It’s that time of year again – waiting for kitten season to start up and inundate us with teeny, tiny, squirmy bits of cuteness. It’s hard to be patient, I know, but this year’s crop of little ones will be here soon.
In the meantime, we are inundated with cuteness anyway! Our kitten room has a mere four residents now (Ray, Drita, Dina, and Rangpurr). Ezekiel and Gabriel both found their forever homes this month, and Blossom has moved into the Special Needs suite, where she joins a slew of little black cats with poo problems. She’s had a bit of an adjustment to make; something about living with Nimbus, Hawkeye and company doesn’t sit quite right with Blossom and she sprints into the hallway at every chance she gets. However, she’s doing quite well medically, no longer showing such awful symptoms of pain in her posterior.
In other alumni news, sweet Sadie, one of last winter’s teenagers, has also (finally!) found her forever home. Twitches and all, it always mystified me that anyone with room for a kitty in their home could pass up our Sadie, but now that she’s found her bliss, the wait seems worth it.
As for our remaining littler kittens (none of them are really little anymore), Drita and Ray are keeping up the kittenhood quotient in the apartment bedroom. We are still awaiting the results of Drita’s metabolic panel (the tests for which Ray was her “control kitten”), but happily the little girl is thriving as far as we can tell.
Drita has a pretty massive overbite (one of her oddly adorable characteristics) and when she eats, she quite literally mashes her face down into her food bowl so that she can grab at the food with her set-back jaw. The results end up all over her face, from whisker to whisker. When she was still a baby, and even when she was older (but still thought she was a baby) Drita would be happy enough to leave that food all over her face … and wipe it on any willing visitor. These days though, she’ll clean herself up and when she swipes her cheeks with a paw to clean them, she might find another full bite of food there!
Ray in the meantime is growing in confidence and is showing his true sweetheart colors of late. You need to be gentle with him since he can’t see very well, but show him a spot on your lap and he just might take you up on the offer (and not let you go!). He’s very curious, and sniffs around your feet and legs to find out all he can about the other cats you’ve been spending time with. Sudden movements startle him, but he’s learning to trust that even if he gets a bit frightened, he doesn’t have to run away and hide. And he’s no miser when it comes to head bonks, either. This timid sweetheart has me absolutely wrapped around his little paw.
I’m sure that in the coming weeks, we’ll have more kittens to report on for you, but it’s a treat to follow our babies as they grow too. If you have a chance to stop by and say hello before the teenagers move out and the apartment is taken over by teeny babies, please do. They’re relishing this time before they have to be grown-ups and they love a gentle visit, especially from a good friend like you.