11/23/10

On Friday, Starsky and Hutch (now Jack and Percy) went to their new homes in Indiana. On Saturday, Fred decided he wanted to go out to lunch. We were just sitting down to lunch when my cell phone rang. I grabbed it and saw that it was the shelter manager calling.

Three hours later, we had in our possession some sweet little 6 week-olds. Six of them, to be exact. And when Fred checked them and it became clear that we had an even number of boys and girls, well, our naming scheme was immediately clear to us.

Meet…

(“Adios, Johnny Bravo!”)
Greg.

(“Hey you guys – ooh! My nose!”)
Marcia.

(“Porkchops and appleshauce.”)
Peter.

(“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”)
Jan.

(“Mom always SAYS not to play ball in the house!”)
Bobby.

(“Baby talk, baby talk, it’s a wonder you can walk!”)
Cindy.

The Brady Bunch is my all-time favorite show, so it was only a matter of time (and having the correct number of girls and boys) before we got to have our very own bunch of Bradys.

Left to right: Marcia, Peter, Greg (in front), Cindy (at the water bowl), Jan, Bobby.

I don’t know where they originally came from. The man who turned them over to me got them from his grandmother, who had them kind of dumped off on her by a family member. They were in pretty good shape for the most part, though a couple of them have goopy eyes.

We put them in the foster room when we got them, and showed them where the litter boxes were (in the closet) and where the food was, and then left them alone to get used to their surroundings. A couple of hours later Fred opened the door to go in, and called to me to bring some paper towels because there was poop in the middle of the rug. And then he stepped further into the room, and it was like everywhere he looked, there was more poop. They’d pooped in every single cat bed, and the room just smelled horrific. I got it all cleaned up, and moved the litter box from the closet into the main part of the room, and set up another smaller, lower litter box in case the problem was that they couldn’t get into the litter box. There have been a few more accidents since then, but for the most part they seem to have gotten the hang of the litter boxes.

Yesterday, I took them to the vet and dropped them off for their COMBO testing. They all tested negative (yay!), and after I picked them up I had to go to the shelter to pick up a few things. I was driving down the road, and I smelled the smell of fresh poop and glanced back to see that all three girls were traipsing through it. Because I’ve learned to never ever take ANY cats ANYWHERE without about three times as many cleaning rags and replacement blankets for the carrier than I could possibly ever need, I was able to pull over in a parking lot and clean the carrier and the kittens with no problem.

Five minutes later down the road, THAT SMELL again. I stopped and looked. The carrier of boys had one little pile of poop in it, and all three boys were at the opposite end of the carrier staring in horror at the pile. That was a lot easier to clean up.

I’ve been experiencing a real Poopapalooza, is what I’m saying. Hopefully that’ll end soon!

They’re all very sweet and friendly kittens and start purring as soon as you pick them up. They’ve all displayed their own little personalities quite nicely, especially Bobby Brady. If Bobby Brady (I can’t help it, I HAVE to call him “Bobby Brady” rather than just “Bobby”, for some reason) were a person, he would speak in ALL CAPS! AND MANY! MANY! MANY! EXCLAMATION POINTS! The instant I enter the room and sit down, he climbs up on my shoulder and rubs his face against my cheek and purrs and talks. He’s a shoulder monkey. Cindy Brady climbs into my lap and just lays there and purrs and would probably just lay there and let me pet her forever.

Marcia is HUGE compared to the other kittens. She’s at 1 pound 10 ounces, and Cindy, Bobby, and Peter are all at one pound. Marcia’s a calitabby (I think that’s what you’d call her) and she has that very soft and silky Siamese-like fur. She’s a bit sedentary and doesn’t mind playing, but she won’t, you know, get up and go across the ROOM to play or anything. She’s probably conserving her energy for trips to the food bowl. She’s also a bit of a drama queen – the first to hiss and the first to complain if you pick her up when she was doing something. Greg’s a wild child and just plays plays PLAYS. Jan’s very playful and if you pick her up she’ll purr, but she doesn’t really ask for attention the way the three smallest do.

Peter, oh – what can I say about Peter? Just like the real Peter Brady (or rather, I guess I should say, Peter Brady the character from the show), he’s destined to break my heart (I was sure I was going to marry Peter Brady, you know). He’s a sweet, quiet little man who will sit with one paw on my knee and stare at me, clearly hoping that I’ll pet him. He purrs and purrs and purrs.

Since these guys are still so little, they’ll be around for a while – so you’ll get a chance to fall in love with them as much as I already have!

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Pretty, pretty Reacher.

Something has annoyed the Rhyme.

“I haz a box.”

Buster Brown gets around.

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When I walked into the kitchen the other night to put a glass in the sink, I was startled to see Newt laying there. I know cats like sinks – there’s a whole site devoted to it, after all – but I’ve never actually had any of the cats take up residence in the kitchen sink. He slept there all night, and hasn’t been back in there since.