5 September 04
A Home for Carlos and Blake
Carlos and Blake, the two kittens that emerged from the cornfield behind our house a couple weeks ago, got adopted today. Just as last Sunday, they went to the Petco today where Feline Lifeline holds their adoptions. It didn’t take long before a family came by with a little boy who was quite interested in Carlos. Then the mom started to handle Blake and immediately bonded with him. It turned out that her 13-year old cat just died of cancer Thursday. They came into Petco looking for another kitty and ended up leaving with two! So Carlos and Blake, tentatively renamed Tumble and Pumpkin, are off to their new home, shared with a yellow-orange 6-month old tabby named Flash (three different shades of orange cats in one house).
Here’s a picture of Blake at Petco, curious as ever.
1 September 04
Click On Cats
Monday evening we went to the library where I found a copy of Getting Started: Clicker Training for Cats by Karen Pryor. I’ve seen references to clicker training before but never read anything about it. Basically, the idea is that you can train animals by getting them to associate a good behavioral action with a marker signal such as you clicking a clicker box. Soon the animal learns that a click means a treat is coming and starts to expand his behavioral repertoire so as to produce more clicks.
Pica went and bought an inexpensive clicker box and we’ve been having fun working with Charlie and Diego. Both are now able to follow a dowel about and touch it as a target. Tuna is working well as a treat, though we need to figure out the best way to dispense it.
Speaking of clicking on cats, Rate My Kitten is a good site to visit if one is looking for distractions.
22 August 04
Leaps And Bounds
Diego is by a good bit the most agile of our two kitties. He’s always leaping up on things, mostly just to check out what’s happening. (Charlie is getting better at his leaps but often it seems has to pull himself up by his forepaws.) Yesterday evening he gave a prime example of this. One of his favorite spots to sit is the trunk bag that sits on top of the rear rack of our tandem. This itself is about a yard off the ground. Anyway, I was changing the 5-gallon water bottle on our water dispenser—glug, glug, glug it was going, filling the empty dispenser. Diego leaps in one bound from the tandem rack to our couch, then without missing a beat, leaps in a second bound from the couch on to the countertop, and then steps over to the water bottle to check out the commotion. He’s a regular scientist, our Diego.
19 August 04
All We Do Now Is Wait
I’ve set the trap to try and catch the two new kittens while Numenius is out at Spanish. I ran to buy smelly cheap catfood and a robust carrier. This evening I spotted their mother, a bright orange tabby. I’m hoping we catch her; the kittens will stay near her (though they are now coming up to the back door and exchanging hisses with Diego and Charlie) and should be easy enough to catch.
I’m guessing, having seen them this closely, they’re about two months old. Tamable. What a relief.
Numenius already has names for them: Carlos and Blake. I’m assuming the orange tiger’s what inspired the latter…
Postcript, 10:10 pm: both kittens are caught and in a carrier in the carport. We found a new use for the Honda Element, aka Nellie: use as a place to transfer kittens from a trap to a carrier without fear of their escaping when your bathroom’s no longer an option.
4 August 04
Four Kitten Update
Diego is helping me with this blog as I write though some of his text needs a little editing. He is also very interested in pens, so I think we have the makings of a literate kitty here. Anyway, it’s official: we’re keeping both Diego and Charlie. Our landlord is letting us keep a pair and we signed the adoption certificate for them this past Sunday. Our cats are now bona fide.
We’re having a great deal of fun having them around the house. I’ve never had a cat before. Since I’ve been a cat lover since at least age 6, this is quite a joy for me. I’ve always lived in a situation where people were allergic, cats weren’t wanted, or cats weren’t allowed.
We saw Diego and Charlie’s sister this evening. She’s grown quite a bit, though is much smaller than her big brothers, and is feisty as ever. The interesting thing is that she’s developing a grey undercoat to her black fur, coming in across her back especially. She’s also getting a grey coon tail pattern contrasting with the black.
Up in Woodland, Louie, the orange kitten we adopted out a month ago, is doing very well in his new home. His family loves him dearly and think he’s going to grow up to be a huge cat.
4 June 04
Kitten Typography
Disclaimer: I am NOT a cat person…. but Numenius says we’re working on me.
I took the kittens into work today at the request of my coworkers. (Also at work today were a riparian brush rabbit and a wood rat, but no dogs, unlike most days.) The kittens are tired out after a long day of playing.
We have fenced them into the bathroom so we could go in and out without their escaping. They figured out how to climb the fence within, oh, about five minutes (see right). This business of keeping them enclosed is pointless.
My head is full of photo captions to shots I wasn’t able to take: kitten on tandem. Kitten in telescope. Kitten under rocking chair. Kitten in Kinko’s box. Kitten on algebra book with tampon. Kitten(s) in, or on, REI paper bag. Kitten wrestling with clean laundry. Kitten looking longingly outside through the screen before being pounced on by sibling.
I think we’ve found homes for them, or at the very least, backup homes in case they’re unclaimed. I’m feeling optimistic.
26 May 04
Cuatro Gatitos
Our adventures in kitty fosterhood went well today. John our landlord graciously took the mother cat still in the have-a-heart trap to the vet to be spayed; he likes the idea of having a cat around to deal with the rodents (who indeed get plentiful at times. There’s a crop of corn growing now which will shelter lots of rats.) Pica caught another of the kittens this morning, and it turned out there were two kittens, not one, in the trap. So all four kittens were accounted for and came to spend the afternoon and evening in the kitty nursery a.k.a. our bathroom. It looks like the kittens are about five weeks old.
We have lots of thanks for people. Virginia for kindly hosting the kittens over the weekend while we go birding around the Salton Sea; John for the trip to the vet with the mother; and Deanna, Sue, Carrie and other coworkers of Pica’s for providing lots of veterinary advice.
In the fine tradition of cat blogging (alas one of its finest practitioners , Kevin Drum, in February gave up the practice to move on to loftier blogging digs), here’s a photo of the two orange kitties.
25 May 04
Catching Cats
This evening as I came home I saw that the feral cat had not two but four kittens—two black and two light ginger, everyone hanging out in the carport. The mother raced off and I was able to pick up one of the black kittens by the scruff. It’s now in our bathroom, complete with the litter I ran out to get and kitten food.
I set the have-a-heart trap for one, I hoped, or more of the other kittens. They’re easily seduced by tuna. Not ten minutes later, a big ruckus took Numenius outside. We’ve caught the mother and another one of her kittens.
I called my vet friend who said to cover the trap and wait till morning. No sense in getting clawed to pieces trying to get the kitten out of there. Then the key is to round up the other two.
I have to say this has all been a bit more stressful than I would have liked. We’re getting ready to go on a birding trip to Southern California this weekend and I find myself suddenly in charge of five cats…