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!

If You Can't Get a Hole in the Head, Get Five Four-Week-Old Foster Kittens

Syd and I are going to be playing around with idioms next week in her Creative Writing study, so it's relevant that I tell you that I needed five four-week-old kittens like I needed a hole in the head.

But to be fair, I did tell her that she needed to choose a regular volunteer commitment this year, and I did tell her that it should be something that she's passionate about. After all, those college application essays aren't going to be writing themselves!

She'd been making some noise about going back to volunteer at the little local food pantry we used to volunteer at weekly when she was a tot, so I thought that's what she'd be doing. Now that she's fully licensed she can even drive herself, so I could just sit my butt down in a quiet home for two hours a week while she built her leadership skills and logged service learning hours and created the foundation of a kick-ass college application essay about food insecurity.

But instead, somehow I found myself putting my name on a quite different volunteer application that she filled out, and then somehow I found myself going with her to pick up a litter of foster kittens. Another volunteer had already claimed the litter of four six-week-old kittens we'd originally planned to pick up, but the staffer said that another litter of five six-week-old kittens had just been dropped off that morning; would we perhaps like to take them, instead?

Five isn't that different from four, so fine.

As the staffer was examining them, though, she was all, "Hmmm... these don't look like they're six weeks old. I think they're more like five weeks."

Five weeks instead of six weeks means they'd spend just one more extra week in our care, so... okay, fine.

A few more minutes, and that became, "Actually, five weeks might be a stretch. I'm going to write them down as four weeks old."

And of course, by then I'd already been petting them, and seen that one is a tortoiseshell and one is a TORBIE!!!!!, so the news that we'd be coming home with one more kitten than planned and keeping them all at least two more weeks than planned sailed right over my head. An hour later, I was sitting on my playroom floor, holding both that tortoiseshell AND that torbie in my hands and giving them kisses on their little fuzzy foreheads!

Here are Socks, a tuxedo, and Athena, the torbie, the bravest of the litter and the first ones out of their travel crate:

The shelter gave them their first set of vaccinations before we took them home, so here are the other three tired babies sleeping off their shots in their travel crate:

And then Socks laid down for a nap, too:

Eventually, everyone was awake at the same time and whoa. It's been wild ever since!

Foster kittens are a LOT more work than it would be to spend two hours a week unloading produce at the food pantry. We've got to keep them isolated from the other household pets, and just sanitizing their area and keeping them cleaned up takes tons of time. They'll happily use the litterbox, but they'll also just as happily use the floor or their bedding--you will not BELIEVE what the kids' bathroom looked like this morning! I gagged, Syd literally almost fainted, and then five bad kitties had to get stuffed back into their travel crate while we spray cleaned and steam mopped and Lysoled the floor and walls. 

Seriously, the WALLS!!!! And then we had to come at each of the kittens with a warm washcloth, too. They were furious.

Thankfully, these guys are acting wolfishly healthy so far, wrestling and scampering and growling at each other over the bowl of wet cat food:

And they flock to Syd. Check them out sleeping and sprawling and fighting all over her lap:

A few years ago, a young friend's cat died, and in the condolence letter that I wrote to her, I told her that I believed that cats could sense when you were a person who had been loved by a cat, and she shouldn't be surprised if she found that cats were drawn to her even more now. Of course I didn't actually believe that; it was mostly just a pretty way to express to her that love is never wasted, and I wanted her to still feel like her Lavender's love was with her.

But looking at these five little foster kittens, happy and snug in a cuddle pile in Syd's arms--

--I swear I can almost feel the invisible spirit of Gracie standing there, telling five scared kittens, "Go over and climb on that kid right there. You're going to be so safe and happy with her."

And so they did. And I know that Syd actually has smiled since Gracie died--we've told jokes and had fun and things have, mostly, gone back to normal. She's definitely smiled and laughed, and she's definitely had her happy moments. But she hasn't yet been as happy as she'd been with Gracie, I don't think. I think she always misses her, and I think that remembering Gracie hurts her. I know it hurts me, and it hurts me to see my kid's grief, always just right there below the surface. 

So I'd like to imagine that the invisible spirit of Gracie really was there, that first time that those five foster kittens curled up in a cuddle pile in Syd's arms. I'd like to think that in some way Gracie, too, got to be there to see her beloved kid really, truly, genuinely happy again. 

Back to the Children's Museum, 25 Months Later

Here the kids and I are at Kindergarten Day in March 2020:

And here's the next time that we stepped back into our favorite museum: Kindergarten Day, April 2022!

I've missed volunteering at the museum so much! And even better that it was a Kindergarten Day that finally brought us back, because Kindergarten Day is the MOST fun to volunteer for. It's even more fun than Chemistry Day, because even though the Chemistry Day activity is usually more interesting, it also usually results in us getting lemon juice or maple syrup or something horrifying all over ourselves. Space Day is also really fun, but Kindergarten Day is something special. The little kids are always absolutely enchanted by our simple activities, enthusiastic and easy to work with, and this year's kids were even more thrilled because, thanks to the pandemic hitting when they were all three or four years old, many of them had never been on a field trip before. Like, ever. 

Can you remember your very first field trip? I can. I was also in kindergarten, and my class went to the Arklahoma State Fair to see the animal barns. In the chicken barn there was a chick pen, and in the chick pen was a little ferris wheel in constant slow motion. There was chick feed in each seat, so the chicks would walk themselves in and start pecking away, oblivious to the ferris wheel carrying them up and around.

It remains in the Top Ten Best Things I've Ever Seen.

At one point during this Kindergarten Day, the kids and I were busily making little carousel animal models with the kindergartners. They could choose a cardstock animal in a few different colors and write their name on the back, then decorate their animal as they wished. Next, we demonstrated to each kid how to tear off a piece of Scotch tape, and each kid got to choose a paper straw and tape their animal to it, using tape they'd torn off all by themselves. Finally, they got a paper cone with the tip cut off, decorated it, as well, and inserted the straw into the hole to stand up their carousel animal. If they didn't run off immediately, we'd play carousel animals for a while, using our important directional words of "up," "down," and "around" while acting it out with the kids. 

So I was busily doing this with about three little kids, and one of them said, "Why are we making carousel horses, anyway?"

I said, "Because here in the Children's Museum, we have a real carousel."

The kids were all "WHAT?!?" with big eyes, so I said, "Look over there," and pointed into the adjacent gallery, where the big carousel was going, music blaring, kids riding all the animals, looking like a literal kindergartner's dream come true.

I'm not in charge of anyone's memories, but I sure hope that there are three or so little kids in particular who will carry with them the memory of their very first field trip, when they got to make a little carousel animal to play with and then they turned around and there was a real, live carousel right behind them.

I think my own kids had fun, too. Here's Syd's carousel horse on a cone that a kindergartner decorated for her:

An adult who was chaperoning kindergartners pointed at this horse and asked Syd if she'd made it. Syd said yes, and the adult was all, "Oh. Are you left-handed?"

It was so random, so inexplicable, and yet so clearly meant as an insult that it's pretty much the most hilarious thing that I've ever seen happen. We obviously carefully saved Left-Handed Horse and brought her home, and now she holds a place of honor in our home, as does Will's Asgardian Steed:

Nobody said a peep about the craftsmanship of Will's horse, nor seemed to notice that it has eight legs.

Afterwards, the kids and I had a brand-new gallery to visit. Since our last trip to the museum, Dinosphere had closed for a year, been revamped with new fossils, and had just opened back up a few weeks ago.

Not gonna lie, I was a little nervous about the Dinosphere revamp. A few years ago, the museum did the same thing to ScienceWorks, and they took out the construction site where you could move real-looking rubber rocks (something like these, but even better) around while riding in pedal-operated bulldozers AND the crawl-through earthworm tunnel system. The giant water table with a lock-and-dam setup and an Archimedes screw that they put in is pretty cool, but nothing else compares to the cool factor of a literal bulldozer you can ride in and operate yourself, and literal rubber rocks that you can pile up and toss around and shovel.

Thank goodness Dinosphere is even more epic after its remodel.

There's new signage--

--and they moved Supercroc to a different location--

--so that its spot could be taken by Sauropods!!!

The T-Rexes and Triceratops are still there, thank goodness:

But now there are whole new sections with new fossils--

--new activities--

--and a beautiful tribute to a museum paleontologist we knew and loved:

So that's what I'd been most excited to revisit. Will, though, has a different favorite thing in the museum, and she was ecstatic to reunite with it:

She's not leaving for college until January, so hopefully they'll have some more quality time together before she goes. 

On a different evening, Will and I headed back to the museum after hours for their volunteer appreciation party. We had to leave Syd behind, because she's a very busy teenager with a part-time job these days, but as a bonus, we got to bring Matt with us!

And the party was 70s-themed, so I sewed us all bell bottoms:

The party was 70s-themed because of the museum's new Scooby-Doo exhibit, so along with our feasting--

--and festivities--

That's us very much NOT winning the pub quiz.

--we got to explore the new exhibit:

The interactive bits are always cute to explore, even if they're designed for small kids. The setup is basically that of an escape room designed for young children, and I think that sounds like just about the funnest thing ever:

My favorite part, though, was the collection of artifacts and original prints, most of which are on loan from Warner Bros.:

This is the original drawing for the original cartoon!

And then a special treat--another visit to Dinosphere, even better without the crowds!

It was fun to have Matt there, because instead of leaving him alone to explore, we could pester him and march him over to all our best places and tell him super interesting stories like "over here is where we ran a fossil activity one time seven years ago but the table next to us where kids could excavate chocolate chips out of cookies was better."

This is my favorite fossil in the new gallery:

It's a MOSASAUR!!!!!!!

Will remains partial to the Sauropods:

I really like that this is one of the magical places of my children's childhood that we haven't had to give up as they've grown. We no longer visit the local playgrounds every day, nor do we make a point to visit a hands-on museum everywhere we travel. The last time that we went into the library playroom, I didn't notice that it was the last time. It's lost to me just like the last time I nursed each child, or carried her on my hip. 

But this museum has kept a place for us even as the kids have aged, welcoming them as young visitors, then as young volunteers, and now as nearly-grown volunteers. But at the same time as Syd's volunteer ID has become nearly unrecognizable as her, since she's gotten so big since she sat for its photo, this museum has kept the magic of its galleries, always offering something splendid and fascinating to the kids even as they've grown and their interests have changed. I hope that this museum, the wonder of exploration, the thrill of trying something new, the beauty of coming back to the familiar, is a type of magic that they never have to grow out of.