Week 2 with the Foster Kittens: Five Weeks Old and Full of Trouble!

Socks

Whenever I look back at photos of all of our former litters of foster kittens, I ask myself why on earth I didn't take MORE photos of them? They're so cute and little! Did I not appreciate what I had while I had it?!?

I appreciated it all right. I just keep forgetting that it is nearly impossible to take a decent photo of a small kitten, much less five of them. Someone is always in motion, always blurry, always running out of frame. 

That's not my vibe so much. Everyone else can play with them, wrestle and dangle ribbons and toss curly strips of paper towel tube for them to chase. All I want is a kitten to sleep on my lap and purr while I pet it.

And when that happens, I take a photo!

Socks and Anchovy

Athena

Pickle

We've been moving them between their nighttime accommodations, the children's bathroom, and their daytime accommodations, my bathroom, since for several days they seemed happy enough to use the litter box, but also happy enough to simply squat wherever they were and pee on my floor.

This means we got a lot of fun bathroom floor photos in between doing a sanitary load of laundry and deep cleaning two bathrooms every single day!

Anchovy and Taboo

Taboo

Athena

They're more reliable in the past couple of days (although that back corner under my desk remains an unholy temptation...), so they've gotten to also hang out in my bedroom and nap on the bed, and every now and then a lucky kitten gets to come out and sit on the couch with us.

Anchovy

Anchovy

And sometimes a couple of them get to ride around the rest of the house in a shirt pocket...

Taboo and Athena

They are not very helpful when I'm trying to get some work done:

Pickle

So then you've got to distract them like you do any other ipad baby:

Socks

I still prefer when they lie on me and sleep and purr, though. Obviously, when you're catlocked, you have to stop doing all your productive things and instead play on your phone or nap while the baby's napping.

Socks

They've all been very good kittens this week and hit the one-pound mark, even little Pickle, who had insisted on remaining 15 ounces after all the other babies blew past her. For some reason, a few days ago all the kittens decided that they hated their canned kitten food, so Syd fixed up her go-to Plan B of baked chicken pureed in a blender with a little water, famous as the food that finally got Buttons, the runt from her last foster litter, to decide that eating solid food was a route she wanted to pursue. The kittens are ALL ABOUT the pureed chicken now, but now that they're all over a pound, Syd's next big challenge is to wean them off it and back onto regular kitten food. 

Chicken is too expensive to be feeding it to kittens that could eat their nice kibble perfectly well if they weren't so picky!