Day 79
Today was the first full day with just Sipke and Stipke by Mitsy’s side. We both had a full business agenda, which gave us much-needed distraction, but we thought of our little guys in the Adoption Centre a lot. We both still wake up with the name Kabiri in our heads, my little man, who was so courageous when entering the new cat condo… We pray for courage for all four of them. They are ready to meet a new family – go and see them! We would do that ourselves, but we know it will melt our determination to let them go through the adjustment without seeing us. We’d smuggle them out and take them back home, I fear…
Good news
Towards the evening we got two pieces of good news.
First we received a message from our Ninth Life Cat Rescue contact about how the kittens handled their first night and day in their new ‘B & B’. They are still nervous and will need some more time to adjust to their new surroundings, but: they have explored their double condo, found the litterbox in the other half and ate all of their food! And every volunteers who met them, loves them. Hurray! (Like: how could they not love them! They are special kittens!)
Suzi!
The other piece of good work was about the bloodwork for our resident rescue Suzi. It came back with good results! She is hypercalcemic (very high calcium levels) but it does not seem the type often caused by a fatal disease such as cancer. Phew. We still need to figure out how to lower it, because it can lead to issues in the future but at least it looks like she has a future. We adopted her from the Humane Society 5.5 years ago; she was rescued from a hoarder’s house and that is all the detail we got. But looking at how she had developed (not), with stunted growth and super afraid of everything and everyone, we know that she will probably not make it to the age Dixie reached (20 years). But it would have been horrible if we had to shorten her future at this point in time. The other day we read something about cat-memory. The short term memory is really short. No more than a day. However, they also have the long term memory that is linked with what they imprinted on at a very young age and onwards. With Suzi, due to her reactions, we know, for instance, that she must have lived with people who smoked and coughed a lot. Whenever one of us has a cough, she shoots away and hides. The smoke must have caused her nose to be permanently stuffed and get chronic sinusitis. This cat has not lived a single year without antibiotics for it. We sometimes hear a dry cough and that is attributed to herpes. Apparently 95% of all cats have that virus. She also intensely dislikes loud voices. Maybe all cats do…
This whole memory business is why we do not want to personally check up on our little ‘fillies’ at the store. What if they think we are taking them back home? That would just be cruel. Although, if one of them does not thrive, we will take it back, for sure.
Lots of play, even Mitsy joined in
Today we both spent quite a bit of time with the resized family. It was a rotten day weather wise, until late afternoon. The room was chilly so we even switched on the heater for a little bit. To my delight, while playing with the twins, mom joined in! And to both of our even bigger delight, the twins came to sit with us companionably after we brought food or just sat to spend some time with them. Both of them are getting more and more talkative, and mom talks back to them too. She already did that earlier, calling them to dinner, so to speak. It just feels as if it is louder now. When she is hungry, she looks at us with huge pupils and ‘tells’ us. When she was still roaming outside, I think we only heard her voice once or twice, and only on the catcams, never in person. So it is nice to see that she is still progressing in terms of socialisation. It even happens now and then that she walks towards us without food being the motivation. She rubs her body on our legs and asks for a hug. Sometimes to her own surprise, and then she walks away quickly.
We don’t have the impression that she misses the other kittens, but we really believe that she is aware of a change. She spent a lot of hours sleeping and so did the twins. They have now also found the two cat beds we put in the room. They seem to enjoy them and that is a good thing, because we can definitely feel that summer is over.
