When We Were Very Young....

Get ready for cute baby kitten pics, because this is what we looked like when we were very young!  (Yes, A.A. Milne is one of Mommy's favorite authors.)

Carbon and Tabby, Summer 2005

Tabby and Rori, Fall 2007

Tabby and Knut (Rori's brother), Fall 2007

Spooky 1, Fall 2007

Baby Chiba (Little Bit's sister), Spring 2008

Starla, Spring 2009

Smokey (Little Bit's sister), Winter 2008

Little Bit, Winter 2008

Little Bit with her boys (Squishy, Kai, Tiger, and Cloud), Spring 2009

Carbon with Little Bit's baby sisters (Boo and Michelle), Spring 2009

Baby-Tuxie, Summer 2009

Baby-Dot, Summer 2009

Spooky 2, Fall 2009

Freya and Heimdall, Summer 2010

Tigress, Summer 2011

Leopard (the feral kittens' mom), Hemming, Miss Marble, their brother, Summer 2011

Movie Monday: Miss Marble!

Miss Marble writes:

Oh, hi!  I'm visiting inside more and more!  I like it where it's warm by the heat vent, but I've been learning how to play spring and exploring around the open area.  I've been in the kitchen and down the hall a little, even!  Auntie Freya brought over her spring to show me, so she's been teaching me how to play with that.  Missy came over and greeted me, but didn't want to groom me when I asked her.  Mommy and Daddy pet me a lot, which I love, and I lean against their legs while purring.  Everyone loves me, and I love everyone!  I'm not ready to stay inside forever, though.  I like visiting inside for 20 minutes or so, then ask to be let out again.  I'm coming in at least three times a day, though!

I like this chair.  Mommy or Daddy sit in it while they pet me.  I've been put on the chair, but I don't like staying up there yet.

Freya likes to play with me when I'm under the chair!  I was wrestling with her for a while this morning.  She's become my "mommy-auntie":  my substitute mama kitty.

 I now am not concerned at all when I'm eating from the inside food bowl.  Auntie Rori can even sniff my tail tip, and all I did was flick it at her nose!

I found a new toy this morning!  It's a blue ball, and I can pick it up in my claws to shake it!  The blue is a crocheted covering for a ping-pong ball, but the ball itself got squashed.  It doesn't roll well now, but it's still a lot of fun to play with!

The release part of tnr, and the socialization part

The PDX pride Mommy here:

We sent Miss Marble on her way outside again. :'( I always choke up when we release a feral back into the wild. It's such a bittersweet moment! It's where she belongs, though. She just was freaking out too much inside. She bounded off like a rabbit, straight to a hiding place she and the rest of the family use, under the cedar tree (surrounded by rosebushes). Then, when she saw us wave at her and realized we could still see her, she bounded off to another favorite place, through the back fence into the wilderness of the wetland behind us.

Hemming did very well with his testing today!  We are sooo proud of him!  There were a lot of dogs waiting in line, and one other cat who looked like him, only female and a little older.  This was his first experience being around dogs, and he aced it.  He meowed the whole time we were waiting, while the dogs barked.  I really wish more dog owners would put their dogs through obedience courses, or at least train them properly.  Two barked and lunged at a lady wearing a straw hat, another dog kept nipping at its neighbor in line, and a lady made her dog walk right down the line to the end rather than walking around a different way to get to the end.  Maybe the owners need obedience training, too?

When we got checked in, and were in line again waiting for the vet, a big dog who was behind us in line came over to the carrier and sniffed Hemming through the bars.  Hemming sniffed him back, and put one of his paws up to the mesh door like he was asking the dog to play with him!

The vet and vet tech who did the blood draw couldn't barely believe that Hemming was born feral and that we'd only had him a short time.  They both said he looked and acted like a tame kitten, and were quite impressed with him!  He was so calm for his blood draw, even came out of the carrier nicely after the vet tech scruffed him.  He flinched and tried to look at his leg when they poked him, but he didn't mew in surprise!  Afterward, he walked right back into his carrier on his own, after the vet tech redirected him from wanting to jump down off the table.  We get his test results back on Tuesday, but are fairly certain that he doesn't have any bad diseases.

He's now in our office at home with the door closed, but free to roam in here.  He absolutely loves having a room of his own!  He walked around for a bit after I showed him his dishes and put him in the box to show him what that was, then I put him on my lap and petted him for a bit.  The first lap he's been on!  He wanted to climb, so he climbed up the door to the carrier, onto the top of it.  Then, after getting down from there, he climbed up the back of the computer desk onto the CPU tower and is very happy in his newfound nest.  Snuggly, purry, smiling, the picture of contentment!

Two trapped!

The PDX pride's Mommy here:

Two of the kittens are trapped and inside!  We made the decision not to try for more, because we can pay for the neuter fees and then next week get these two tested for diseases.  If we trapped any more at this time, we wouldn't be able to get them tested, and we'd much rather know if they are clean before trying to socialize them.

At around 4 pm, the polydactyl tabby/white boy made his way into the trap after the canned food, got trapped, and started screaming his little head off.  He couldn't understand why he wasn't allowed to go back out the way he came in.  He kept going to the door of the trap and batting at it, trying his best to make it open.  I brought him inside, where my husband and I gently talked to him and the inside cats all came to talk to him and investigate him.  Heimdall is turning out to be the best babysitter in the world, another reason why he reminds me so much of Skylar!  He lay down right next to the baby and started purring, which relaxed the baby considerably.

About an hour later, the marbled boy was trapped.  He made quite a ruckus in the trap, pulling the newspaper lining over his food, sticking his paws out the top, and turning around and around in the trap.  When I brought him inside and placed his trap alongside his brother's trap, they both calmed right down and started trying to play paws through the mesh with each other!  The inside cats went over to see the marbled boy, too, and were very interested in the rearranging he'd done with his trap paper.  He finally uncovered his food and ate, though it took him about two hours to do so because he was so stressed.

Little Bit cannot be around these new ones for a while, because she wanted to clean their behinds for them.  She was a mama cat, after all, with four boys of her own, so she knows how to treat young ones.  She just doesn't realize that you can't clean and groom someone through trap mesh.  Besides, a stranger cat trying to clean them was just scaring the little ones instead of helping.

They're sleeping now, curled up in their traps, with water bowls that they haven't touched yet.  We'll feed them some canned food in the morning, then take them to the feral cat clinic for their surgeries and eartipping.  We'll pick them up in the afternoon sometime and take them back home.  They will stay inside with us for the weekend to heal, and we will try to get them tested for diseases early next week.  They'll be inside until we figure out if they are disease-free, and then we will start to socialize them.  Once they are socialized, we will either make them our outside pets or adopt them out to a good home, depending on the level of socialization.

Here are some pictures from yesterday:

 Heimdall and Tabby greet the poly tabby/white boy.

 Heimdall being a good babysitter and purring to calm the baby down.

 Mr. Talkative!

 Carbon's not afraid of kittens anymore!  Checking each other out.

 Two brothers in traps:  marbled kitten on the left and poly tabby/white kitten on the right.

Tabby greeting the marbled kitten.

Heimdall greeting the marbled kitten.

It's Trapping Day!

It's trapping day at the PDX pride!  Mama Leopard's disappeared, along with the normal-toed tabby/white kitten.  We hadn't seen the striped kitten for a few days, either, but he came back last night!  The polydactyl tabby/white and the marbled kittens have been eating out of the open traps, as has "Daddy" Tuxie, so we're confident that we can trap at least the three little boys and maybe Tuxie as well.  We'll bring them in tonight and take them to the clinic for fixing/eartipping tomorrow.  Here's some pictures from the past couple days, where everyone was learning how to eat out of the traps.

 Tux keeping watch as the striped kitten eats in the left trap and the other two eat together in the right trap.

 Wait!  How come brother is eating in the box and I can't figure out how to get inside?

 Is this how we're supposed to do this?

 Freya:  Yep, I see them both eating in the same trap!

Hi!  Do you have any more of that yummy canned food?

Wordless Wednesday: Mama Leopard, "Daddy" Tuxie, and baby kittens

Digital scrapbooking design personalized with Smilebox

Fashion Friday: Meowy Catmas!!!

Meowy Catmas from all of us here at the PDX pride!!!!  We purrrray that it's a good one, filled with lots of blessings, snuggles, purrs, treats, and all that makes holidays wonderpurr.

Tabby in her "Santa Baby" dress by our small tree.

Freya wishing for Christmas to come sooner, wearing the "Santa Baby" dress.

No eating the cord for the lights, Freya!  (The reason we didn't get a full-sized tree this year; Daddy says next year.)

Merry Christmas!  Winter blessings!

Thankful Thursday: Kittens!

Welcome to your forever home, Heimdall and Freya!!!

We are proud to announce the arrival of our two newest family members!  These two littermates are 2 1/2 weeks old, born on (approximately) March 24, 2010.  Heimdall is a little boykit, named after the Norse god who is the gatekeeper to the Rainbow Bridge.  Freya is a little girlkit, named after the Norse goddess of love, beauty, wisdom, and the leader of the Valkyries (warrior maidens who ferried the souls of the dead), whose sacred symbol is the cat.

Our family was looking for one, possibly two, kittens to adopt, before Skylar got so sick.  Then, we all got too busy taking care of him, and our purrents thought it would be too much strain on the household to have kittens during that time as well.  So, they asked Skylar if, when he crossed to the Bridge, he would pick out a kitten to send to our family.

On Sunday, Mommy was looking at Petfinder.com at kittens in our area.  She and Daddy already knew they wanted a tuxedo kitten, in memory of Skylar, and probably a boykit would fit best with our family.  She narrowed down the choices, then saw the picture below:

Doesn't he look sooooo much like Skylar???  She just knew this was the kitten that we were supposed to adopt!  She told Daddy to look at the picture, and he agreed.  He looked at the other kittens at the shelter, and saw the following one:

Guess what???  She is the other kitten's littermate sister!  Just like Skylar and Lydia were littermate brother and sister!  Mommy and Daddy went down to Salem, OR, on Monday (the next day) to meet them.  The shelter is named Salem Friends of Felines, and we highly recommend it to everyone.  The kittens were in one room, free to play and jump, and the adult cats were in another room, also free to go wherever they wanted in their room.  The only ones who had cages were the sick ones or others needing veterinary care (one was recovering from a leg amputation).

Our purrents gave them their new names on the way home, and Freya proceeded to lick Mommy's hands through the carrier door.  Heimdall wanted in on the attention, too, so he pressed up against the door to get petted.  This, of course, started a wrestling match in the carrier!

When they got home, we all came out to investigate the new beings who were going to live with us.  Even Carbon likes them, and he usually doesn't consider kittens to be cats until they pass a year old!

Of course, Carbon also though the carrier was interesting!

Heimdall on the left and Freya on the right

Little kittens, big hallway!

Wordless Wednesday

Come back tomorrow to find out who these two cuties are!

Happy Gotcha Days to Us!!!!!

Can you believe Tabby and Carbon were ever that small???  Here they are when they first came to live with us, five years ago!

Carbon sleeping in the kitty stroller, one of his favorite places to take a nap

Tabby taking a walk at the Doggie Dash, wearing her cooling collar