Thursday, May 29, 2014

4 tiny little knights

It's been a while, but here we go again! :D The kittenseason has started, our shelter kept getting teeny tiny kittens and was lacking crisis fosterhomes to take them all in. Normally I only foster kittens that can eat on their own already, and the crisis fosterhomes are families that take those tiny ones in 24/7, whenever it's needed, and also feed them around the clock. I offered to help out with bottlefed kittens and the shelter asked me for 4 little boys. They already stayed in one of those crisis homes for about 10 days, and I got them when they were about 3.5 weeks old.
I don't have to bottlefeed them during the night anymore, phew! I do have to stay up later than usual ánd get up early again as well, I've had them for a week tomorrow, so I'm a bit tired by now (which is also why I didn't post before, I have so much photos already, but oh the sorting!). But it's all so worth it, they're sooo adorable! :)

And I have to say, I really have tons of respect for the fosterhomes that do feed 24/7, because you're not done with just preparing a bottle. They can make a mess even with a bottle, haha! And they need their bellies stimulated to be able to poo and pee, they do start to learn themselves to go on the litterbox with a little bit of help, but they get accidents then as well and practicing food can be quite messy too, so there's loads of cleaning to do as well. I can't even imagine all that ánd the lack of sleep like those 24/7 fosterhomes have, and I'm very happy that there's people willing to do that until those tiny kittens are old enough to go to new (foster)homes!

Anyway, these 4 arrived last Friday and I wasn't sure what to name them. On Saturday I received a package from a brand called A England, and they have a nailpolish line that's named after King Arthur's story. The owner of the brand loves animals as well and named her cat after one of the knights, and 4 little knights sounded good to me as well (or 3 knights and a king, haha), so I decided to name them after that! I call them de riddertjes in Dutch :) 3 of the kittens are so alike that they arrived with a colored ribbon around their neck to keep them apart. Letters/numbers/words are linked to colors in my head, so I went with knight names that matched the colors of the ribbons, to easily remember their names.
The tabby with white is called Lancelot, the tabby with green ribbon (King) Arthur, red ribbon is Perceval and blue ribbon is Tristram. During the day I can easier keep them apart, also because their character is starting to show more. Perceval is also a bit bigger and his markings are becoming darker and clearly blotched, Arthur and Tristram are still more alike. But remove some light and pile them up, good luck telling them apart then! :D


When they arrived they all went into the basket, only little Lancelot stayed visible, the rest was sleeping in the back

Tiny little paws! :L


Tristram is the smallest one, but he sure makes up for that with character, boy can he scream! :D 



Yeah, I have no idea who these 2 are, lol! I'm sure it's not Lancelot, that would've been easy to tell, and I pretty sure the right one is Perceval (but I may be fooled by bad lighting, haha), I guess left is Arthur

I have so much pics of when I'm feeding them, but this post will become huge if I add all those, so will show those next time! :)