Author: annagoebel

The kittens a growing so fast, and becoming stronger and stronger. The littlest one, the black kitten, looks like a homeless waif, but she’s as strong and determined as her brothers. They’re starting to get their feet under them better, so they look more like kittens and less like baby seals!

We’re calling our new kitty Mouse, and she has the most rewarding purr. Make sure you have the sound on for the video!

Mouse has a lot of black in her ears, so I applied a gooey treatment twice a day for four days – it was supposed to be five. She is very forgiving, but after four days she was just done. It’s very unpleasant because it makes her ears – itchy at the best of times – super itchy. I came in yesterday to find the tube gone. I can’t really say it was intentional, but wherever she has hidden it, I cannot find it. End of treatment. Check.

We have a new foster kitty! She is going to be a mama, probably in about two weeks. She is so big!

She’s a sweetie. She has taken all the moving around very well, and begs to be petted even though she doesn’t know us very well.

Her coloring is dilute torbie, which means she has both tabby and tortoise-shell markings, but her color is softer, with gray rather than black. The photo doesn’t show it well, but in many places her color is light tan rather than grey, with muted tortoise-shell markings.

Chocolate has made a lot of progress in the two months she’s been here, especially in learning about playing. I don’t think she’d really played much before in her life.

We have found that play is a good road to more trust and more human/cat interaction, so we have worked with her to make it as enticing as possible.

Her favorite game is playing with a toy under the square of fleece we have for that. She will pounce on it, or burrow under the fleece to get it.

She is getting to enjoy chasing toys that we pull along the ground, or feather toys that fly through the air. She is slowly learning that they’re not dangerous, and can be fun.

One interesting thing is that she learns from Magic. Magic is the queen of playtime, and has never met a toy she didn’t like. Chocolate watches her and learns new ways to play. She had the instinct for pouncing on something moving under the fleece, but she learned to zoom across the room from Magic.

Chocolate has been pretty stressed by changing homes. She has spent the last month in various hiding places in the big room, watching the humans from a distance. She is cautious about coming out, even to eat, and makes it quick.

The result is that she’s been a challenge to photograph! This is the first I have been able to get. I haven’t even been able to get my phone out fast enough!

She has not had much experience with playing, so we’re going to work on that, but she is very interested in food.

We got a new foster called Chocolate, a black-and-white adult female. She is not newly rescued, but has lived indoors for over a year. She just has not interacted with people very much.

She’s in a big dog cage for now, while we see how she and Magic get along. Below is their first interaction – very uneventful. Magic tiptoes quietly up and sniffs, and walks quietly away. So far, so good!

We’ve made real progress in the last nine days. I’ve gone into Magic’s room as often as possible, and kept the door open between her room and where I work – with a grate up instead of a door. I’ve made sure we have a play session at least once a day, and usually twice.

I’d worked with Magic quite a bit before, in the 2 months she’s been here. I’ve used a clicker – click and treat, I’ve put food down close to her. I was even able to touch her haunches lightly with two fingers. Then we had to capture her and put her in a carrier for a vet visit. All the trust was gone after that.

Once her kittens were all adopted, I started to see how much I could regain. I can’t get close to touching her any longer, but sometimes if she was in the cat tree when I would come in, she’d stay there and not run to her favorite safe spot.

When she’s on the cat tree, I can swing the cat toy within her reach, so that’s what I’m concentrating on.

At first, she would only stay on the top level. She likes being up, and that’s where she felt safest. On that level, she was willing to lower her guard and bat at the toy. She would not come down, and she didn’t want me too close, but she was really happy to be able to play, and I think to have someone to play “with” her.

Gradually, over the last nine days, she has become more relaxed. She has been slowing coming down, first just her front feet on the next level down, then all of her, then the next level. Finally she was willing to follow the toy to the floor. This morning was the biggest breakthrough so far – she ran right to my foot to grab the toy and take it away. Real progress!

I think play is sometimes overlooked as a tool in taming a wild kitty. I believe play can be the most powerful tool you have with a cat. Food is a good offering, but a cat will ignore food completely if they feel under threat. Toys are enticing in a special way.

Twice in the past 24 hours I have taken a feather toy on a wand to play with Magic, and she has already let her guard down a tiny bit. She loves it; she wants it. She’s willing to lower her guard enough to play with it, even though she knows I’m there, fairly close, and she knows I’m the “engine” behind it moving.

A lot of ground work has already been done for this. Magic has lived here for two months, and she has already come a long way. She already has enough trust to turn her back when she has the toy. But if I took a step closer, she’d be gone. Cats know exactly what their boundaries are.

It’s usually said that if you don’t tame a feral kitty by the time they’re eight weeks old, your chances of being success go way down. It’s said that you might as well just forget it with an adult cat.

Magic is 3 or 4 years old.

But then I think about our Jiro, the feral kitty we found and trapped in our back yard. He was a full year, and truly wild. He was quite frightened of humans, and being in a strange new place. It took months of patience, but he is now a happy lap kitty who really loves his family and his life.

Magic could go to a barn home, but I don’t want her to have to make that transition as winter is coming. So I will accept the challenge of Magic. I’ll keep her through the winter and we’ll see what happens.

All four of our current foster kittens have left on new adventures with their people. It’s a bittersweet time, but I’m so happy that the adopters are both lovely people who know cats.

Little Gem and Midnight went home with Ashley last week, and Ashley sent pics of them looking pretty comfortable in their new home.

Captain Jack Sparrow and Princess left today with Joyce, their new forever person. They will be loved not only by Joyce, but her granddaughter and her family, who will come to visit. She is looking forward to meeting them, and has already renamed Princess – Princess Royal Kitty is much more impressive! I think it suits her (shown here).