Ok, tell us more about the cats, Pipi, Snowball, and Columbus!

I've now had the cat and kittens (Pipi, Columbus, and Snowball) for two days and I can already tell a lot about their personalities and some interesting things have happened as well.

First, Pipi, the mom cat, is still off and on with me, sulking a lot right now. And the kittens are also still in their wonderment phase, except for 3am in the morning when they are at full swing chasing after each other. As a whole, this is a really tight nit family and they miss each other when one of them wanders out of sight. The mom, despite being a young (technically, still a kitten herself), is a great mom.

What are the cats like?

THE MOM CAT, PIPI, is very tame. She likes to be touched and would never bite or scratch you. I cannot believe how well behaved and tame she is. She is still shy though hides where her body can be pressed up against a small space and sticks her head behind the toilet whenever she can (I've put tin foil around the back of the toilet to keep her away from there). And she isn't very responsive most of the time. Yesterday though, she did walk up and brush herself against my legs and she begged quite vocally to be let into the rest of the apartment last night. When there are no fleas on her for sure, I'll let her roam.

I did find a few physical concerns with her. She has a cut on her left ear that seems to be healing well. Her left top fang is broken in half and missing. Her front claws are fine. But her back claws all are shaved off to the middle of the claw. Perhaps even cut off, and they are semi black. Perhaps someone cut the back claws some time ago, or she got it like that by jumping off hard surfaces or something.

She is quite the jumper as well. I have a cardboard barricade in front of my washroom. About 3 feet high. She can jump over that. Last night, I turned it on it's side and made it into a 6.5 feet barricade. She did a standing vertical jump to the top of the barricade and helped herself over!

She was eating well, yet is very skinny for a nursing mom, and she's always nursing her kittens, more about that later. But she is very healthy, with a nice coat, and she likes to be touched. And brushed, and petted. Lately though, she has been rejecting food and water.

Litterbox wise, she is using it fine. She urinates a lot and poo'ed twice, both times a constipated mess. She's good at using her litter box, so good that I had to empty the pine wood bits out of her box, wash it (and sprayed it with Nature's Miracle) and put new pine in. But what I saw happen after was that she took a walk around the bath room, she came onto the litter box set up for the kittens (I have two in there, one for kittens, and another for Pipi) and pee'd in their box. And she pees a lot so a third of the kitten box was suddenly tainted. She has since found her own box again and is using it.

And as for nursing, she nursing all the time, with 8 healthy and large nipples and two kittens, that means that the kittens can have their fill. And more. And they do. She can probably comfortably nurse four more kittens without any problem.

Fur wise, I noticed that she is shedding more today. I wonder if it's because she is stressed? She didn't appreciate the flea combing I did for her, nor did she like the dewormer. But then, it's still apprehension time for her and hopefully she'll become friendlier soon.

KITTEN #1, SNOWBALL, is a male cat and is mom's best friend. He is almost always sucking on her teat, engorging himself full of milk. And it shows, he is a nice, plump kitten, who is a little bigger than Columbus who doesn't drink milk as much..

He can eat solid food, but doesn't much prefers to drink from mom. Thus, he and mom have a close bond, he'll go over to her to play with her and she comes whenever he lets out a "where are you?" meow. He also watches mom very closely and copies what she does, particularly in the little box. I do expect that he will grow up to be a big cat someday.

Snowball is curious, hasn't quite learned how to use the scratching post yet, loves to play with my mouse, loves to stalk Columbus. He isn't much of an explorer, still very much depending on mom and always watching and learning from her.

Litterbox wise, he can use his litter box to pee. He has poo'd once as well in the litter box. But I did put him in the bathtub, on a towel, and he pee'd on a corner of the towel. I don't know if that is his fault of not, as he couldn't get to a litter box. I think he'll be fine though with the litter box, but I'm watching him.

KITTEN #2, COLUMBUS, is a female cat, and is very independent. While Snowball will run to mom and feed, Columbus will go explore on her own. She will also sleep by herself sometimes, away from Pipi and Snowball, but prefers to sleep with her brother or with everyone most of the time.

This kitten is pretty smart and adventurous and is usually the first of the two kittens to try new things. She's also very tame and obedient, like her mother. She loves the scratching post, as well as the cardboard box beside the scratching post, always flexing her strong arm muscles against the box, biting it, or scratching and climbing the post.

She'll eat solid food without any problems, although still preferring to suckle on Pipi and litterbox wise….I don't know yet. She has pee'd in the litter box, but the only time she poo'd…well. When I was picking through the cats with a flea comb, I did her first and put her in a box by herself to quarantine her from the other cats. She was crying a bit and then let a large kitten poo in the corner. It's not her fault as there was no little box and she had to go. But she hasn't defecated since, so I have to watch her extra carefully.

In fact, tonight as I was watching her, I saw her do some sort of weird jerking, with a coughing sound and then she threw up on the floor. About a quarter cup of partially digested wet cat food. Hairball you think? No, although there was a little fur, it was not a hair ball at all. I had fed her the food seven hours before then. And it came out almost the same, hardly any of it was digested. Perhaps her little stomach isn't ready for solid food yes, as I would have expected that her fast metabolism would digest the food in half that time. But yes, she does prefer mom's milk, so it could be just a matter of being too young for the solids. Unless, it's normal for slow digestion and kittens throwing up cat food.

BOTH SNOWBALL AND COLUMBUS love to sleep. A lot. In any position, but preferably either against mom, or against each other on the soft scratching post base. When not asleep they are in two modes. The normal mode where they explore, bat some balls around and wander. And full chase mode, where they are having a good time bounding around, chasing, and attacking each other.

Both kittens are not weaned yet. And from the way that they are growing and how well they digest the milk (from plumb bellies to normal bellies in about eight hours) they will need to breast feed for a while,

I place these kittens at FOUR TO FIVE weeks now. I've seen six and seven week old kittens, and these older kittens can do many things that these two cannot. What I've seen so far that leads me to believe that these are young ones (oh, and from the same father as well, they are nearly identical) are that:

1. They can't jump high in any way at all. They may try to climb up, but they can't even get into the large litter box without tremendous effort to get their hind legs up.


2. The can't jump down. From any height. I put them on an eight inch box and they can't get down. They may fall down, but they aren't jumping.


3. They don't drink water at all. A cat should get 70% of its water from the food they eat. They are drinking from mom, who binges on water, so they don't need to be anywhere near H2O.


4. The mom grooms them excessively. And all over. They are still liking it a lot.


5. They are really absent minded. Their minds don’t have a good memory and they are easily distracted.


6. They are just starting to teeth. Their teeth are coming out. They are not all out. And they just started trying to bite things.


7. From their size, I would have guessed that they would be older, but it's apparent it's because they are lucky to have all of mom's milk only for themselves. They will gorge themselves sometimes for hours. Sometimes will fall asleep doing so.

So that's what they are like. Tune in later when I talk about the medicine I am administering to them and what happened with the flea scare.