Hola Cincos |
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Wednesday |
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Last weekend was hectic, with dinner guests on consecutive nights, so between dinner preparations and vacation planning, we never found time to post. We also weren’t sure how things were going to play out until the weekend was over.
Fortunately, Queen Isabella continued to recover slowly but steadily from last week’s mastitis. She never seemed uncomfortable, just lonely in the villa, so we were happy to accept a proposal from the cat managers at Homeward Trails. We transferred QI to her coordinator (one of our Sat night dinner guests), where she can hang with seven other mellow cats…
...including old pal Chimay, who’s become much more social thanks to the efforts of her new foster mom!
And then on Sunday we picked up a new litter via shuttle from the Prince Georges County shelter – four 5-week-old kittens with a Nola-lookalike nursing mom.
For some reason the new HT database seems to require immediate naming of animals (hopefully this will change), so we were told to submit names, genders, and colors for our new posse the same day we picked them up. I’m sure we would have received some great suggestions, but we went with the obvious and called them the Cinco de Mayo kittens, since they arrived on that day.
We had a hard time mining the Cinco de Mayo history for female names, but Martha liked Guadalupe for our momcat. She hissed at us a bit the first day, but quickly befriended us after we delivered a couple of meals. Guadalupe was even a good sport about the prophylactic azithromycin regimen we put her on.
That left us trying to find names for the three females and one male in her litter. They all looked pretty healthy, though quick to dash under the futon at our approach. They’re getting more comfortable with us every day.
Ignacio is a classic brown tabby boy, and by far the biggest of the Cincos.
Puebla is a patchy tabby and (so far) the most adventuresome of the Cincos.
Zara is a cute little black squirmer who likes to hang out in the nest.
Goza is a gorgeous puffball, small like Bunnyfoot under all that fur.
For the first day or two, the Cincos went skittering under the futon when we opened the door, but now when we hang out for a few minutes, they emerge to play.
If they don’t have any health setbacks (we have found a few puddles of vomit recently), the Cincos could be big enough to go home in another month. So we’ll need to socialize them as well as we can this week, then turn them over to someone who can do more of the same while we’re away.
Meanwhile we’re trying to convince our staff dogs (and upstairs czarina Nola) to keep the barking and chewing and hissing in check. We want our housesitters to stay sane while we’re away.
And maybe the Cincos will come back for another short tour with us before they graduate in June.
filed by: TS
