Holly's Happenings: Kitten Kaboodle

I am in love with the whole kit and kaboodle!

Once you get a kitten, the natural thing you do is take a billion photos - Hannah Simone.
A kitten gets himself into every kind of trouble - Champfleury.
Kittens are wide-eyed, soft and sweet. With needles in their jaws and feet - Pam Brown.
A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there - Agnes Repplier.

Sat 10/12 - It was a 47 degree cold, drizzly, misty walk at 5:30 when I got up. As soon as Maggie peed, we turned around and went straight back to the house.

The kittens have become very curious and friendly, so when I go out in the garage, they come to the edge of the box to see me. Mama was nursing them, but this one twin came over and tried to climb out. And then I caught Arigato in the act of escaping.

I hadn't yet finished excavating down back, but it was too cold and damp out to mess with it yet. So I started work in the garage making a new confinement area for the kittens since they had started climbing out of the box.

Styx liked that I had moved the climbing (cat) tree in front of the window.

Running out of time, I headed to the barn for the October Birthday parties for Judy, Kayla, Patty, and Carol.

We had a very good, and tasty potluck.

I left the party a bit early to get home to finish my pond/creek dredging project, which I did, and posted photos of last week.

I was then running late for the Hawkeye kick off at Spikes, and joined Joe, Mary, and Patty there.

It was also Lady's night out, that Elaine, a new friend who works out at the gym
and is a pickleball player with all my pickleball friends, had organized. So at halftime I went out to the patio to dance with them. It was cold outside so we stuck fairly close to the big heaters they had fired up. In this photo is Elaine and Sherri, warming by a heater.

I left before the end of the disappointing Hawkeye game, made a stop at Food City, and was home and in bed by 10:30.

Sunday 10/13 - It had gotten down into the upper 30's overnight and there was frost on the roofs when I walked Maggie at 5:30, so I took the space heater from my sunroom, and moved it to the garage. Then I had to wrap up in a blanket. I didn't sit here at my desk too long, because company was coming and I wanted to get the new cat enclosure finished and do a little house cleaning.

Once the new cat habitat was done, I moved the kittens in their box bed to under the cat tree. Mama Styx came over right away to check on them. And they immediately started exploring.

I watched for awhile and took this (video) to show my Facebook fans the new kitten space. While the cats played, I finished cleaning the rest of the garage. Notice Styx and a few kittens on the first shelf of the cat tree.

Courtney sent this selfie of she, Val, and Tango to say they were running late. That was good, because so was I. The kittens were such a distraction.

The babies have never really seen Mama eat before, and were fascinated by this. It was soon time to expose them to cat food.

Joe helped Ken and Linnea transport Brian's scooter to their house, using our horse trailer, and then he brought the trailer back here to power wash it.

Some kittens had fallen asleep on the shelf and others below in the box bed.

When the 'kids' arrived, we let Maggie out to meet Tango. They did their greeting sniffing, and that was that. They got along fine the rest of the day, except Maggie swiped Tango's toy.

Then it was time to meet the kittens. (Mary was here also, while Patty was at work.) And like the earlier quote said, billions of photos were taken, a few different times during the day.

We had snacks for a lunch.

Then we loaded up two dogs and six people into two cars and went to the dog park. Maggie raced around a lot more than Tango did.

Next on the agenda was a pontoon ride. It was a tad cool when going into the wind, but the sun was warm and felt great, even hot when out of the wind.

Silly Courtney tried to do some tanning.

The sun was already getting quite low in the sky as we were heading back to the dock at 4:15.

Then we had to hustle to get to the barn with our limited time and daylight left. Just Patty, Courtney and I went. We groomed Amiga and Zorro and Courtney braided his mane.
While we were gone, Valencia trimmed all the kitten claws (90 nails total)!

We ended our wonderful visit with dinner at Stonehenge. During my before bed kitten playtime, I noticed right away that their sharp little nails were not sticking me or snagging my clothes. But their new, sharp little baby teeth were becoming apparent.

Monday 10/14 - The day was kind of a 'bust' because I felt cold, tired, and unmotivated. I did get this new blog post started. I also tried feeding the kittens canned kitten food mixed with kitten milk replacer. I placed mama cat's dish of food next to the kitten dish so they could see what they were supposed to do with it.

They all came running to check it out. A few actually ate the stuff (video), but some just made a mess walking in it and running off. I did not let Styx eat very much of the kitten food, thinking her digestive tract would not be used to the kitten milk replacer.

Babe ate the most of the food and then got very playful.
Meanwhile, I set up a new box for the kitten bed.

It was larger and more enclosed at one end to help keep the kittens warmer when it gets so cold at night out in the garage.

The front was very open and I also put in an escape door on the back side.

Mama Styx checked it out and seemed to approve of it. The kittens liked the new space to explore and the second door.

I spent quite a bit of time out in the garage playing with and holding the kittens (video). I was not happy when one of them peed on me and the cushion I was sitting on, but it motivated me to start laundry.

This is Lady, cleaning her paws and face of some residual food.

I did two loads of laundry and put flannel sheets and heavier blankets on our bed.

While working in the bedroom, I noticed out in the sunroom, Maggie sleeping, but her ears looked odd.

I woke her up when getting closer for a photo. I just thought the way her ears were resting, made her look funny and cute.

Joe parked his scooter on the sidewalk to get to an outlet so he could re-charge the battery. He has been so good about letting me take over a large portion of the garage space with kittens, so I didn't complain about this odd (in the way) parking spot.

Mid-day I laid down in the kitten enclosure to watch them and take a nap. Several immediately came over and started climbing on me.

I hoped none would pee on me again.

Eventually they all settled in and we had a nice little nap.

I did not go to the gym, rake leaves, or go for a ride, all of which I had intended to do. But I did water the grass seed and new grass. It was actually warmer outside than I had realized, and still very, very dry.

I took Maggie for a long walk after dinner. You can see how dry the under brush in the woods is. This was going up Library Trail. Eventually, as we came back home by way of the road, I saw a bunch of vultures circling, and then this one in the road.

It is a good way to have road-kill cleaned up.

At bed time, I tried food for the kittens again, and this time didn't make it as soupy and also put mama cat's food right on the same dish.

The kittens do watch and learn from Styx. Babe and Lady were the only two who ate very much.

Babe ate the most again. I let Styx clean up everything left on the plate since the milk replacer hadn't seemed to bother her earlier.

Tue 10/15 - Was not as sunny, but seemed warmer than the day before. My Hibiscus is producing two or three flowers a day. Too bad they only last one day.

First thing when I was taking the dog out for a walk, I found cat (Styx) puke, just a little, that was mostly liquid. When I fed her can food she would not eat it. And later in the morning, there was a little more throw-up. This had me concerned, but I figured it was all the milk replacer she ate the night before that upset her tummy. After a few hours I tried the can food again and she ate it.

She likes to lay on the lawn chair for a warm place to rest away from the kittens.

It was another mostly non-productive day. I just couldn't get up the gumption to go to the barn or the gym and I ended up taking three (yes 3) naps. Again I was blaming and questioning my thyroid medication, or worse yet, I wondered if I had some kind of physical disease/ailment making me so lethargic and unenergetic.

Joe blew leaves out of the drainage ditch and removed a few piles from the front yard before he left for golf and then poker. I made myself got out and work on the pile he had made down back. The left side of our back yard remained leaf covered.

I did extra raking and got most of the right side of the back yard cleared of leaves.

I took Maggie for a long walk after dinner. It was getting dark, cooler, and a breeze had picked up, so I covered my ears. I took this selfie to send the girls who I regularly Facebook message with.

A sizable amount of my evening time was spent in the garage with the kittens. This old flower pot is Renegades favorite toy.

He hides in it, plays in it, tries to climb on it, and rolls it around (video).

He has been great about using the litter box. Most of the kittens are quite reliable, but there are still occasional accidents.

There was much kitten play occurring and they like to climb on my legs while I sit on the floor with them. Babe and Renegade are usual playmates, and do a lot of wrestling.

I offered dinner, on one plate, and while Mama Styx ate her can food, some of the babies ate their mixture of can and milk replacer.

Wednesday 10/16 - The rain finally came, and this time, enough to leave water standing in the creek. I took this photo after the skies had cleared, mid-morning. And here is a before shot when the creek was dry.

When the pond is full to the spillway level, all of these big rocks are under water, so there is a lot more filling that needs to happen.

Well, I finally got myself to the gym. I didn't lift weights, but I did some rowing, Line dance class and then Zumba.

Renegade had stepped in the morning feed which resulted in a great deal of time cleaning his paws.

I brought a large plant in off the front porch after getting it deadheaded and the pot cleaned off. Then I cleaned the porch in preparation to put up Halloween decorations.

I had lots of kitten time out in the garage because they are at a very playful and fun to watch age.

As usual, Babe and Renegade were having fun together.

Some of the action shots are out of focus.

Eventually they all got tired and settled in for a nap together. The garage is fairly cold, so the kittens do a lot of snuggling.

I went to the Spaghetti Pasta Buffet at Legend's with Patty, Mary, their cousin Shirley and her husband Paul. We all ate heartily.

More kitten time before bed. They are getting the hang of eating and using the litter box.

Lady is the most snuggly, and probably the sweetest. She loves to lay in my arms (video).

Thursday 10/17 - It had gotten down into the 30's over night so first thing, I turned on the space heater in the garage. I saw that the kittens had left their larger box bed and were tightly packed into the cat climbing tree box.

They actually looked fairly warm and snuggly.

I also noticed at feeding time, that the girls were more interested in the can food (video) than the boys. Once the canned food was gone, I decided to put the dry food in where the kittens could try it. When Styx came to eat it, two of the boys tried nursing while she was eating.

Once she moved on, Arigato and Renegade went for the dry food.

Even though the babies are doing fairly well with solid food, they're still nursing quite often. It is getting pretty crowded at the milk bar.

My knees were sore from Zumba the day before, but after doing weights, I decided to do another Zumba class, because sometimes exercising sore muscles help them feel better.

On the way home I dropped by the vet to get wormer, but decided to wait and have the kittens weighed. Then I went to a couple of stores, getting cheap regular clay cat litter at Dollar General.

I have continued watering one area of seed I planted later than the rest, that has just started to germinate. When the new grass looks dry, I also water it.

I finally made it to the barn and went for a nice ride (only an hour) with Jan and Polly.

We all got a little cold by the time we finished at 6:00.

As usual, the day ended with kitten time. I cut holes in this box and put it in the kitten enclosure for them to play in. Renegade was the first to go explore it.

Friday 10/18 - While they are awake, there is never a dull moment in the kitten habitat. I took this (video) of them at five weeks of age.

As usual, Renegade and Babe were hard at play (video).

Sometimes I worry about them hurting each other.

I took mama Styx and the five babies (the whole kitten caboodle) to the vet. I had her tested for Feline Leukemia and AIDS. I was so glad it came back negative, which means none of the kittens have it either. Each kitten weighed in right around one pound and were wormed. Mama Styx weighed just over six pounds and was wormed also. She has ear mites, which the vet treated, but he was very surprised that none of the kittens did. There was a little flea dust on the mom, so I need to stay persistent with washing the bedding and ground blanket. The mom roams everywhere in the garage, so I need to consider other areas where fleas might lay eggs, like the carpeted step by the door where Styx sits alot.

I have committed with Wild About Cats to adopt Styx. I figured it will be easier to find homes for the kittens than for her, and she is just so sweet and I love her so much.

Once home from the vet, I fed everybody canned food and then mama settled in to nursing them. Renegade, as is often the case, was off on his own eating dry food.

Then we (Joe, Patty, Mary, Shirley, Paul, friend Shirley, and I) all went for a pontoon ride. I forgot to take any photos.