9-28-09 – the Wonkas and the True Blood 6.

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Those Wonka kids are doing just fine. They seem to be losing interest in the bottle on their own and have all started showing some interest in baby food. My next step, I suppose, will be to mix the baby food with canned kitten food and transition them over to that. I put out a bowl of water and a small dish of Babycat on Sunday, and I’ll be darned if they didn’t all four at least give it a try. We’re still supplementing with the bottle, to get some fluid into them, and judging by the litter box, they’re getting enough food and fluid in. I weighed them this morning, and they’re all solidly over a pound (they gained from 1 1/2 ounces to 4 ounces since I weighed them on… Tuesday, I think?), running around with big bright eyes and play-fighting. They are killing me with the cute, I’m telling you.

We’re currently letting them out into the guest bedroom to run around during the day. The cage is still in there, and they seem to all understand where the litter box is. When they get tired, the boys always return to the cage to sleep (the girls tend to flop down on the condo or on the bed across the room). At night we put them in their cage and lock them in, and they don’t seem to mind. When they’re a little bigger, I guess we’ll just allow them full access to the room all the time. Right now they’re still little enough that they get lost in the corners of the room (“Oh WOE, I am lost, someone please save me!”), so we’ll keep them locked up at night.

Violet, Gus, and my knee (and foot).

“So, I’m WALKING ALONG, minding my own BUSINESS, and suddenly there’s this cage door! NOW what the heck am I supposed to do?!”

Gus requires a post-meal massage.

Even this little, they see a closed door and they’re determined to be on the other side of it.

Look who climbed up onto the condo all by her little tiny self! It’s Violet!

Mike followed, and she bit him on the butt for his trouble.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THERE’S A MONSTER IN THE BOX! STAND BACK! BILL WILL SAVE YOU!

First, Bill identifies the monster as being monstrous. “Yes, that is a monster. And it is in the box.”

Second, Bill names the monster. “That is a monster of the mean and bitey genre. Must be a Hoyt monster.”

Bill decides his strategy. “Stop flailing at me, mean and bitey monster. I am thinking here.”

Bill approaches the issue from another angle. “Ah, yes. The mean and bitey monster looks completely different from here!”

Bill taunts the monster. “Can’t get me now, CAN you?!”

And then Bill runs off because he thinks someone was maybe considering that it might possibly, in the next six hours or so, be snack time, and he doesn’t want to miss that.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This was Stinkerbelle from two years ago.

And here she is now.

It’s hard to believe she’s the same cat, isn’t it? She got so dark!

Stinkerbelle was one of our foster kittens. She came with a sister and two brothers, and they were the most feral kittens we’d ever had. It took several days for the most friendly (least feral) of the four to allow us to pet her. All four of the kittens fell immediately in love with our Tommy – when I say “immediately”, I mean that we opened the door to the foster room to let Tommy visit with them, and they all ran right over to him. We thought that perhaps their mother was a black cat. Stinkerbelle (her name was Maryann back then) wouldn’t so much as allow us to touch her until the day we took her siblings off to PetSmart. We know that separating feral kittens will often make them friendlier, and when we first took their first sibling (Tina Louise) to Petsmart, the boys responded by becoming friendlier. When they went off to Petsmart, Stinkerbelle was in the kitten room by herself, and when I walked in and sat down, she came immediately over to me to be petted.

We kept her for a few more weeks, and she got friendlier (though I wouldn’t say she ever really got friendly), and then I took her to Petsmart. It just so happened that I was cleaning cages at Petsmart the next day. I mentioned in passing to Fred that it looked like Stinkerbelle had spent the night digging at her cage door trying to get out, and that was all he needed to hear. On his way home from work, he stopped at Petsmart and got her and brought her home.

(This is a big thing because Fred HATES to stop on the way home. So if he was willing to stop and get her, he was serious about it!)

She’s still on the verge of feral. She spends her days hanging out on top of the kitchen cabinets or on top of the bookcase in the front room. She’ll allow you to pet her if you approach her slowly, but she doesn’t allow you to pet her for long (she gets overwhelmed easily). She still loves loves loves Tommy, and she’s curious about the foster kittens though she won’t go so far as to play with them.

(I do not for the life of me know how it is that we named her Stinkerbelle. I imagine we were trying to come up with a more fitting name than Maryann, and one of us suggested “Stinkerbelle” and it made us laugh. She does not, for the record, stink at all.)

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Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: Those are some awesome Crazy Eyes there on the left.
2006: But this is the ONLY position she’ll take her bottle in, standing on her back legs with her back against me.
2005: Hey. Did you SEE the Best. Picture. Ever.?

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