a stepping-stone to adoption for abandoned furballs

entries

kittens

hijinx

reference

about 50K

Rock 'n Rally

Sunday
5/1/2011

Good news to report on Mica. He’s not back to 100% – he’s still a little wobbly and weak, but he’s clearly on the path to full recovery. Whew! Having never experienced encephalitis in a kitten, we didn’t know what to expect and wondered if he might have life-long problems. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all.

We’ll never know if his illness was caused by toxoplasmosis or a virus, but we’re relieved that none of the other Gems got sick and that Mica made a quick recovery.

The other Gems continue to thrive and provide us with camera-grabbing cute moments every day. They’re eating well, using the litter box reliably, and generally just having a lot of kitten fun!

Up in the bunkhouse, the Rally Caps finally have names. We’re baseball fans, so we liked Dan’s suggestion to tie the names to baseball, but we’re also following the Capitals closely and we wanted to honor the Bottle Caps with a continuation of a hockey theme (they had been named after Capitals players by their previous foster’s little boy)...so...we split the difference.

Orange guy, Xander, is the beefy robust version of our orange tabby Bottle Cap fighter, Alex. On the other end of the spectrum is Twinkie – a nod to your Minneapolis Twins, Dan – and also to a little gal with big attitude, Pinky, whom Twinkie reminds us of.

The tabby gal with white feet and a tiny white tail-tip is now Soxy – both for her white feet and for the Boston Red Sox (Ted's favorite team.) Finally, we wanted another hockey-related name. We thought our solid brown tabby was a boy at first, then we decided otherwise, and we had a hard time coming up with a female hockey name. After much discussion, we settled on Pucka. We liked Puck, but decided to give it a feminine twist with an ‘a’ on the end.

We’d like to report that GA is basking in the glow of step-motherhood, but after the first day or so, she decided that maybe this gig wasn’t quite as great as it seemed. We stepped in pretty quickly and started bottle feeding the Caps just to be on the safe side, and the fact that they latch onto the bottles and gulp down healthy amounts at each meal says that GA probably isn’t nursing them as much as they need. However, they do nurse from time to time, and she’s good about grooming them. We often find one or two of them just curled up near her, which is worth a lot.

Although we’re having to bottle feed them, we don’t have to get up in the middle of the night (yay) and they all lock on to the bottle quickly and efficiently, which makes it easy for us.

Meanwhile, usurped baby, Tamara, is acting just as you would expect a human toddler to react to a new baby. When I bottle feed one of them in my lap, she is climbing all over me begging for attention. At first, she clung to GA, but now she interacts a lot with the babies – both playing with them (as much as they can do that) and even napping with them.

She’s good about not playing too roughly considering they’re less than half her size. We’d still like to get her with other kittens her own age (we’re working on that), but the Rally Caps are providing her with company and entertainment.

So everything is looking good at 50K, both upstairs and downstairs!

filed by: ME

7 comments

previous

entry 455 of 870

next

go to entry:

 

50K – the year in furballs:

2015

 

2014

 

2013

 

2012

 

2011

 

2010

 

2009