Calories burned wrestling kittens

NorthCascades

cmriverside

*squee* Is this a new family member(s)?

I used to do foster care for a local animal shelter...one or two kittens are fine. Six of the little rascals are a smelly, messy mess.

NorthCascades

These kittens killed my Garmin! With their powers!

I've been feeding a stray in my neighborhood for a year and a half, having exactly no success turning her into a house cat. She hissed at me every time I fed her, never let me within about 10 feet of her. But kept coming to my door looking sad and pathetic and eating everything I gave her. She would come in for food but run as soon as I moved. In December she decided we're friends, and then started looking like she swallowed a basketball. 🐈 😆 🤣

Pixie lives indoors now, with her 7 little sprites. My grand kittens.

cmriverside

oh, jeebus. I read your dead Garmin post, too.

They look to be almost old enough to move out (and get fixed - along with Pixie!!)

I had a cat-mom like that when I was in my twenties. Unplanned kittens are not an ideal thing, for sure. We had to find homes for them and that was a task in itself. I hope you get them fixed soon.

NorthCascades

Pixie was supposed to get spayed on the 7th, we pushed it back to the 18th because she still has boobs, cutting through them complicates the surgery. But it's coming. I wanted to get her fixed a long time ago, but she wouldn't let me catch her until she was pregnant.

The kittens are 6 weeks old. We've got forever homes for all of them. 🙂 I'm keeping two, my next door neighbor is keeping two and the mom.

cmriverside

Oh, that's nice that the whole family will be in the neighborhood.

When I volunteered at PAWS, they would spay and neuter kittens at eight weeks or two pounds. Male or female.

NorthCascades

I've been waiting to ask the vet when we get the grand kittens fixed, thanks for taking that one off my list! I can't believe it happens when they're so young! It sounds like one of those movies where the parent goes back to school with their kid. 🙂

Those kittens are the reason I'm not skiing today, and why I'm not riding or walking as much as I'd like. The neighbor and I have been working as a team on this.

cmriverside

I think some vets would rather it be at 4 Months, but they can get pregnant by that age if they are big enough and healthy.

Granted, the shelter had to neuter before adopting them out, and the smaller the kittens the more likely to find homes quickly. There is about a week's recovery after the surgery for females. I'm guessing a couple of those are female by the tortoiseshell markings. So cute.

NorthCascades

Speaking of their markings ... we thought they were all inky black (except the tux) until this week when the sun finally came out in Seattle and revealed their tiger stripes! 😆 🤣 (☹️)

The neighbor and I talked about requiring a $100 donation to a charity before we allowed anybody to adopt. We weren't really comfortable enforcing it. The idea, I'm sure you know this, is we only want them going to families that will be willing to spend what vet care and healthy cat food cost. It seemed like 7 kittens was a lot, we both fell in love with 2, and are only giving 3 out. We've been able to vet people carefully and know that they're going to homes that will prioritize them. So we're trusting adoptees to get them fixed.

I'm getting a boy and a girl. I chose this apartment because it's a place cats can go outside and be safe. It's going to take a lot before they're allowed outside though, won't happen before they're fixed and microchipped. 🙂

yirara

Awwww! when I lived in the Middle East a feral cat decided to give birth in my garden, and I ended up with 6 tiny, very different-looking kittens. It was amazing to see mom teach them how to climb down high things (up was never a problem), hunt pigeons (she'd bring half-dead ones and then get angry at the kittens when they ignored the poor pigeon). One small one vanished quickly unfortunately. When they got old enough we caught four of them and had them castrated. The fifth one had already gone his own way, and mom had also mostly left. Couldn't find a home for them, and we left short after, but at least they couldn't reproduce even more.

NorthCascades

Pixie is going to the vet today, they're going to remove her ability to produce kitten.zip.

cmriverside

Yay! Go Pixie!

goal06082021

Sweet babies! I hope Pixie's surgery goes smoothly and she recovers quickly.

I also used to work at an animal shelter and we would spay/neuter at 2 lbs as well. 4lbs is better - the margin for error is a lot thinner the smaller the animal is - but we ultimately wanted to minimize the amount of time the kittens had to spend in our care. It was a big, well-funded shelter, but even the biggest and best-funded shelter is still a stressful environment for a cat of any age, so the fewer days they spent with us, the fewer opportunities they had to get sick and have to stay even longer. We had a robust foster network that afforded us a little bit of time to let them grow some, especially in the "off" season, but during all-caps-defcon-1 KITTEN SEASON (April to July), there were simply too many of them to hold onto for that long. So, our surgeons got really good at sterilizing the itty bitty 2-pounders so they could go home right away once they were placed on the adoption floor, which was usually about 48-72 hours after surgery. The boys were barely aware anything had even happened to them, the incisions were so small we glued them shut instead of using traditional needle-and-thread stitches; the girls were a little sore for a few days, but they were also right back to their usual kitten antics in less than a week.

cmriverside

all-caps-defcon-1 KITTEN SEASON

I do not miss being at the shelter this time of year.

SoMany
KITTEHS

goal06082021

@cmriverside I did specifically cat adoptions, and this was South Florida so it was never really *not* Kitten Season - there were many a St. Catty's Day/St. Pawtrick's Day waived-fee or "BOGO" adoption promo because we were already starting to fill up with baby cats. Heck, we had Kitten Bowls several years in a row on Superbowl weekend. My workstation was right outside the post-surgery cat recovery room. the mewing...the mewing!

cmriverside

@goal06082021 I actually laughed out loud at your, "the mewing...the mewing!"

I live in a pretty small one bedroom place. There have been [too many] queens with kittens here as foster animals. It was not my most intelligent time(s) in life, that much I know is true.
I had to stop working at the shelter - they took over my whole life! All I wanted was to volunteer four hours a week and I ended up with three resident adult cats and an ever-rotating number of pooping/ getting into everything/always somebody on the injured list or sick cast of kittens.

One of the women who worked in the shelter said the word Kitten with such disgust and derision that you'd think she hated them - but she was working in the cat foster section.

They'll break your heart in good and bad ways.

SuzanneC1l9zz

We also have a Pixie. She's a whopping 8 lbs and has thumbs! 🥰

NorthCascades

Miss Pixie is 3.5 years old, too old for this. She's hurting, but also stubborn. They gave us pain medicine for her, she seems pretty loopy. She's using the stairs we got her.

For the next few days Pixie is living in the bedroom, she has a human in with her at pretty much all times, and I'm kitten sitting and getting food. Right now I have one sprite sleeping on me and another is sitting in my lap chewing the drawstring in my pants.

AnnPT77

NorthCascades wrote: »

Miss Pixie is 3.5 years old, too old for this. She's hurting, but also stubborn. They gave us pain medicine for her, she seems pretty loopy. She's using the stairs we got her.

For the next few days Pixie is living in the bedroom, she has a human in with her at pretty much all times, and I'm kitten sitting and getting food. Right now I have one sprite sleeping on me and another is sitting in my lap chewing the drawstring in my pants.

Yet you didn't post any kitten photos? 😉

NorthCascades

AnnPT77 wrote: »

NorthCascades wrote: »

Miss Pixie is 3.5 years old, too old for this. She's hurting, but also stubborn. They gave us pain medicine for her, she seems pretty loopy. She's using the stairs we got her.

For the next few days Pixie is living in the bedroom, she has a human in with her at pretty much all times, and I'm kitten sitting and getting food. Right now I have one sprite sleeping on me and another is sitting in my lap chewing the drawstring in my pants.

Yet you didn't post any kitten photos? 😉

I need to figure this photo hosting thing out, I posted some kitten photos in the first post but some people have told me the pictures just don't load for them. ☹️

I'm going out for a ride, I'll post some more photos later today. 🙂

cmriverside

I see all the kitten pics. I'm on the web on firefox...