New scratching pole

Yesterday I gave the kittens a slightly higher scratching pole with a basket at the bottom, and they liked it straight away!

Tara in the basket

Ysera with a mouse on top

Unfortunately Dew is acting a bit different and less fun towards the kittens since yesterday, could be caused by the scratching pole which is from my cats? It was never used by them, only Dew lay in it every once in a while. He seems confuzed now, he wants to go to the kittens but for example, he tried to carry Naeva out of the room with his mouth, and he went for Tara as well. Still a bit soft, but too harsh already imo, and he included a mild version of his battlecry. I'm gonna call someone about this later, because I don't have enough experience with adult cats with kittens to know what's the wise thing to do here (correct him, let them sort it, keep him away from the kittens, ...)

Little stalkers! When I see this, I can understand Dew as well :P

Ysera's favo sleeping position

Naeva sneaking up on a toy

Stubborn little missy!

It's often not so easy to make photos, Naeva and Amin discovered the cord on my camera ^_^

And Tara discovered my belt loops and loves them. Not so nice, because I often get nails in my back as well! But she thinks I shouldn't whine, it's fun :e

Amin is a little dragon as we'd say in Dutch, a "draakje", he slaps and bites a lot atm. But his adorable face makes up for a lot :) Naeva discovered how to climb my pants, I hope it'll take a while before Amientje discovers that!

Sleeping together

The kittens are doing well, they gain weight like they should, use the litterboxes, and there's barely any hissing anymore. Only Yse hisses sometimes when she gets spooked by something. Tara (Taartje) was meowing this morning and searching for a litterbox (I was cleaning them) and she even held it in until I could quickly put her on a litterbox :) Both Tara and Ysera are more relaxed when I pick them up now, at start they really started to panic and tried to get away, so yep, I think they're doing well! :)

I originally posted this on a forum on Tuesday, July 10. Roughly translated and posted here afterwards.

Names!

I finally found some names for the kittens, although it's not really helping yet. It doesn't matter what kind of sound I make, they don't look anyway! :) I called the blue one Tara, the red/white one Ysera, the creme Amin and the black one Naeva.

Tara is just a name I liked and I found it matched with her attitude and character, Ysera is a name from WoW, the description of that character in game matched well with this kitty I think (like this kitten is often a bit in her own world as well). Amin -Amientje as I'd say in Dutch- is the name from an online friend (although I found out later that it's not a name that should be given to pets according to their religion, oops! >.<) and Naeva apparently means child of the evening, which I thought would go well with her pretty fur.

Tara starts to find me more interesting, meows a bit more and is by far the biggest kitty now. If they'd told me she was from a different litter than her brother I would've believed it straight away! She's really a little lady already, and also a little foodjunkie :D

The bench is still comfy!

Naeva starts to turn into a real cuddlycat, she loves to curl up in my neck and hair and give my face kisses while purring like mad. Tiny wet nose against my nose :L She also greets me with meows I can barely hear, so cute! At first it was Amientje who focussed on me the most, now that's Naeva.

Lying upside down to show that she also has white in her fur

Amin attacked my nose this morning with 2 paws and a little kittenjump! Luckily he was gentle, because this little mister is the worst when it comes to teeth and nails. Every little thing on my skin needs to be attacked as well, so he keeps me quite busy :)

But he can also be adorable (when he sleeps) :angel

Ysera all of a sudden made good progress this morning, she actually stayed with me for a little while instead of running away instantly. And when the others came to me, she joined them too, including a little meow to me. And as it turns out, there's a big engine hidden in that tiny body! <3 I just cleaned her up a bit as well, and she really liked it this time, prrrr. It's só nice that she starts to trust me a little, she has enough to deal with already.

Her little head is improving as well, but she just lacks some bits of her nose and mouth, I don't know how else to describe it. Her eye has a milkywhite layer which isn't getting any less yet, and her mouth is open a bit, but she just can't close it further. But with eating and other things it doesn't seem to be an issue for her! There was a big piece of scab hanging loose from her nose yesterday, poor girl, that looked really awful :( But after that got loose and I put cream on her nose again, it looked like she felt a lot better all of a sudden and she even went nuts for a bit. It was really nice to see her like that, I often find it hard to see such a tiny little creature having so much issues already. Later this week we're going to the vet for a checkup, curious to see what he thinks of her now.

These pics show the position of her mouth and teeth, which isn't so visible when she looks straight forward. She gets eye ointment at least 10x a day, cream on her nose several times a day, and painkillers of course, but there's nothing else I can do about her mouth. But I hope it'll improve when she grows!

On my lap together with Naeva

And some more lapcats

Look at little brave Naeva here! :o

I'm so glad she didn't try to do that with Sue :O

Getting them socialized is so much easier with some friendly kittens there as well! I already knew that, but now that I see it for myself, it still surprises me. And Tara just greeted Dew with her tail up (she was the worst towards him) and he sat with her and Amientje in the window :)

I originally posted this on a forum on Sunday, July 8. Roughly translated and posted here afterwards.

Dew and the kittens

The kittens are all doing fine, and their bowel movement is ok again as well. I am a lot more fun already, and Dewey is a lot less scary as well. At first they were hissing to him with arched backs, but now they're watching him closely (when they're tired) or start to follow him. But Dew's still a bit impressed from all the staring and following, especially when they close up on him or sit on a row just looking!

Dew jumped in their room and that spooked Amin...

...who then started to follow Dew

His sister Tara also noticed that big thing. I would also feel a bit weird if I were Dew and there's 4 pairs of eyes staring at me like Tara does here :O

Dewey ignores Amin's high back

Both following Dew

Dew and mini-Dew!

Dewey loves flies (the bigger, the tastier >.<) and there was one between the door and the doorframe. Amientje got brave and went to sniff Dew while he was going for his snack, and after that Dewey went back on his scratching pole on the other side of the door.

Tara played with Dew's tail shortly earlier when he was lying near the door, and she got a very soft poke against her head when she was sitting behind the door. That grey thing moving behind the door was pretty interesting for Dew as well! He seems to know well that she's the biggest of them all, but that he has to be very careful still. So adorable together :)

Bindi and Sue dislike the whole kitten-thing, they hiss and Sue looks angry at them as well. Bindi is interested in their food (nothing new there), but she's too scared to go into their room and take it, haha. But my girls have plenty of space in the rest of the house and choose to just stay away from them, which is fine of course.

I originally posted this on a forum on Sunday, July 8. Roughly translated and posted here afterwards.

Aaaand some more photos...I keep clicking!

This little one plays very enthousiastic, but after that she's really tired as well! I do find it a bit tricky to photograph her fur! So most photos that I took so far were a bit blurry unfortunately.


That toy mouse looks very big all of a sudden :)

Rolled over by accident, but doesn't matter, just continue sleeping!

When I went to check on them earlier, a few of them were sleeping on the mattress, but this little lady woke up straight away. She's improving a bit already, she's hissing a lot less to me :)

Part of the camera moves...what's that! :o

She wants to play, but it's all bit harder for her, and I can notice as well that her sight isn't ok. On the background you see brother and sister playing together.

Then we have brother and sister, it's obvious that they're a bit older already!
Sleeping on the bench

She really likes the Catit rails! Even though her paws are still a bit too short :O

But that's ok, you can also have fun and be silly near the rails!

On my lap, the little miss is ok with that a bit more often now, and she can purr well then! And if I stop petting her, she sometimes already throws her head against me <3

Of course her brother had to mix in as well :)

He keeps following me, he's really interested in humans!

Huh? What's moving there! *poke*

I'll go bug the poor thing with her ointments again, and give them the activity board (without the cups). I think the blue/creme will enjoy that one :)

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The kittens are doing well further, but their bowel movement got a bit thin, especially from the black one. It's probably from the warm weather, but I'll keep a close eye on her, although it seems she's doing a bit better already again :)

The red/white one has improved a little bit already, but well, it's too early to tell if she'll be able to see with that eye later on. Although I do think she's not completely blind on that side. Her mouth and nose look a bit weird from up close, I hope that'll get better! I'm still pretty scary, but my cats are scary too! Poor Dew even got a panick-slap from her, but he didn't do anything back <3

I originally posted this on a forum on Saturday, July 7. Roughly translated and posted here afterwards.

More fuzziness

And another update :) Last night the male got tired (I should really come up with some names soon) and at first he was lying like this:

Later on he showed that he's really a male :P He stayed with me like this for quite some time in various positions, aww.

This is also the kitten that's doing better than the others so far (and yes, also as a model!), if I stand at the door and he sees me, he comes straight away and often starts purring when I come inside. He also often climbs Mount Bregje, and when I came in this morning, I got his full attention straight away :)

His sister is also doing well, she isn't impressed by anything except humans that come close. She greeted me this morning with a hiss, but quickly remembered that me petting her was nice as well! Last night she lay on me for a bit as well, that was faster than expected, little miss really has a will of her own already. If I pick her up she usually just walks away, back to where she came from with a look that says "Tss, what were you thinking..." :)

She's the climber of the bunch, she's the only one that goes higher up in their room (on top of the bench is fun!) and yesterday she quickly understood how that scratching pole works.

The little tortoiseshell is becoming a real tricolor, she already has só much character packed in that tiny body! Those colored things on my fingers and toes (nail polish) need to be caught, she already tested if my hand is edible (hey, what's this? *bites*) and she even tried to drag along my pants, lol. She does need to improve her nailskills, she gets stuck on things quite often. If she then can't easily pull herself loose, she just lies down there instead ^_^

*Yawn*

I don't have many photos of the red/white kitten, and the ones that I have are mainly closeups so I can easily compare if she's improving. I'm also pretty scary and she hisses a lot, and she thinks that my camera makes strange sounds, so I'm not bugging her with it too much. Last night she was lying with me for a short while, and she does allow me giving her meds. I just cleaned her up a bit, and she kinda liked that. And as you can see on the pics with the scratching pole, she does her best to go along with the others. She also sleeps and plays with them, although it's all a bit shorter and less enthousiastic, poor thing :(

The 4 of them were lying here before she went off to discover that scratching pole, so you only see a small bit of her here. I don't think the photos show so well, but there's about 300grams weight difference between the 2 tortoiseshell kitties.

My cats know very well what's going on now, Bindi finds it all a bit scary but somewhat interesting as well, although she easily hisses and ignores them further. Sue was in the kittenroom shortly, but luckily the kittens were asleep, the look on her face said it all, haha! :@ Dew is doing very well, at first it was all really scary, a quick look and then run away fast! But he already sniffed some kittens and even walked around in that room last night. I placed a wooden board in the doorframe and their most used scratching pole on the other side, this way the door can stay open and the kittens can't get out (for now), and Dewey can sit on the pole and watch kitten-TV. The blue/creme hisses a bit at him and the red/white smells a bit funky with all the meds on her face, so I'm keeping these 2 away from him. I picked up the male and the little tortoiseshell a few times and they went nose-to-nose with Dew, and he also went to sniff that little one when she was eating. But when the male spots Dew on the scratching pole, he goes stand sideways with his back arched up and a big tail, and my little Dewdew (that now all of a sudden feels like a tiger in size), is actually a bit impressed by that! :O <3

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Dewey just went in their room again, but that made quite an impression on the little ones, behind him was a whole trail of arched backs and big fluffy tails :O After he went away again, the 2 tortoiseshell kitties were standing a bit uncomfortable in their sideways-arched-back positions and seemed unsure what to do next, so they just continued like that to each other. Especially the smallest one was clueless and seemed to be stuck in that position :D When Dew came back again brother and sister were standing side to side, both sideways with an arched back, and then it turned out the little miss can growl, big time even! Such a nasty sound coming from that tiny kitten! I'm proud of my sweet Dew for staying so calm :)

I originally posted this on a forum on Friday, July 6. Roughly translated and posted here afterwards.