happy new home

Obi and Amara will have been in their new home a couple of weeks on Sunday.   I’ve little doubt that we’re missing them far more than they’re missing us.  I’m not surprised, and that’s how it should be.  I’ve never seen kits seem so at home in their new home so quickly.   They did that kind of commando crawl as they first came out the carrier, low to the ground, watching.   By the time we’d had a cup of tea and left Obi had been on his new daddy’s knee for a snuggle, Amara was following her new mum into the kitchen to see what was on offer there, and the pair of them appeared to be planning an assault on the window blinds.

They sent a couple of pics last weekend.  I know

I’m impossibly biased …….. but ……… aren’t they

just gorgeous.

obi

 

news – good and sad

The good news is that I’ve heard from all the 4Rs this week.   Interesting that they all decided to get in touch at the same time.

rabbit & radish enjoying the sunshine

Radish and Rabbit have been outside enjoying the sunshine this week.  I dropped in on them unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago and found them happily sprawled across their human’s bed.  Rabbit still has his endearing habit of carrying his tail so high that its almost laid along his back 🙂  These lads are well in and clearly loved to bits.

robin & rocket - grubby handed cat burglars 😉

Rocket and Robin have sent pictures of them also snuggled on mummy’s bed – despite having grubby hands after rummaging around in the attic.    Their human apologises for the quality of the photos but they’re taken on her phone since her camera disappeared.  Seems Robin is the main suspect, it sounds like he has a habit of collecting stuff and stashing it away in his treasure trove.  Perhaps I should have warned her?   I rediscovered so many things when I cleaned their bedroom out after they’d moved.   Then again, it looks like she loves them so much they’d get away with anything.

It’s less good news at home.

this big boy so needs a home of his own

Alfie is thoroughly fed up living here and being stuck in his bedroom a lot of the time because

he doesn’t get on with the other cats.  He’s lonely, missing his human, and feeling the need to

stretch his legs.  He’s such a snuggle bug, loves a cuddle and human company.

There must be someone out there with an Alfie shaped hole in their lives?

(that’s a pretty large hole – he’s a big lad)

remedial cat flap lessons 😉

The kittens – Obi and Amara – are happy little souls.  They’re able to go out in the garden to play now and are having a wonderful time.   It’s sad that there have been no enquiries about them though.

Seems that kittens their age are simply past their sell by date.   Even sadder that most people seem to be looking for kittens who are so young they’re really too young to have left their mothers.   They are the most adorable little furry people.

new toy

I wish these photos had come out better – then again a proper camera rather than the one on my phone might have helped.   But here is Obi and Amara discovering their new toy.  It’s a battery operated box with a motion sensor.  When it senses the kitties near it the mouse whirls round inside the box.   Their foster cousin, Daisy, was terrified by it, my boys were bored and irritated by it.   Jango fell asleep by the motion sensor so it didn’t stop.  But this kept the naughty little monkeys out of other trouble for nearly half an hour.

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get down!

amara trashing plants

I’m not complaining ….. but sometimes fostering feels like  a cross between running a B&B and a borstal!

another casualty of the over enthusiastic furry gardeners

In the olden days when it was just the midgecat and me, we had a meditation CD.  Mainly silence, but with the intermittent sound of a bell to bring one’s concentration back.  I’m thinking of recording something similar ……….  periods of silence ……. with intermittent cries of “get down”  and  “leave that alone”.  I could leave it on repeat and guarantee that 85% of the time it would be a valid comment on a delinquent kitten’s behaviour.  Perhaps if I also recorded shouts of “Obi!”  and “Amara!” and set it to shuffle tracks I could still hit the mark 50% of the time.   They’re little rogues ……. adorable little rogues ……… but little horrors none the less.  They sooo need a home of their own where they can have more attention than they’re having now and the run of a garden where they can be little monkeys to their hearts content and work off some of that kitten energy.

Surely there must be someone out there who values their house plants and sanity less than the satisfaction of having saved these two from a life of furry crime?

high anxiety …………. settling

It’s not been the easiest few days around here.

Smudge went off to her new home accompanied with large sighs of relief.  Like with Duke, I did my best, but a cat who hates cats just ain’t really going to be happy around here.  I was thinking we’d have a bit of a break, the skittles could move into Smudge’s bedroom and Honey / Amber could have a room to themselves.  It didn’t quite work out that way.  Alfie arrived a couple of hours after Smudge left.  Just enough time for Biff to do a RyanAir kind of turn around of the room.

alfie - trying to fold a rather large furry body into a bed a little too small

Then we descended into chaos.  The kittens, possibly with the aid of Honey though no one is admitting anything, managed to tip over the floor to ceiling scratch post.  Sooty had another of his sicky phases and set out on a mission to vomit in ever room of the house …. at least twice.  Smudge found it hard to settle in her new home and emailed me saying she was thinking of coming home and could I pick her up at the weekend.  Meanwhile Alfie was feeling confused and out of sorts having landed here after the trauma of his human dying.

alfie

And then Obi discovered he could jump onto the tops of doors and started practising around the house.  It opened up a whole new world to him as he realised he had access to the tops of kitchen cabinets (much to mog’s horror) and the top of the book shelves where the xmas furry lights ended up in the hope it would be a safe space.   Amara, being the girl and rather brighter than her brother, discovered the joy of playing around with the door and swinging it too and fro as poor Obs tried to balance up there.

obi - made his way up to the top of the book shelves

Biff and I have been out to visit Smudge this afternoon.  Thankfully she’s realised that she’s considerably better off in her new home than here.  When we got up to leave she legged it up her new stairs and out of the way.  She’s determined now that she’s not going to be coming back.  Molliedog’s daddy came over yesterday and helped make the scratch post a little more stable.  Honey and Amber’s mummy is feeling better and hopefully they will be able to go home soon.  And now Alfie seems to be feeling a little better.  He’s been teaching the skittles a few hunting techniques and having a big cat snuggle on my lap.

how to get down again ............ ?

good news at last!

smudge - counting the minutes to her new home

We’re really excited to say that Smudge has found herself a new home.  Some lovely people came to meet her this afternoon, fell in love with her and will be taking her home with them on Wednesday.  Smudge has her bags packed and is sitting in the hall already!  I’ve felt so sorry for her.  This house is so not the place to be if you don’t like cats.  She’ll have a home of her own, two doting humans, a garden and the promise of a bed to share a night.

Obi and Amara have continued their adventures over the weekend.  They’ve helped my lovely neighbour sort out his veg plot, and put the other neighbour’s dog right on a few things.  Poor canine backed out of the argument with a blooded nose.  Until this afternoon they’ve been good little kits – going off and playing but coming back when I’ve called them.  This afternoon they were having none of it …… they’d gone off on an adventure and weren’t coming back for no one!  They’d managed to find their way round the front of the house and when I called them Amara ran up a tall tree and Obi ran into the road.   They were both grabbed and brought inside, rolled onto their backs and had raspberries blown on their tummies – the worst punishment in this house.  They’re grounded for a while now ….. until my nerves recover.

which is harder to manage? kittens or word press?

honey and amber looking out from bedroom window

amara straight up the first tree she finds

 

I’m determined to try to get the hang of wordpress but its not proving easy.  Images all over the place at the moment.  And how do you know a slideshow from an image from a gallery?  It’s probably quite simple to a lot of people, but its not coming easily to me and is slightly hampered by small furries clambering over the keyboard at regular intervals.

Then again it may be easier than this morning’s task which was to take the little ones outside again.  They both have more confidence today so were ready to go a bit further ……… eeeeeeeek.  Obi jumped over the next door neighbours fence and Amara popped through to the neighbours who back on to us.  Thankfully Jango had shown me all the ways through between gardens when Radish and Rabbit first went out so it was mainly just a matter of making sure that the little ones found them.

I do think its one of scariest things in living with cats though – those first few times of them being allowed out.

On the move

We’ve decided it’s time for a change and have moved over from Blogger to WordPress.  It’s brought the old posts with us but not the pictures 😦

But we have to start somewhere.

amara out for the first time

Obi and Amara have had their first adventure outside this afternoon.  First that is since they came into rescue.  They spent rather too much time outside before that.  They were both very brave at Sheffield Animal Centre yesterday when they had their micro-chips fitted.  Thanks RSPCA – excellent service.

Amara was first out the door, but went the wrong way round towards the front of the house, lost her confidence when a car came down the road and fled back inside.  Obi, standing confidently behind her, did rather better and had a brilliant time playing on the garden.  Poor Sooty ended up having to do some of the supervision as Jango was in bed (again!)

obi playing in the garden

sooty reluctantly supervising

its not always much fun

amara in jango’s hammock

obi and amara at smudge’s bedroom door

smudge

vic with his sister victoria

vic with his best mate – obi

vic with his sisters

I love fostering, I love my cats.  But it has its rough weeks.  You know the ones where you just can’t seem to do anything right?  Furry complaints are flying around right left and centre and hard as I try the brick wall seems to be the main thing in view.

I’ve tried everything I can think of for finding a home for Obi and Amara and come up with nothing.  At least they don’t seem unhappy.  In fact they seem pretty much oblivious to the complaints from the older cats about them racing around and being generally crazy.  I’m going to take them to the RSPCA special ‘cheap as chips’ event tomorrow, get them microchipped and then they can go out and trash the garden as well.

It’s a different story for Smudge.  I feel so sorry for her.  She hates cats and she’s landed herself in a house with 7 of them.  Her mum had to give her up because she was too poorly to care for her any longer.  Now she’s mostly stuck with the choice of sitting alone in her room, or playing out with two crazy kittens and two other adults who she got off on the wrong foot with.  I spend as much time as I can with her.   We’ve had a couple of hours reading on my bed this afternoon, all snuggly and purry. But it never seems enough.

The really sad news came through in the week that little Vic has had to be put to sleep.  My lovely little foster kit was poorly over Xmas while he was with me.  He picked up and was rehomed with one of his sisters but was poorly again,  and then again. It seems that a virus that most cats have without ill effect had turned itself into something nasty.  Really upset about it, he was such a lovely lad.  I’ll try to keep it from Obi, they were such good friends whilst they were here together.

strange daze

It‘s been an odd sort of week really.   In some ways very little has happened … but what HAS happened is a bit bizarre.

It started with someone being interested in Obi and Amara but then put off by Am having some white bits on her.  They wanted to know how fluffy they were because of worries about her shedding hairs on the black clothes they said they wore all the time.  I wonder if they were goths or clergy or lawyers – I never did find out. However I imagine after Amara had run up their curtains and Obi had trashed the house plants a few white hairs on their suits would have been a side issue.

Then there was the deceased cat, poor lad, who had been knocked down not far from me.  I offered through an internet forum to take him to the vet to see if he was microchipped – not something I relished the idea of doing, especially since the last dead cat I had in the car was midgecat coming home from the same vets.  But it transpired that he was locked in the garage of a neighbour for reasons un explained.

And bizarrest of all ….. on my trip across town to collect some Safe4 …… a brilliant group arrangement to avoid mega costs on postage and packing …….. I had a car run into the back of me.  Not only did I realise I half knew the driver, I realised my late mother had known her husband, someone who lived in her house had come to feed the midgecat whilst I was on holiday, I’d shopped in the shop she ran, and fourty years ago gone to ballet lessons in a property she now owned.  In a big city how weird is that?