Over the weekend, I started letting the kittens have more room to roam. For the first day, I put up baby gates across the hallway – one stacked on top of the other – but the hallway is wide enough to make the gates barely reach, and though the kittens didn’t attempt climbing them, it was only a matter of time, and the weight of a couple of kittens would surely have brought them down.
I talked to Fred, who thought about it, and ended up building something that was sturdier and couldn’t be climbed – basically it’s a light piece of plywood, cut to fit across the hallway with hooks on either side. We call it “the wall”, it’s temporary and can be moved out of the way in the evening. It’s not gorgeous, but it works really well.
In addition to their room, the kittens now have the bathroom to run around with (complete with a big-cat litter box! Kittens, I have found, are just like little kids. You know when you’ve just potty-trained a child and they get to where every time they see a bathroom they have to try it out? Kittens are totally like “Hey! New litter box! Time to kick some litter around, WHEE!”) as well as my bedroom. Like all kittens, they’ve particularly taken to my bed, and most of the time when they pile up for a nap, it’s on my bed.
I let them roam for most of the day (I put the “wall” up at the end of the hallway around 7 am, and then herd them into the kitten room around 9 pm), and go up often during the day to visit and snuggle. Sometimes when they’re upstairs racing around and I’m downstairs, they sound like a herd of elephants.
Sam the charmer.
Tell me it doesn’t look EXACTLY like Bill’s sharing a particularly juicy secret.
“Heyyyy, good-lookin’!”
Hoyt adores laying on his back and having his belly rubbed.
I share this picture not only because you can see Terry’s little pink hernia bulging out (down toward his back legs), but because you can see the wonkiness of his paw.
See? He’s got three pink pads, each one belonging to a “finger”, and then over to the side (toward the top of the picture), he’s got two “thumbs.” It’s unbearably cute.
It looks wet around Bill’s eyes because I’d just put gel in them. It seems to have the effect of making them lick their lips for some reason, and then clean their faces.
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Previously
2008: I don’t remember what she was appalled by, but apparently it was quite SOMETHING.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
Oh they are such cuties – and that is a great plan for blocking the area off. That has been our biggest problem with Virgil and then Barney – how to keep them corralled, and then how to keep them from falling. We ended up using some poster board to make a temporary fence with Virgil, but with Barney we didn’t, and then we closed off the banister openings with the cardboard and closed off the open stairs with a carpet runner. I think if I was fostering I would have build something like you did – we considered building something like it at one point but then didn’t think we would need it long enough to worry about (and then right when we were getting ready to take the cardboard down, we got another kitten).
As far as the eye stuff I think that part of it is that it gets in the ducts, but Barney does that when I give him his eye ointment, which I can’t imagine gets in there as quickly as the gel does – maybe it is just a weird kitten thing.
I wish I could biggify the hernia pic to see it better.
They probably lick their face because the medication gets into their tear ducts and they can taste it their mouth. Kinda like us.
Does it come in tuna flavor? 😉
Hélène, you can see a larger version of the picture here, or a super-sized version here. It’s not that exciting, though, it just looks like a furry bulge. 🙂
Good point on the medicine getting into their tear ducts, I hadn’t considered that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come in tuna flavor (since it’s made for humans), but I may have to email the company and suggest that! 🙂
They are getting cuter every day! How happy they must be to be able to explore more territory. I remember when I first let the four tiny monsters out of the kitchen for the first time… they were WILD! Like “WOW! a bed! WOW! a couch! WOOOW! a litter box!”
Must be a joy to watch them 🙂
As for the licking… when I pill my cats they feel like they need to do a whole face and chest thorough licking… Bastet knows why 😉
First… OMG, too cute! Love the whispers, the wonkey paw and the winks!!
Love the divider! Especially that it can be removed. I used Masonite to block off the “dangerous” parts of the basement – it’s light, flexible, cheap and the “smooth” side is so slick the little claws can’t hook in.
Yep, I’m not sure why the bed is such a big draw. Now that the Maples are with the General Population, they nap almost exclusively on the bed. Amazingly, the GP have completely abdicated it to them!! And ROFL about the litter boxes! Yes, yes yes!!