So the kittens are a few weeks old now and going all crazy. I figured I’d post a few more recent pictures and tell you all a little about them.

Koetje, so named due to the fact his markings resemble a common cow. He’s very social and easygoing, likes to cuddle and recently found a home with my mom.

Kaiya, named after an online friend of ours. She looks very similar to Koetje despite the fact that she has a few spots of orange along her head and backside. Just a few, she’s mostly white really. She too just found a new home over at my mom’s.

Pongo, named after one of the 101 Dalmatians. Pongo is white with black spots all over, and not in any recognizable pattern. He looks really weird and acts it too, he’s got some form of brain damage we think. We’re keeping this one as he fears outsiders.

Pita, short for Pain In The Ass. She was a total brat at first but has mellowed down somewhat. Loves to lay with you and purr.

Kira, ‘twin’ of Pita with very similar looks. Her deep black eye makeup makes her look very unique. She and Pita are practically inseparable. For a home we need to find someone willing to take both. She’s very cute and cuddly.

Jack, aka Black Jack. He weighs a ‘ton’, being easily twice the size of the other kittens. He’s mostly black with some white and has an odd black splotch on his mouth. Jack is incredibly smart and a fast learner. You really have to watch this one.

Some pics:

Here’s Kaiya, Pongo, and Kira posing for a picture.

There are 5 kittens in this tiny basket, Koetje is in the bottom right corner, kind of engulfed by the others.

Feeding time is always fun, especially when we still had 12 cats. The twelfth being Eek who was visiting for a while. Nova and Sol are not visible in this picture.

Kiaya has a very pretty face.

Pita looking pretty.

Yesterday we gained another 6 kittens as our pretty feline glamgirl finally went into labor. It took quite a bit and was pretty painful for Nebbie, especially at first, but mommy and kitties are all fine now. I’ll write up a more detailed log of what transpired later, but here are some pics!

So yeah, now we have 11 cats.. Gonna be a lot of fun, heh.

We took Comet back to our local vet the other day to check up on him after the accident. We still weren’t sure whether or not he had a broken rib but a few days ago we did notice a small hole on his back. Right on top of his spine was a hole a few millimeters wide and it was completely open, you could see right through it. I don’t know why we didn’t catch that before but it was yet another reason to get him checked out.

We made sure to go early so we’d be the first in their half hour walk-in. It didn’t take long after we arrived that they got back from walking their dog and had a look at poor lil’ Comet. I’ve been going to this vet for years and I’ve always had the husband looking over out pets but this was the first time the wife took a look at it. She’s usually the one that handles the surgeries and such.

Anyway, she didn’t think that Comet broke a rib, but even if it had been broken when the accident happened it most likely was already healing rapidly since he’s still so very young. There’s still a lot of cartilage in the place on bone. She looked at the hole in his back and thought that it was probably the most likely cause for all the air in his lungs last time as well. We had her take his temperature to see if he was getting an infection and he was indeed a little on the warm side with a 39.5C (and slowly rising but Comet didn’t like it anymore). So we had her give him a shot to keep him well and protect him from infections. He’ll be just fine in about 2 weeks. After that we can come back and give him his normal shots.

My birthday was a month ago and yet I haven’t posted about it yet. I guess now as a good as a time as any. I didn’t have a party or anything, I’m not really big on those, and it had been a pretty rough time on us financially for a while that I’d rather do something small. So it was just me, the wife and kid, mom, dad, the handyman, Werner and uhm.. damn my memory really does suck, I should blog more. Anyway, my mom brought some cake, which was delicious, and we mainly just babbled on about stuff. Oh and presents… Yes.. the presents..

First of all, my kid and my mom had been talking to each other about some mysterious present my mom was getting for me. And of course me being my curious self just had to know what it was. Hints were unintentionally dropped (like the possible need to bring it sooner, before my birthday) and after a few days I figured it out. Which was then confirmed later by trapping my mom in idle conversation.

It was a kittycat. A tiny orange fluffball of a kitten. Awesomely cute and immediately adapted to his surroundings. He’s very cute, and loves to play, mostly with Ryan. It’s not the first time my mom got me a kitten for a present, but this marks the first time I ever got an orange one. Too cute! Wife and kid pressured me later that evening to get him a name so I blurted out Comet. Which fits the galaxy them I have with my cats and he looks like a flaming ball of fire.

More presents! My wife gave me one of my presents early, a Creative ZEN! Awesome! I’ve been wanting one for a long time and had been looking at that specific one in the store. It’s the 2GB version and features an SD card slot (I bought a 4GB card later), 320×240 video playback, which is quite sharp I might add, and it’s nice and small while keeping the screen big. I love it!

I also got some monies, most of it from my dad, which is always welcome. The Wii game Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2, which is awesome and more difficult than I thought it would be. It follows all the main storylines from the DBZ show starting with the Saiyan Saga. I’m stuck at the moment with the battle between Piccolo and monkey mutant Gohan.

I also got a few DVDs, some silly knick knacks, and other stuff I can’t remember at the moment. Did I mention I have to blog more?

As I promised you here are a few pictures of the kittens we got last october, Orion and Nebula.

Orion (Ryan)
Ryan’s the more assertive one of the two. He’s also very attached to my wife, he insists on laying/sleeping on her shoulder. He’s growing up fast though, soon he’ll need both shoulders. His fur is very thick and soft and has a beautiful pattern.

Nebula (Nebby)
Nebby is a bit of a weirdo. Sometimes we think she has brain damage. She walks kinda funny and will ‘flop’ in the most inconvenient places in the most uncomfortable ways and sleep. She’s a bit smaller than Ryan but almost as soft.

I promised my wife that if the first appointment with the IND went well, we would look into getting kittens. A few days before that appointment we also happened to see a little ad for kittens in one of the local supermarkets, so I had the number handy when we went there.

Well as you can read in the previous post, everything went more than fine so once home I called the number from the ad. Some guy picked up with a very heavy accent, I could barely make out what he said. Apparently they were willing to drop by and show us the (2) kittens they had left and we could decide which one we wanted.

About half an hour later we saw a van pull up and a couple came out, walking back ‘n forth in front of the complex, apparently with no idea where we lived. We walked outside and they came in the hallway, the woman holding a small box with 2 kittens inside of it. One was gray striped and the other black with some white. Mew, mew, mew! They were both very cute so we took both of them, and the couple (Polish from what I gathered) were relieved.

Ellen still had no clue what the heck we were doing until we handed her one. We took ‘m inside and let ‘m roam around a bit. They smelled so they had to be washed as well. We were told they were about 8 weeks old but they were much too small to be of that age. I’m guessing they simply wanted to get rid of them. We think they never even left their ‘birthbox’ until now.

Then of course it was time to name the 2 new feline additions to our family. So, as is my custom, I went with the astronomy genre and named then Orion and Nebula. Ryan and Nebby for short. I’ll add some pictures ‘n stuff in the next post.

Saartje, Pluis, and Stinky are celebrating their first birthday today, being born on last year’s mother’s day, heh.

Pluis and Stinky got a new home almost a month ago, so all the other cats can actually get attention again. And my mom sent them an ecard for their birthday. ^_^

And what is Saartje doing for her birthday? Same as always, being all cute and fuzzy, and sleeping a lot.

My mom took one of the little kittens from me about a week ago. She took the fluffy wuffy one, which was one of the female kitten which featured a fairly flat face and longer and softer fur than her siblings. She immediately felt at home in her new abode and currently is running around the garden a lot. She’s also very affectionate. Tentative name: Princess.

Someone called about obtaining another kitten of mine, but they never showed up. They didn’t even call the next day to inform me about what’s up. That was disappointing.

Though yesterday, through contacts from my family, I had a young couple come over who were interested in getting one/some. It appeared to me that they’ve never had any pets before judging from their questions but seemed pretty serious about all that comes with. So that’s good.They still wanted to get some more information and talk it over and then they’ll let me know their decision. I’m fairly certain they will take two of them. I hope so.

The kittens are about 3 weeks old now and are starting to get active and playful. Their claws are now retractable and they are teething.

Even though they’re all 99% black (they have a tiny white spot on their throats) they are still very different from each other. Like, one of is really fluffy with a flat and wide face, while another has a very tight and short fur and looks smaller compared to the others.

One had a little problem with one of her eyes staying closed, so I took it to the vet after it persisted and got some medicine to treat it with. It was kinda like conjuvitis and I had to put a little bit of creme on her eye for about 4-6 times a day. It healed fine and they’re all ok now.

I made their box roughly twice as big as they kept moving around to give them some more room to play in. I’ve also let them out of it for a while ’cause they were getting kinda curious about the ‘outside world’.Anyway, I’m trying hard not to get too attached to them, seeing as how I have to give them up pretty soon, but they’re just so damn cute and irresistible.

This month, on the night of the 14th (mother’s day), Nova started moving around and forcing the other cats to give up their spots so she could lay there. I already had a box prepared for her but lately that was mostly in use by Sol, and sometimes Alpha. At around 1am or so I had to throw Sol out ’cause Nova wanted to lie in the box.She was mewing at me ever so often, so I stayed with her as I knew it couldn’t be much longer before she would deliver her litter. Every time I got up to get like a glass of water she would follow me, she did not want to be alone during this.

Having had barely any sleep for the two days before I was exhausted and after about an hour of keeping Nova company I fell asleep until she woke me up again about another hour later. It was time.

Meanwhile my loved one tells me she has to go to the hospital because she hurt herself, so I had 2 crisis to deal with while being intoxicated with drowsiness. Needless to say my brain wasn’t really prepared for that at the time and I freaked a bit. Which isn’t really that much of an unknown state to me, as I don’t like not being in control, but that’s a topic for another blog entry someday.

So Nova finally gave birth to her first kitten, pitch black and doing all the things newborn kittens do. ^_^ It took about 30 minutes for the second one to arrive, also black. All this time she did not seem to have any pain at all as she was not mewing or anything, even purring at times. Unlike last time which was a small disaster mostly cause she was still so very young herself.

After an hour the third one came, again looking completely black. Then the fourth, with yet another hour of waiting in between, and it too was black as night.

I knew this would be the last one, the kittens all appeared to be in perfect health, drinking and even purring (so cute!) so my job was done for now. I could let her rest and I should have been getting mine because many many hours had passed and I was absolutely exhausted.

Of course I did not sleep as I had to take care of other things as well. It was morning by now and I needed to get them a fresh new box to put them in to. (The pic shown is still the old box, hence the bloody mess.) So it wasn’t until I finally got back home several hours later that I could jump into bed and pass out.

I don’t really remember all of it, days tend to blur into one another when I’m so heavily deprived of sleep. So this account may not be 100% accurate.

Anyway, in the end I wound up with a grand total of 9 cats (yes, you read that right, NINE), and found out personally this time that my baby is damn near indestructible. So 9 lives all around!