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
Saturday, November 10, 2007, 06:06
A Brief Blizzard
Just as I was finishing up feeding the three little kittens Friday morning, I thought the sky seemed awfully dark.
A little while later I looked outside and. . .it was snowing! Big, white flakes that were coming down fast and furious.
Anyone who has observed snow probably knows that big flakes usually means the snow will not accumulate much. Unless it's March. Then big flakes can keep going for a long time and we can end up with lots of snow.
I took the camera outside to get pictures of the first "real" snow we've had this year. It was snowing hard enough to make it a little difficult to see across the road.
The snow gathered on the few pumpkins we have left, too.
When it was finished snowing about 30 minutes later, the grass was covered with white. Later on in the afternoon, the temperature warmed up so that most of the snow melted.
Indian Summer
Now that we have had a coating of snow on the ground, we can have Indian Summer. That's what my mother always said -- that there had to be snow on the ground first before you could properly call somewhat warmer and sunny weather Indian Summer. It has been quite cold this past week with temperatures at night down in the teens and warming up in the 30s during the day.
Hanging clothes outside
I hung clothes outside to dry the other night, but they were frozen stiff almost immediately. Over the next few days, they gradually dried to the point where it only took a few minutes to finish drying them in the clothes dryer.
I suppose from now on I ought to just hang the clothes in the basement so they can dry. But what fun is that? It's more fun watching the "stiff as boards" frozen clothes gradually drying out and becoming more flexible again like they ought to be.
Kitten mess
I had a terrible mess when I went down to the basement to feed the little kittens Friday evening. The little black girl had pooped all over herself and her brother and her sister and the towels in their box.
I spent a long time trying to get them cleaned up with washcloths. When I was finished, they all looked like little drowned rats -- and they weren't terribly happy about it, either. Well, maybe that didn't bother them as much as getting clean towels in their box. I put clean towels in there Thursday, and the three of them sat there sniffing the towels and wondering what had happened to the nest they'd had before that smelled like "home" to them.
The three little kittens are starting to play with each other. They roll around and pretend they are biting. They can't bite much yet, though. They don't have any teeth. Bless their little kitten hearts.
Sometimes I think I'm a somewhat loopy when it comes to the animals around here. But then I like to think of the line by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" -- "He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small."
LeAnn R. Ralph
