Sunday, November 18, 2007, 07:11
Dora the Explorer
I made a terrible mistake the other day. I left the door of the kittens' new home open while I was putting out food for the other kitties and filling Charlie's water dish and doing things of that nature.
The little black kitten, much to my surprise, came out of the dog cage and began snooping around the basement. She toddled over to the step ladder and looked up at it. Then she turned around and toddled under the chair where I sit to feed them. When she emerged from underneath the chair, she went to the other side of the dog cage, toddled around behind it and came out opposite of where she had gone around.
She was quite unafraid and seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. Her brother and sister were sitting in their on-its-side box on the heating pad inside the cage. They didn't feel brave enough to venture out.
"Why," I said, watching the little black kitten, "you're quite the Dora the Explorer."
I clapped my hand over my mouth.
What was I doing?
Dora the Explorer is a name. I wasn't going to give the kittens names. Names mean they have an identity. And an identity makes them special individuals.
As I watched the little black kitten, she turned and toddled toward the freezer. My big orange tom cat, Gilligan, was sitting close to the freezer. Dora -- errrr, I mean --- the little black kitten toddled up to him. He bent down to sniff her as she toddled under his belly. With a look of surprise, Gilligan leaped out of the way.
"You really are Dora the Explorer, aren't you?" I said.
The damage had already been done. I never should have thought of Dora the Explorer.
After I sat down to see if the kittens wanted more formula, I made another terrible mistake.
When she saw me, the little gray girl kitten came up to the edge of the door. Beneath the door, there is a couple of inches of cage between the door and the floor. She looked at it for a moment -- and jumped over it. Dora and the little tom cat slithered over the doorway to get out. But not the gray girl kitten. She jumped. Then she toddled over to my legs and stood looking up at me. The next thing I knew, she was climbing my jeans to get up into my lap. All by herself. When she finally made it up to my lap, she looked so proud of herself. The tom cat and Dora had not yet figured out they could climb my jeans.
"Why, you're very athletic aren't you?" I said, looking down at the gray girl kitten, who was so pleased with herself that she was purring.
"You're such an athlete. You're so good at jumping and climbing already. You must be Katerina. Isn't there an Olympic skater named Katerina. . ."
My voiced trailed off as I looked at the kitten.
I had done it again. Katerina Witt was who I was thinking of.
Katerina -- errr, the gray girl kitten -- snooped around in my lap, looking for formula.
"Here it is my little Katerina," I said.
Now, I ask you. How could I have gone from a firm resolve not to name the kittens to thinking of two names in only a few minutes? How did that happen?
That was several days ago. I haven't thought of a name for the little tom cat yet. With my track record, though, I feel it is only a matter of time.
I can also tell you this, however. There is something sad and terrible and empty about little creatures like the kittens going around without names or an identity of their own. Without names, it is as if they are unimportant and unloved. And that's not true. They are alive. They are little miracles. The creator who created us all created them, too.
Many years ago, when I ended up with three newborn kittens whose mother had been killed when a horse jumped sideways and jumped on her, I named them all. Sebastian. Nightshade. And Shadow Cat. Little Shadow Cat was a gray kitten.
When the co-worker of a good friend heard about the kittens and heard that one of them was gray, she wondered if it was possible if she could have the gray kitten. She lived alone. And she was partial to gray kitties. Her faithful kitty friend and companion of many years had died, and she was very lonely without a cat.
My friend kept telling me how excited her co-worker was to think that she could get a kitten. She asked for updates on the kittens all the time. And she could hardly wait for Shadow Cat to grow big enough to come and live with her.
I would be lying if I said I didn't still think about Shadow Cat from time to time 15 years later and wonder what her life has been like. Her sister, our beloved Nightshade, died two years ago. Sebastian is still with us. I could have no more sent Shadow Cat out in the world without a name than I could have let all three of them starve to death when their momma was killed.
So for now, the little black kitten is Dora the Explorer. And the little gray girl kitten is Katerina. The tom cat hasn't let me know his name yet. But if I'm going to send them out into the world, then they need a name and an identity.
I'm hoping to find a special home that will take two of them so they can stay together. A special home where little fuzzy bundles of joy are desperately needed. The kittens never had a proper momma cat, and it would be wonderful if two of them could always have each other. Then perhaps we would keep the third. My other older kitties will only be with me for a few more years. And the way Guinevere looks now, she won't be with me for much longer. She is off the antibiotics for a few days before we start another round. I do not believe she is suffering. But I also do not believe that it is possible for her to get well.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Wednesday, November 14, 2007, 19:13
Making Progress
My three little kittens are making progress. They turned four weeks old Monday. Or rather, they turned four weeks Monday night. They were born at night.
Sunday they got new living quarters. I had been keeping them in a small box with a heating pad in the bottom and was keeping the box covered, but they were outgrowing the box. So, I moved them to a small kitty carrier with a heating pad in the bottom where they would have more room to move around.
When kittens are with their mother, they do not officially come out of the nest until they are four weeks old. Sunday evening when I went down to the basement to feed them, I opened the door of the kitty carrier and left it open. The kittens were too afraid to venture past the door just yet.
The little black kitten came to the door, but she didn't want to go through it by herself. The others stayed back farther.
A Handful
All three kittens are quite a handful -- literally. Randy took pictures of them while I tried to hold onto the wriggling, squirming mass of kittens. I was afraid if I wasn't careful, they would crawl to the edge of my lap and fall off onto the concrete basement floor. Their eyesight is not good enough yet to have much of an idea of depth perception. "Hurry up and take the pictures," I kept saying to Randy. He tried to get my face in the picture, too, but the kittens were just too much to hold onto all at once for very long.
Monday morning I left the door open again, and as I fed the little black kitten, the gray girl kitten carefully edged through the open kitty carrier door and slithered to the floor. I picked her up and put her into a box I had ready and waiting next to me. It is a much larger box than the one I kept them in for almost the first four weeks of their life. The top parts of the box were folded down, and even though it was a much larger box, to my surprise, the gray girl kitten almost climbed out! I unfolded the top pieces, pulled them up straight, got some duct tape and taped them up straight. Now the box was almost twice as deep as it was before.
That's the thing about kittens you know. You can't keep them in anything for very long because they learn how to climb so soon. I would just as soon not have them exploring around the basement just yet. There a thousand places they could get into where I couldn't find them. And they are too little to come to the sound of my voice calling, "Kitty-kitty."
Medicine
The little black kitten finished the amoxicillan a week ago Monday for the illness that nearly killed her when she was only a week old. By Thursday I thought she wasn't eating as well as she had been eating. By Friday evening, she was way off her food. The little tom ate 25cc and the gray sister ate 20 cc. By contrast, the little black baby only ate 2cc. I put her back on the amoxicillan, and by Saturday morning, she was feeling somewhat better to eat a little more than she did Friday night.
By Sunday, the black kitten was feeling well enough to eat a fairly good amount. She has never eaten as well as the other two, but she was eating better than only 2cc in a feeding! So I guess that means I will have to keep her on the amoxicillan for another two weeks.
I have not named the kittens, by the way. I am afraid that if I name them, they will become part of the family. They already are part of the family, I guess. But if I name them, I know I will not be able to give them away.
Another New House
As it turned out, the kittens were not particularly happy with the kitty carrier, either. When I would take them out to feed them and would then put them down in the bigger box, I thought they would play. They didn't. They tried to climb out and yelled at the top of their lungs.
Monday night and Tuesday were one of those situations that passed in a blur. I had to go to a school board meeting Monday night, then rush back for the church annual meeting, then I had to write the school board story. Then I had to get up at 5 a.m. Tuesday morning to feed the kittens, rush back to the town for the county board's annual budget meeting and write two stories for the next day's paper. I arrived home again at 3 p.m. Tuesday, and that's when I decided to make another house for the kittens.
To make a long story short, I carried a dog cage up from the barn that we had gotten to keep the three barn kittens in after spay/neuter surgery and fixed it up for the little kittens. I figured they needed a bigger space to move around in, plus I put a small litter box in there for them so that when they are ready to use it, they will be able to find it. I turned the small box I had kept them in originally on its side and put the heating pad in there for them. The kittens have a lot more room to move around, so I am hoping they will start playing with each other more. That's what kittens do, after all, is play. That's their job!
Isabelle
Isabelle's training is going quite well. Unfortunately, my little horse trainer friend is afraid of her now and won't be working with her anymore.
The trainer he is working with came out last week on the day we had 40 mph winds and snow squalls and rain squalls. Isabelle wasn't particularly crazy about being out in that kind of weather. (I don't blame her! I wasn't either!) She did nothing bad. She was just sort of uncooperative. I think she thought the people handling were crazy because any horse with an ounce of common sense would have been hunkered down someplace out of the wind and would have stayed there.
The trainer pronounced that Isabelle was a "dangerous" horse who would "explode" without warning and said the horse was "scared" to be out in her own pasture by herself and that she would "kill" him if he tried to ride her and that she learned fast because she was "afraid" of being wrong not because she was a smart horse. (Huh?)
All of this because the horse was rather uncooperative and wanted to stand with her rear end to the wind just as any horse would do in those weather conditions.
I'm not sure what planet this woman is from. But she doesn't seem to know very much about horses.
I also think the woman was miffed because my little friend had gone out and had done something on his own without the "teacher" and had good success and didn't appear to really need the "teacher" to have success.
The other thing that I found disturbing was that she never addressed any of her comments to me and acted as if I wasn't even present. Hello. Guess who owns the horse? Guess who buys the feed? Guess who takes care of her? Guess who pays to have her feet trimmed? Guess who knows her better than anyone else in the world?
My little trainer friend still wants to work with Isabelle but he is afraid of her now, and I will not allow him to work with her if he is afraid. She will pick up on that. The "professional" horse trainer also appeared to be afraid of horses, and I think Isabelle was partially responding to that as well. When I asked some other people I know who have horses and who are a very reliable source, they did *not* have a good opinion of the "professional" trainer.
So, I have been working with Isabelle myself. Randy and I put the saddle on her Sunday, and by the time we finished the session, he had put his full weight in the stirrup and did everything but actually sit on her back. She did very well. I will continue to work with her until it is too cold outside or there is too much snow. I will still be able to do ground work with her on nicer winter days. And then, we will be just be that much farther ahead when spring comes.
LeAnn R. Ralph
