Itty Bitty Turkey-scoffing Committee

The Committee, aside from being very very scared by some visiting children on xmas day, are very much enjoying the festive season.  Specifically, they are enjoying left-over turkey for dinner.  Although the upstairs cats (a/k/a the perma-cats, a/k/a our cats) more or less turned their noses up at turkey when it was given to them, the Committee are loving it.  As soon as they smell it, Spot starts purring like he's got an outboard engine.  No new photos just yet, mainly because we're still recovering, and cleaning, from xmas day, and boxing day (with a visit from the perma-cats' godmother (hi Barb!)) and if I so much as think real hard about setting up my photography equipment downstairs before we've finished cleaning up from entertaining, arbie will grind me up and feed me into her new coffee machine.  Hopefully by the end of the week we'll have some more high-res cuteness to post!

Merry Cat-mess

The bailment kittens and their crazy keepers would like to wish everyone a very happy holidays and a stunning new year. Cookie and Spot will be fawned over by the many guests visiting over the break, with new toys that Santa brought and we are sure they will enjoy their turkey dinner tonight.

We are sure we will have many more hijinks to come in 2011, including the building of new furniture for the enclosure.
xx

New photos - may explode your head (you were warned)

Okay.. so today I used some of my xmas 'bonus' to buy a shiny new Canon EOS 7D camera, a Speedlite 580 EXII flash, and some other bits and pieces (mini soft-box for the flash, lighting stands, reflector and reflector holder, etc).  I've only just begun playing around with the new toys but already they are paying dividends, in the form of new, high-res photos of the committee which are so incredibly adorable that they will make your head explode into candy.

There are more pictures of Cookie than Spot, simply because Spot is a black kitten, and therefore the camera was having a hard time metering the exposures.  Yes, I know about using FEC, I just haven't been able to work out how to configure it on the new camera.  That might be a job for tomorrow.  Anyhow, behold the unlawfully cute photos of the committee!  (click for larger versions)

 

This one links to an extra-large version.
Click on it at your peril!

It's CATURDAY!

These pictures are definitely not what you'd call my best work.  Being taken with a dodgy in-built camera on a dodgy piece of junk mobile phone will cause that.  Better photos will be forthcoming - I promise!  Trying to get these guys to sit still for 1/60th of a second is practically impossible.

Both Spot and Cookie are thriving, becoming larger and more rambunctious by the day. Cookie in particular is turning into a very handsome, very long-haired, very fluffy, very stripy little tabby.  There are few things cuter than seeing him curled up asleep on a purple velvet cushion - alas there are also few things harder than getting a photo of him there!

Pictures Pictures!!

I had the pleasure of spending some quality time with "the committee" and my camera this morning. Here are the fruits of my labour.

Happiness Abounds

Cookie & Spot are thoroughly enjoying the downstairs enclosure. In fact, I have never seen them happier. They scurry around with their tails high in the air and purr like little engines when they are patted. They are really in their element down there and definately now kittens who are ready for a forever home. All that's left is to get them to 1kg so they can be desexed. Given the grief (literally) we have been through with this litter, it is such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment to see them so very happy.

They also got a taste of socialisation with more humans last weekend (the night before they went into the new enclosure). Spot particularly warmed to my 2.5 year old niece which is fabulous to see!

I believe Dale took some photos tonight so hopefully he will upload them soon.

Please pass the address of our blog around to all and sundry so we can find a forever home for these beautiful boys. I promise to post more pictures as these guys just get cuter by the day.

Committee accomodation upgrade

Tonight the committee were relocated from the spare room upstairs into the dedicated foster-cat enclosure downstairs.  The enclosure was constructed over the xmas long weekend last year by yours truly, using mesh netting sourced from catnets.com.au (who I highly recommend - due to pressures of time I ordered it on the afternoon of the second-last working day before xmas, and they had it delivered to me the next day) and wood, hinges, and sundry bits and pieces from Bunnings Warehouse.

The picture on the left depicts the enclosure shortly after it was completed - it has since been enhanced with some shelves and other furniture and toys.  I've also recently picked up the end of a roll of carpet from the Ipswich Bulk Carpet Warehouse at Yamanto which I'll use to upholster some more cat furnature that I'm going to build (just as soon as I buy a Ryobi table saw that I've got my eye on).

The Committee survive another bath

The Committee are gradually becoming better with their grooming and bathroom habits and so need to be washed less frequently.  They did however get a bath this afternoon and some epic snuggles afterwards.  Here you see Cookie (a/k/a The Kitten Formerly Known As Dora) and Spot (a/k/a The Kitten Formerly Known As Cheeky) wrapped up relaxing in front of my computer.  Hopefully Santa will bring me a macro lens and a flash setup for xmas so I can get some better photos of these guys!

It's.... a boy!

Well it's official. I took the "committee" (Itty Bitty Kitty Committee) as we are now referring to them to the vet today for their first F4 injections. They were very well behaved and didn't flinch with the needle. They did wiggle a bit with the whole thermometer in the bum trick but that's to be expected! (especially when they don't use lube... ouch!)

Anyway to actually get to some kind of point, the vet confirmed their genders for me. Both Cookie and Spot are boys, so those will be their names from this point forward. At least, that is, until they are adopted and possibly renamed.

Next visit is in 4 weeks time, when hopefully they will be over 1kg and big enough for desexing. I didn't think to ask, but we may have to keep fostering them until they find their forever home, since the Animal Welfare League at Ipswich is just a vet clinic and doesn't have its own rehoming centre.

So if you know anyone who wants a cute kitten (or two) for 2011, let us know.

Show Me Teh Kuteness!!

I managed to find my camera and so without any further ado, here are the pictures of the IBKC at 5 weeks old. They are actually almost 6 weeks now! This was the first day we let them completely out of their small enclosure and I taught them to jump so they could use their climbing/scratching post. Their favourite spot now seems to be on top of their enclosure. Talk about a power trip! First immunisations on Wednesday - now that will be fun. Shortly after that they will go to the proper enclosure downstairs so they can have much more space.

Spot looking like a very cute xmas gift!













Spot scampering around (probably chasing after cookie!)











Cookie looking down on his/her domain from the top of the enclosure.
















"No it's my paper towel and you can't have it!"















"Seriously - bugger off!"

Tricksey kittenses...

Just a brief update because I'm about to run out the door.  Arbie will have more later today hopefully, including some pictures.

Last night, as arbie was bringing the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee (IBKC) their dinner, Cheeky decided that he wasn't going to hang around for the baby-cat food, snuck between arbie's legs and out the door, and scampered into the kitchen, where he was was promptly chowing down on a bowl of big-cat food (the bowl being about the same size as Cheeky is!).

Every day the little guys are becoming more and more cat-like.  They're now pouncing on each other, playing with balls and mice and other kitten toys, climbing their scratching post, and generally acting like the little cats that they are.  Next they'll be sleeping on my keyboard while I'm trying to blog!

5 Is our Lucky Number

5 seems to be a really good number for "the bubbies" as I call them. They were 5 weeks old yesterday, and I weighed them today with the results being 505g (Spot/Cheeky) and 550g (Dora/Cookie). Lots of 5's. Still very small for 5 weeks but they are growing.

We have started calling them different names so I can teach them to come to their name (yes you CAN train a cat, it just doesn't work like dogs) but they had to be more generic since "cheeky" might put off some prospective adoptive parents and Dora could be embarrassing if it turned out she was a he (which I think is the case - still hard to tell!).

Today's achievements:
What can I climb ma? - Cookie (Dora - the long haired one) now has an eye on anything and everything above him/her to see how far up s/he can get. This is a good sign as it means he/she is more steady on his/her feet. I found Spot (Cheeky) on top of their enclosure yesterday too. Can't wait to get them into the downstairs enclosure where they can climb about. Could be a while yet though. They desperately need a scratching post - I might buy a climbing one this afternoon.

Wheeeeee - Cookie took his/her first grand slide on his/her bum across the lino floor in their room today whilst scampering away from spot. They love to play chasies. It seems they have finally discovered the momentum of running can allow one to skid along on one's behind thus relieving one from running as far. Clever Cookie!

Would love to have posted newly updated (and now much more fluffy and getting cuter by the second) pictures, but I think Jinx (the eldest) has decided to take up photography and absconded with my camera. Nothing is sacred in this place!

Clarification on "weasel" issue

For the record, Addy got the "weasel" descriptor hung on him because - particularly when he was younger - he had a tendency to burrow under the covers of the bed while arbie and I were in the said bed.  He also had a tendency to launch vicious surprise attacks on various sensitive parts of my anatomy that he encountered down there!  This was unusual as both Jinx and Poppy won't go under the covers, and hate having any kind of covering over them - if they're sleeping on top of a blanket, for example, and I fold part of the blanket over them, they will get up and move out from underneath it, then go back to sleep.

Candy had similar tendencies to Addy in relation to the infesting-the-bed behavior.  I referred to her as a "white mink" for some time but after a particularly vicious sneak attack on my backside she got demoted to "arctic weasel".  I can see certain similarities, can't you?

Photo of Mustella Erminia by Eddie Callaway
Creative Commons licensed

Photo of Felis Catus Clawsmybutt by Dale
All rights reserved!

Big Brave Steps & Memories

I think it's becoming quite clear who the regular poster is here. The saying "no rest for the wicked" certainly applies to me. The glamorous life of fashion, photography and graphic design is often expressed by a woman who hasn't washed or slept for days, in a corner of an office slaving over a computer screen she can barely see because her eyes have given out in protest.

But enough about me...

Dale lovingly brought home a bottle of rum tonight and I have indulged just enough to work up the courage to upload the photos from my camera to the computer. I haven't been able to bring myself to do this since the passing of Bitey & Red but it's not a kitty blog without photos and Dorah and Cheeky deserve their time in the spotlight. If it's one thing these little ones have confirmed for me, it's that I'm no good at grief. I am, however, good at showing cute pictures from my camera!!

Dorah and Cheeky are approaching the 5 week mark. I think they are quite small for their age but they are growing rapidly. They eat almost their body weight each day so I should certainly hope so! They are starting to act like the kittens most people know, with a new achievement each day. Today's achievement? Playing with a ball!

These guys still need to be bathed every day (well ok, every other day - wet ones are a miracle product) even though they can groom themselves all over now (finally learned all their kitty yoga moves) they just don't seem to be able to sustain it for long enough to actually get themselves clean. So here are some shots from their last big bath. They don't much like being soaked, but they do enjoy the cuddles afterwards!


Retrospective - Addy's Story
Addy was our 5th foster kittten - the one that broke me. After weeks having him at my side, I just couldn't let the little guy go and he is currently wreaking havoc all over the room next to me playing silly buggers with Candy (his adopted sister).

This picture was taken in the first few days of having addy with us. Just to give some perspective, the width of the "cat throne" he is on is 45cm. Not a large kitty!

We were actually still fostering our first brood (Lois, Clarke, Diana and Lara) when Addy joined the crew. We had taken the others back to the Animal Welfare League to be weighed and checked and this little man came in - fairly late in the afternoon. He had been found wandering the Gold Coast streets by himself, separated from mum and litter by events untold. The foster co-ordinator had no place for him to stay over the weekend and figured she would have to take him home with her, but didn't really have the room. We happily took him home to join the others, knowing the brilliant enclosure Dale built could house 5 kittens easily, and then some!

Addy was (and still is) a very loving and curious little guy, but also very reserved. He didn't vocalise or purr and he still doesn't to this day. You might get a very strained meow if he is hankering for some cat milk but that's about the extent of his vocalisation. Unless you step on his tail - then you know his voice box works! (only by accident - promise!). He loves to play and while he was smaller than any of our other cats, would play with all of the foster litter, and even our adult cat Poppy. Addy and I shared a very strong bond, and when I had to take back the litter of 4, and the gorgeous little Lois I really wanted to keep, he was there being particularly cute. Of course, we couldn't leave him all alone in the enclosure with no play mates, so he joined the household - firstly in his own room and then out amongst the 2 adults. Poppy found a great companion in Addy and they loved to tear around the house and wreak havoc.

The day approached when Addy was about to reach his goal weight (kittens need to be 1kg before desexing) and I couldn't let him go. Despite grumblings from the sidelines, I put my foot down on this one. Addy would me "my" cat - my mate. Almost a year later, and he is very much my little mate. Still the same as he was as a little tiny stray and even more loving. He likes nothing better than to cuddle up next to my head in between Dale and I (of course, this often means his bum is in Dale's face - I call that payback for when the others did it to me!) and he does purr - but only when he is completely and entirely content. Usually when we are cuddled up and sleeping. Dale calls him a "weasel" because of his curious nature and the fact he always seems to be digging in something - his other nickname is "baron von poopycat" given his strangely poor attitude to litter use. I see him through entirely rose coloured glasses and think he is wonderful anyway.

If arbie were a kitten

(from icanhascheezburger.com)

Enough said :)

An update on Dora and Cheeky

Arbie is snowed under with work at present so isn't able to do a post about Addy's back-story.  Dora and Cheeky are doing well and steadily putting on weight.  They both got a good brushing and combing tonight which they enjoyed to varying degrees.  Dora is definitely looking like she will be a long-haired kitty when she grows up, but this unfortunately means that she tends to get very messy and there were bits of caked-in filth of indeterminate origin in her fur that took quite a bit of effort to remove - she didn't like this at all but she seems happier now that it's done.  Might have some new photos tomorrow, subject to the availability of arbie to download them from her camera.

My office is infested with weasels...

Candy the Arctic Weasel is curled up between the legs of the base of my guest chair, twisted into an impossible pose, fast asleep.  It's too dark to get a photograph of her down there, so I've used one which was taken some time ago (and with the camera on my blackberry, so the image quality is pretty lame).

Readers may be wondering why I refer to her as an "Arctic Weasel" - there is a long story there, but to tell that story, we really need to tell Addy's story first.  So I'll let arbie tell the story of Addy, and then I'll follow up with Candy's tale of woe.

(Isn't she just the cutest thing ever?)

The very first Bailment Kittens ever!

Rewind to December 2009. We have barely moved into our new house, and I haven't yet constructed the long-awaited enclosure underneath the house (which is a Queenslander), which we've been intending to build for foster kittens/cats.  I think we'd been in the new house for about a week (arbie will correct me if I'm wrong) when we got a call from the Animal Welfare League who had a litter of kittens which needed foster care until they were large enough to be desexed and rehomed.

We were then inundated with cuteness!  The four fluffy little bundles of cute in the picture to the left were Lara (one of the grey ones), Diana (the other grey one), Lois (the brown tortie) and Clarke (the ginger tabby).  

Clarke (on the left, shown making a play for the left-over milk from arbie's breakfast cereal) quickly became my favourite of the bunch and I was sorely tempted to keep him.  Arbie felt much the same way about Lois.  Eventually though, all four of them returned to the AWL for desexing and rehoming, and quickly found themselves new homes.

(edit: arbie informs me that we had owned the new house for only four days before we got these guys!  We still had the moving van relocating stuff!)

Some very sad news :(

Yesterday, after rushing Bitey to the AWL vet clinic, we took the other three down there for a check-up and the staff at the clinic kept them there most of the day. They were concerned about Red's health so kept him for observation, and Dora and Cheeky returned home to us last night. Bitey was showing signs of improvement by yesterday afternoon.

Unfortunately by this afternoon both Bitey and Red had died. We (and the vet clinic staff) are at a loss to explain why this happened. Dora and Cheeky are well and thriving and were earlier enjoying some quality time with us on the couch watching a DVD. Although we've had a dozen or so foster kittens before, this is the first death we've had and with two deaths occurring on the same day and without much in the way of warning, we are both quite upset. There may or may not be further updates for the next few days.

Bitey is very unwell :(

Little Bitey was very unwell this morning. Although she was scampering about getting into mischief with her brothers and sisters last night when we went to bed, she was lying in bed unresponsive when arbie checked on them this morning. We rushed her to the AWL's vet clinic and we're keeping all our fingers crossed that she recovers :(

Strong with the force, young Skywalker is...

Dora (the Explorer) got a special treat this evening, getting a nice warm bath to clean her up.  Here she's shown wrapped up in a nice fluffy towel recovering with some snuggles from arbie.  It may have something to do with the fact that she looks like a drowned rat cat in this photo, and I know she's the wrong species and gender, but I can't help thinking that she looks like Yoda in this shot.

Tomorrow we will weigh the little munchkins and see how much weight they've put on.  This should make for some very cute photos!  If I bathe the others afterwards, once their coats have dried out they'll probably have lost about 100g in weight.  Unfortunately their tendancy to climb into their food bowls and less-than-stellar bathroom habits mean that they all get very filthy very quickly.  I'm certainly glad I'm not a mother-cat, having to clean the little ones with her tongue!

In other news, I'm waiting for a "cease and desist" nastygram from whoever owns the rights to the "Dora the Explorer" character, alleging that arbie (temporarily) naming a kitten after their character is causing irreparable damage to their brand, for which damages are not an adequate remedy. I think a similar thing happened to Scott Adams back in ~1995:

 

(I'm now waiting for the copyright nastygram from United Feature Syndicate, notwithstanding that them putting an "embed" link on the dilbert.com site which generates the HTML to embed the above image constitutes an implied licence)

Deadlines & Cute Don't Mix

Well it can't be a blog about foster kittens without kute kitteh photos.

These are two of our current foster brood. This was taken on their first day - at approximately 2 weeks old. Featured here are Dora (foreground), so named because she is the intrepid explorer of the group; and Bitey (background), named after the simpsons monorail episode creature, and because she likes to bite the food bowl until she finds the actual food.

Please Note: These are absolutely, completely and utterly temporary names. I must rename them soon, lest they get used to it! Any and all suggestions welcome, and if you want to give the Animal Welfare League of Queensland a donation, we are very happy to let you have naming rights (better yet - reserve one for adoption!).

And since I can't resist, here are Red (suggested by a dear friend from the USA - I think it's her football team's name) and Cheeky - fairly obvious for that one!

Their Story
These little guys were rescued from a property in Boonah where people seem to think it's a dumping ground for unwanted cats, and are happy to let the elderly lady who owns the property deal with the situation. On occasion, the Animal Welfare League will go out and collect the, now ferral, cats and desex and re-home them. This litter was found when they went out on a collection and no mother was to be seen.

So that's enough of an introduction to these guys for now. Much better photos to follow as soon as they can sit still for long enough without their heads stuffed into a food bowl (and I do mean stuffed, they bury themselves in it!). The exhaustion of a week full of sleepless nights pulling together catalogues full of very fashionable accessories has worn me thin and I must curl up with a nice warm litter who have just had their bath and become the babbling mess that is me with ones so small.

The launch of Bailment Kittens

This blog is something I've been meaning to do for a while, I've just been too busy (ok, and too unmotivated) to procure the use of a server somewhere and install Wordpress on it as I did for my former blog (which has been off the air for close to a year now, alas).

We have been fostering kittens for the Animal Welfare League of Queensland for about 11 months now.  These foster kittens (and occasionally cats) are on top of the four cats who are permanent residents here and are owned by us (if you subscribe to my theory that they're chattel) or are our lords and masters (if you're them).  The existing four from oldest to youngest are Jinx (cat, brown tortie, pet store), Poppy (cat, grey and cream tortie, from AWL), Addy (cat/weasel hybrid, black and white, former foster kitten) and Candy (arctic weasel, white, rescued from facebook).

"Kitten season" is well and truly upon us and we presently have a litter of four kittens that are approximately three weeks old.  Photos will hopefully be forthcoming shortly.  Even though they're still very little, trying to get them to sit still for 1/60^th of a second would require the use of adhesives so I may have to sneak up on them while they're asleep.

As and when time permits, I'll be updating this blog with details and photos of our current wards, as well as our previous wards and any new ones that come in.  My other half will hopefully join in, because she has Photoshop on her computer and I don't!  Hopefully she'll occasionally take a break from fashion accessories catalogues and photoshop some kittens!

Those of you who aren't lawyers may not immediately "get" the "Bailment Kittens" joke.  Your options are to either click the link or take a law degree :)