two different colors?
So many cute babies!!! How do you get anything done? I would just spend my time sitting with all of them!
Oh the cuteness! I have to second Rhonda, I would never get anything done with so many babies to cuddle!
TimTam is a *completely* perfect name for a kitten. But you knew *I’d* say that! 🙂
I have two kittie babes, and about 6 years ago I noticed my Alex kept going “missing” for periods of time. Could NOT figure out where he was going. They’re not allowed outside at all, and my house is REALLY small – so for the most part – not a lot of hiding spots.
Then it was the Saturday of my son’s 1st birthday party. and I was in a cleaning frenzy, and had to run out to pick up the cake and balloons and couldn’t find Alex. Anywhere. and he wasn’t coming when I called. and I was frantic and cried all the way to pick up the stuff thinking he’d gotten out when I went outside for something earlier, and what a horrible day for this to happen, etc.
Came home and there he was. But I still didn’t know where he’d gone. Fast forward a couple of weeks. and I walk into my kitchen just in time to see Alex jumping from the counter to the top of the refrigerator – where he doesn’t stop – but NOSES open the little cabinets above the refrigerator and goes in. and stays for a couple of hours. was his spot. now that I knew – when he went missing I’d call him and listen to hear the door of the cabinet thud closed and his little paws hit the counter and floor when he’d come running. I even showed him off at a party one evening when people were over and we couldn’t find him. I reached up and opened the cabinet and there he was. He still loves it up there!
Robyn,
I have never used chemicals. What has worked the best for me is the flea comb. As you use the comb keep a bowl of water with some dish soap in it close by. As you find a flea put it in the water. The soap makes it so they cannot float or jump out so they drown. It takes a little time but no chemicals. Good luck!!
SOMEBODY is channeling Hoyt! Nice to see there’s someone who has high expectations for how a kitten should be treated. 🙂
Aloha from flea-infested Maui –
There’s a lovely thing called food-grade diatomaceous earth. Diatoms – prehistoric critters – will slice open the flea larvae, eggs and live guys w/o hurting any of us. Humans just have to be a tad careful of the dust when using this stuff. A teeny bit goes a long way. Neighbors sprinkled it on their feral cat’s food for about a week and away went the tapeworms he had been carrying for many months, to his detriment. We live next door to a big cow pasture and those moos carry big batches of fleas.
My cat has been on the topical flea treatment but there were so many they just moved to his butt end. The eggs fell off when he walked into the window next to my bed. . . and I found small fleas leaping on me as I dressed. Yowza!
Sprinkled some of the diatomaceous earth in the baseboard of that bedroom. That was after vacuuming with the purple Dyson, which had some tea tree oil on several pcs of TP in the canister to kill them off. If the suction didn’t thrash them, the tea tree would. I hope. LOL
Such is life in paradise.
I hope you realise your kittens are killing me softly.
The only way kittens know how to kill anything.
Ugh, fleas and tapeworms. I just discovered that one of my three cats has a tapeworm, even though none of the three are outside cats, we’ve never (so far as I can tell, and I’ve been pretty thorough) had a flea infestation among our cats, and she hasn’t had a tapeworm since the first week she came to live with us over two years ago. I’m guessing whichever flea was carrying the worms came from our landlords’ cat, who is indoor/outdoor, and prowls the halls of the building.
Actually, the fleas scare me more than the tapeworm, in terms of health issues. Tapeworms are super-gross, but fleas are MUCH harder to get rid of and, from a health perspective, more dangerous. I’ll be spending the weekend treating the kitties and vacuuming/washing everything in the apartment.
On a positive note, all these kittens are absolutely gorgeous. I wish I had the time, space, and means to foster babies. Someday…
Uh oh… we HAZ another complainer!
Cookies are a great theme! The thing with cookies is that you can’t have just one, so clearly these babies will have to get adopted in pairs. 🙂
Silly Sookie… don’t do that again!
Oh Robyn… Hydrox is a dead ringer for my first cat, whom I named “Boots” cause he looked like he was wearing them. His face is killing me with the cute.
The Wonkas sure are growing – seems like just yesterday they were in their little cage and you and Fred were bottle feeding them.
You have to admit-getting a new batch of bebeh kittehs must help take your mind off of missing the True Bloods that have gone to be adopted. I send a little prayer every night that they will find as good a home as you and Fred gave them. Lucky kittehs who reside at Crooked Acres.