Do we now know the source of Elwood’s extra girth? He’s hanging out with the raccoons on the front porch, raiding the cat food bin! It’s good to have friends with thumbs!
We have actually blocked Elwood from getting over the fence – at least for the time being, until he realizes that he can climb the fence in other areas and then we have to block THAT part of the fence, too – and he’s really only gone over the fence a few times. Which is to say that Elwood seems to have gotten sizable via the high-quality grain-free food that he gets inside the house. It’s his metabolism, I tell ya!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I think she [Logie] will end up looking rather like Coy and Joy from this site …and you can adopt these two if you are near Central California.
I suspect you’re right!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Oh. My. Goodness. The Skitten videos KILL ME DEAD with the cuteness!!! I can’t believe the change in just a couple days? It’s like one day they just wake up & decide that it’s OK to come out of the box? For the first 4 weeks they will not leave the box, and then one day – BAM! They’re running around the room.
It is really amazing how they hang out in the box and hang out in the box and you think “Oh, they are NEVER going to come out of there” and then suddenly one day they’re all over the place. These days, they’re out of the box – they like to sleep in the middle of the rug – more than they’re in it.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Are they old enough to be interested in the laser dot?
I gave it a try, and thus far, they’re not interested in the laser dot.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Does Darwin stand around like that very often? How soon until she takes off on a two-legged walk???
That’s actually the only time I’ve seen her standing like that. I’d love to see her head around the room on two legs, but despite my encouragement she’s not having it. YET.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Aww, is that Darwin with the zipper?
That is indeed Darwin. I’m afraid to know what’s really under that kitten costume!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
You wanna see a handful at bath time? Check out this Savannah mom and her kit.
And I thought Emmy got some sass from her kittens! That is way too cute.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He may hiss at me from time to time, but the camera loves Joe Bob. This is my favorite picture of that people lover ever! (Let’s face it, a photogenic feline like me can afford to be generous…) Signed, Il Corbione
Corbie, who’s running the mouse for you when you sneak onto the internet? Also, why won’t you snuggle with me? Whyyyy? You used to! You used to be a huge snugglebug, and now you’re all “Talk to the paw, lady.” Hmph.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Apparently five weeks is the age when the kittens are not so interested in sleeping curled up next to Mama anymore. Yesterday when I walked into the room, the kittens were curled up either in the middle of the rug or on the cat tree, and Emmy was curled up in one corner or another. There’s not much sleeping in the box anymore (I really should take it out of the room and clean it, but I’ll leave it for now).
A few people have asked about Emmy and whether she’s allowing us to pet her. She does allow us both to pet her, but she has a limited tolerance for that, and after a few strokes from me, she tends to snap. She lets Fred pet her for longer periods of time, but once she’s decided she’s done with that, she’s DONE and she’ll snap at him, too.
When I say she snaps, I mean she kind of bites at our hands, she rarely makes contact and she’s not aggressive about it unless you keep going past the point when she wants you to stop (you will please note that I stop immediately. Someone else presses his luck, and Emmy has drawn blood a few times.) We cannot touch her at all when she’s eating, because she’s food-aggressive (toward humans, that is – her babies can crawl through her food, and she has no problems with that). I imagine the fact that she’s still too thin and the babies are still nursing, so her body is working hard at producing milk, has something to do with her food-aggressiveness.
We seem to have hit this certain point, where she’ll grudgingly allow some contact, but no matter what we do, we haven’t been able to get beyond that point. Sometimes when I walk into the room (and I always, always speak to her before I open the door so she won’t be taken by surprise), she’s fine, and sometimes she hisses at me.
My plan is, once the babies are completely litter box trained and eating on their own – so, it’ll be a little while, in other words – to separate them from Emmy. We’ll have her spayed and then get to work with her one-on-one, and hopefully we’ll make more progress. She had such a rough start and has been such a good mama to those babies that I really hope we can turn her around and get her to trust us.
Luckily, despite all my initial concerns, the babies are perfectly friendly and always happy to see me when I walk into the room!
If you look very, very closely, you can see a piece of litter in Newbery’s mouth.
::thlurrrp::
“Dat was yummy.”
I have kissed this face one thousand and thirty-three times, and intend to do it another million times. He puts up with it, but he doesn’t LIKE it. Yet. He will.
Darwin and Logie, snugglin’ in the box.
Front to back, Razzie (obv), Logie (obv) and Darwin.
Newbery, having just awoken from his nap, tries to decide whether to stay up or go back to bed.
Razzie’s just about the size of my foot, it appears.
Something startled Razzie – I don’t know what – look at the fur on her tail!
This cracks me UP!
They love to bite this blanket.
Darwin and Razzie, going sideways at each other.
Checking to see if the coast is clear.
Emmy gets a moment to herself.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Noms video! This video kills me dead, it’s so cute, but first a few notes from me: (1) at 12 seconds, when she jumps up at the outlet? She looks like the frog on Frogger going ::SPLAT!::, doesn’t she? (2) I call Darwin “Little Bit” because she’s a tiny little thing. (3) After she crawled out, I put the toy in the closet where they can’t get to it, because I don’t need them getting STUCK.
I’ve got another video or two that I’ll post this weekend!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Fred calls Corbie “Chester.”
I was like, “Why are you calling him Chester? What’s that about?” Fred said, “He walks like Chester Cheetah!”
I had to go to YouTube and watch the commercial, and then I laughed and laughed.
Corbie TOTALLY walks like Chester Cheetah. I’ve GOT to get Corbie walking on video, so y’all can see for yourselves!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Previously
2011: “Tastes like chicken.”
2010: FAKING IT THE ENTIRE TIME.
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
I would like to place an order for one Logie and one Newbery, with a side order of Jake & Joe-Bob with Stinkerbelle as garnish. Could they be delivered to my house by the time I get home? No? NUTS! 😀
I’ll do the same, but I would like one Darwin, also, to go please.
Oh…and a Corbie-pot-pie, too!
Shipping is going to be THROUGH THE ROOF on this order!
My 2 yr old STILL loves to bite the blanket. I don’t get the attraction…maybe the sound or the feel of it as his teeth go thru it….? My little freak!!!
LOVE the video!!!!
My Sweetpea does it, too! The positive side effect is it keeps her teeth free from tartar, so that makes up for the holes in the blankies!!
My Murphy likes to bite my paperback book covers. Sigh.
All of the blinds in this house have teeth-marks in them.
I had to pay for a Library book that Snickers chewed the cornor of of.
Little Bit was taking advantage of her diminutive stature! So cute.
Emmy is bringing balance to the site: she’s the “hisses” part of love and hisses. It’s a feature, not a problem! 😉
In the video they are running around like they’re having a bad acid trip. (Not that I would know what that looks like). What the heck is in Emmy’s milk?
Maybe Emmy’s been appreciating those catnip toys. 🙂
Wah! Just when Darwin finds the perfect kitten cave EVAH, you take it away from her!!
(Good thing, too! Yikes, she is tiny!!)
The uncoordinated kitten crab walking kills me! Razzy looks like a bebeh bobcat. I seriously need to huff some bellehs…
The “1,033 kisses” picture of Newbery is now my desktop wallpaper. 🙂
Emmy reminds me of Minerva, who came to me after biting at two different foster homes. I was told she was adopted and is in her furever home now.
And “little bit” is so like – I meant to do this!!
I wonder how many times she’d done exactly that before I was in there to see it happen myself!
Five weeks is when kittens start to become their own little cats apart from Mom, though they still need her. Orphans that are at least five weeks old are always easier to raise because it is much easier for a human to become a cat Mommy at this stage. You still have to teach them soft paw, but they already know to clean themselves and take to basic cat box pretty quickly.
Kittens should never (and I know you wont) be taken from Mommy this early if there is a choice, because they will often be “quirky” as adults without her; manageable, but you get things like giant 17 pound tom cats that nurse the bathroom rug or cling to you like tiny kittens when there is a sudden noise. Even a week later (the age in the old days when kittens were given away, though we know now that is too young unless there is an emergency) they are can cope better.
By eight or nine weeks; a wild/feral Mother will already be pushing her babies away (usually) because she has another litter on the way to care for. In general she won’t totally abandon them; they’ll be part of her “pride” until the males drift away by age two (if they live) or become top cat with his “minions.”
But she knows she can feed to litters, so usually she pushes them off; as we’ve seen at Love and Hisses, Mommy cats who are not going to have another litter will sometimes just nurse kittens forever, even for life sometimes. It is very funny to see two full grown cats nursing on a blissful looking Momma cat lol. Even temporary separation won’t always stop the mostly harmless behavior, it is best to separated them long enough to actually dry up any milk so Mom does not keep producing it and expending energy. Otherwise – well its just a cat thing…
Yeah, I wasn’t planning to separate them for at least another month (I’m going on vacation at the beginning of May and thought that when I got back would be a good time to do it). Reading between the lines, here, I think you’re telling me that Emmy will be going into heat in the next few weeks? (I’m remembering when Kara went into heat and decided that Spanky was her man. Poor Spanky, he was all “I do not know what you want from me, and you’re making me uncomfortable.”)
My Harley was feral (although pretty friendly for a feral) when I adopted her. She went into heat quicker than we expected, and she was SO interested in Simon. Simon had been fixed for years and was very confused. He seemed to sort of understand what she wanted but was absolutely appalled at the idea (plus, of course, unable to do anything about it!) Even after she was fixed, Harley was inordinately fond of Simon, and I don’t think either of them really remembered why!
That little red kitten on your header makes me laugh each and every time I see him (or her).
I think Logie might lose her white hairs and be a black cat. I didn’t see my Luna when she was born, but at 8 weeks, she had a spattering of white hairs on her body, and a raccoon-like tail. (We called her Luna because the white against the black made me think of moonlight on a lake.) After a few months, I noticed both the white hairs and the raccoon-tail were gone, and she was all black. My white cat, Sugar was born with a black/gray dot on her head, and that also slowly disappeared. I think your friend, Oldcat, mentioned that it’s like how baby deer and baby lions are born with spots and they slowly fade away.
So many lovely Newbery photos today. I have a Picasa folder just for Newbery, it’s fun to put the newest on the desktop, and see all in a slideshow since he Was born. All the kittens are so cute but you know that Newbery has a special place in my heart.
Darwin is very smart! She found the perfect hiding place from her crazy siblings. But I would have totally taken it away too, because you’re right, they will get stuck in it at some point.
Happy weekend to all, and Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate!
LOVE the video! And I can so sympathize when I hear you say “oh, this is not good…” You think you have everything “kitten-proofed” until the minute they prove you wrong! 😉
So glad that you will spend time working with Emmy when she is one-on-one with you…the kittens are beyond gorgeous and will find terrific homes – and Emmy will have the same opportunity, with your socialization efforts. She is such a lovely Mamacat!
Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Spring!
Simba likes to blame his metabolism for his wide-body too. I like to blame his bossy nature and his intense desire to know what is on everyone else’s plate. The thumbed-creatures in the house (read: my kids) have discovered that the way to his heart is through his extra-large stomach. His weight fluctuates, but right now… he’s wearing his fat fur-pants.
Newbery seems to have inherited Mama Emmy’s exceptionally expressive eyes. He will make such a handsome man-cat!
re: Coy and Joy* – they look just like my Mr.T did, although he didn’t have facial markings like they do; his face was just black. I always used to be amazed that this cat, who looked solid black except from certain angles in the sunlight, would fill up the grooming brush with pure WHITE fur every time I brushed him! Now I know why, AND a better way to describe him (in memoriam) than “black on black.”
*Although I have sworn no more cats, I do find myself calculating the distance to California… and it’s a holiday weekend so I could leave now…
I swear, if there were any way possible I could make the trip down to the states in the next little while, I would be there picking up (at least) Logie for adoption. Apparently would only take me 19.5 hours to drive there. Hmmmmmm… 😀
Does the end of Razzie’s short tail ever stand up straight like the other kittens or does it always bend at the tip? I dont think I’ve seen a picture of her when it wasnt bent..
Love the video! What a crazy romping group of wild indians!
Oh hello Corbie! Has anyone told you how cute you are? Didn’t think so..
My handsome young tabby, Chester, applauds Corbie’s new sobriquet; he does, however, consider Don Corbione’s lack of snuggling is letting the side down. His sole suggestion? A few one-on-one catnip sessions per week. Of course, that’s his response to pretty much every question.
so what’s really coming out of the little atomiser thingy, Robyn? ‘cos that a hilarious lot of kittens you have there. wobbily, slippery, skittish, floofy kittens. i laughed.