The Foster Kittens are Four Weeks Old, and Quarantine Guidelines Exist for a Reason

Beautiful Sage, shedding ringworm spores all over my couch...

Remember how last week I joked that we'd definitely ended the kittens' ringworm quarantine a week early and wouldn't we be sad/regret it if it turned out they actually had ringworm?

Hahaha yeah, you can see where I'm going with this...

family portrait on the kids' bathroom floor wearing the clothes I changed out of as soon as I left like a good cat foster mom

The animal shelter 100% told us to watch the cats for ringworm, and Dr. Google 100% told me that the ringworm incubation period is three weeks. But the two-week infection disease quarantine already feels soooo long, and we were so bored sitting on the kids' bathroom floor and changing into new clothes multiple times a day, and at four weeks old kittens are so cute and rambunctious and it's so fun to let them chase a ribbon across the living room floor and watch them wrestle on the couch and Ginger was going absolutely stir-crazy locked into a single small room with a bunch of kids.

And I mean, come on. I know the interweb SAYS the ringworm incubation period is three weeks, but that can't be right, on account of three weeks is boring and feels too long. I'm sure two weeks is perfectly fine!

So after the two-week infection disease quarantine was up, we had a lovely few days playing together all over the house. 

We got to celebrate Easter together:

I did remember to wash the quilt on hot, but I should probably soak that basket, too.

Ginger FINALLY got a break from the kids:

Yep, that's the desk I work at for half the day, every day.

The babies got more room to hunt and fight:

Why, yes, those ARE our couch cushions. You know, the ones where we rest our literal heads!

All over the kid, who's of course hanging out on my bed.

For Christ's sake yes that's my literal face. Just don't even talk to me anymore I'm too stupid to listen to words.

And we got to do tons and tons of my favorite activity, which is hanging out on the couch:

SO many couch cushions to wash in hot water and dry on high and then hang out on the clothesline in the sun just to be sure.

It was actually while we were hanging out on the couch, the kittens wrestling and chasing each other and crawling all over every possible surface that could ever possibly be contaminated, that I spotted this suspicious spot on my awesome little buddy Sage's arm:

Bare patch of fur with white-ish powder on it, the better to shed all over everything.

I swear, my lot in life is to never have a single moment of peace. I consulted with the animal shelter's foster program director the next morning to arrange to bring everyone in for a Wood's lamp test, and she told me that if they tested positive, it would be perfectly fine to return them. No foster family jumps with joy or anything at the idea of the pretty intense ringworm treatment, quarantine, and cleaning regimen, but there are foster families who are reasonably comfortable with it.

I'm not necessarily UNcomfortable with it, but considering that 1) the entire household is definitely exposed and most of our crap is definitely contaminated so I was already about to have to spend the next 48 hours doing nothing but cleaning, 2) within 72 hours we were about to have visitors who also probably didn't want to be exposed to ringworm, and 3) we are going to England soon and really, really, really do not want to have ringworm there, either, I decided that this wasn't the time to learn how to administer ringworm treatment to four foster kittens and one foster cat.

So the litter tested positive via Wood's lamp, my teenager and I said goodbye, I cried, and right now they're with a way more responsible family than us, getting their nice twice-weekly dips and twice-daily topical ointments and once-daily oral medicine and recovering from ringworm in plenty of time to be adopted right on schedule, and I'm still compulsively bleaching all the things that can be bleached and washing on hot all the things that can be washed on hot and looking suspiciously at things that can't have either and buying every tea tree oil bath and body product I can find while feeling a lot of random itches like the true hypochondriac I am.

And both kids have ALREADY been asking when we can get more foster kittens.

Just... after England, guys. Let's just not cause an international fungal incident and then we can spend the rest of our summer up to our itchy ears in kittens.

Four Little Rascals and Their Mama: Our Foster Kittens are Three Weeks Old!

Dill and Fennel

 Welp, they're definitely messier than they were a week ago! I'm currently spending all my teaching money on puppy pee pads, wet kitten food, and wood pellet litter, but if a hobby doesn't take up all your time and even more of your money, then what kind of hobby even is it?

selfie with Sage

Dill and the teenager

The babies really woke up this week. I miss their wobbly little uncertain steps, but watching them play fight and chase each other is also incredibly cute. They're still nursing regularly, but they've all gotten the hang of their wet kitten food by now, and they and Ginger are easily going through three cans a day on top of Ginger's dry food (that I've also seen a kitten or two snack on). It's so different from every other litter we've ever had, that we've always had to bribe with pureed baked chicken to start putting on weight!

doing our best to make Sage an ipad baby

picture of two mamas!

Even Sage, who I suspect isn't quite the same age as his siblings, FINALLY started chowing down by the end of the week--little dude put on over two ounces in two days!

Sage FINALLY eating his nice wet food!

We're done with quarantine, and although I'm still not giving the kittens any freedom (and Ginger keeps getting herself put back in kitten jail for essentially beelining straight to my dwarf pomegranate, mouth already open for munching, as soon as we let her out), it's nice to be able to bring them out of their room to hang out with us, rather than having to chill out on the floor of the cramped kids' bathroom whenever we want to visit them.

Sage not enjoying his field trip into the outside world

family portrait on my lap

We're probably not technically done with ringworm quarantine, but we're done with changing clothes every time we touch the kittens, so I guess that's us done with ringworm quarantine! If I have to admit in a few weeks that we all have ringworm, feel free to shame me. I'll deserve it.

Clove, Dill, and Fennel

My favorite kitten is still a kitten who's sleeping and purring on my lap, so I like most to snatch one up just as they're all settling down for a nap so it can come and snooze on me instead. I also really like Zooming with my college student from the kitten room; essentially we just spend an hour with me holding kitten after kitten up to the camera, and her squealing at them in such a high pitch that her computer's microphone can't even pick it up. She's coming home for a visit in a few days to watch her sister perform in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show, and I think she'll be hard-pressed to divide her days between the kittens and her dog!

Clove is my snooze buddy

Now that everyone's over the hump of possible illnesses and all the babies are gaining weight, all we really have to do with them is love them, feed them, socialize them, and clean up after them. This is the part where they work their way into my heart and I get so attached to them that I cry for days when we finally have to bring them back to the shelter so their forever families can come adopt them.

Dill is my other best snoozer

I should probably take more pictures of what their bathroom looks like every single morning and just look at that when I miss them...

Four Little Kittens and Their Mama: Our Foster Litter is Two Weeks Old!

Dill

Welp, I couldn't actually get a hole in my head, so I did the next most unreasonable thing: I picked up the phone even when my caller ID clearly stated that the call was from our local animal shelter's foster program.

And then I did the NEXT most unreasonable thing, which is agree to take four two-week-old kittens along with their mother.

Welcome, Ginger, Clove, Dill, Fennel, and Sage!

Clove and Fennel

Ginger and family, with Dill in the foreground

All we know about them is that they were removed from unsanitary conditions in a hoarding situation. We're not even sure if Ginger is the kittens' biological mother; apparently, there were three mother cats and a lot of kittens all found in the same area, so the shelter workers estimated ages, grouped the kittens accordingly, and offered each set to a mother. Ginger accepted this set of four who were thought to be about two weeks old, so now she's their mama, they're her babies, and they're all here with us!

Dill

Clove

I've assured Ginger numerous times since then, though, that if she's missing any babies, they're with the other mama cats in other homes and having just as nice a time as she and these kittens are with us. I don't want her to worry.

Sage getting weighed, with Ginger growling at Jones on the other side of the door

Ginger and family

Kittens with their mama are a lot easier than kittens without, and for the first few days, they were a LOT lot easier. The mama takes care of all of their input and output, and it's only in the last couple of days that we've really had to think a ton about litter boxes and kitten food. They're definitely starting to get a lot messier now, but I don't think they'll ever be as messy (I hope!) as that litter of six four-week-old kittens last summer. How we managed without just burning the house down behind us, I do not know.

Fennel

That litter did inspire some new innovations for this time, however. I started them right off with lots of small, shallow litter boxes to explore, and lots of these puppy pee pads laid down everywhere. They're really not too messy yet, but it is SO infinitely easier to toss a pee pad than it is to wipe pee off the floor.

Dill

Clove, Dill, Fennel, and Sage

And now that the kids' bathroom has its new shower and new flooring--all tile! No cracked linoleum!--it's a great place to tuck away the entire family. In the mornings when I come in to clean and sanitize, I shut Ginger and the kittens into the shower and she scrabbles at the shower door, outraged, while I pick things up, sweep and steam mop, and restock, lecturing her the entire time that if she just kept the room tidier, it wouldn't take me so long to clean. I'm pretty sure that every time she's in the litter box, she picks up a couple of paws-full of litter and flings it across the room.

Dill

Ginger and family

The family has to stay quarantined away from our family pets for two weeks before we can even think about letting them out into the rest of the house, and even then I'm not quite sure how we'll manage that--I don't trust four-week-old kittens to be out of sight of their litter box, and I can already tell that Ginger won't get along with our adult cats. So let me know if you've got tips! They're also under ringworm watch at the moment, as they were definitely exposed to it in the hoarder's house. Fortunately, none of them are showing symptoms, but it does mean that we also have to change into foster family-only clothes when we visit them and change immediately when we leave, so it'll be VERY nice when that additional annoyance is done. 

Dill

Ginger

It's such a treat to have kittens in the house again, though! These are by far the tiniest babies we've ever had, and when you look at them in relation to someone holding them, they're so unbelievably small that it looks like the perspective is off somehow. I am loving every second of giving them a safe place to grow and spend a few more precious weeks with their mama. 

Clove and Sage

Fennel

I sure wish Ginger would stop flinging her damp litter around the room, though!

The Second to Last Time That I Ever Rode the Carousel

The last time the kids and I hung out at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, we volunteered at one of our favorite stations, Build Your Own Carousel Animal:

My coworker is going significantly off-book here, tempting fate that she will not soon have a cluster of first-graders around our table clamoring to stack paper straws instead of building their nice carousel animals. 

We had big afternoon plans of driving up to the only dance supply store in driving distance that sells the specific make and model of pointe shoes that my teenager prefers, then hitting up Trader Joe's on the way home for their many delicious seasonal products (ah, the varied joys of visiting the Big City!), but first, we loitered around our favorite exhibits, seeing the dinosaurs and moseying through Greece and mooning over the hockey gear--

The Indy Fuel is our nearest minor league hockey team. We went to a game last year and it was an absolute circus; I LOVED IT!

--and, of course, riding the carousel one thousand times. Y'all know how obsessed I am with the Children's Museum of Indianapolis carousel and its bloody, bloody history (seriously, though, read this book! It's bonkers!), and on this particular day I beelined, as usual, for one of the notorious stags, then got Syd to take my picture with it:

Will loves the carousel more than anyone--

--and when she finally got off after a number of rides that I did not even count, I said to her, "Hey, this was the last time you'll ride the carousel for who knows how long!" Because, you know, she was off to college in January, and we don't usually volunteer at the museum over the summer break. 

The kids think that I am cheezy as hell whenever I say crap like that, but I'm glad that I called her attention to that last precious moment and made us acknowledge it, cheezy or not. Because that was the last time that She Who Loves That Carousel the Most will ever ride that carousel:

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You don't usually know when it's the last time that you're going to do something that you love, or the last time that you'll experience some particular precious thing. It's a gift to be able to acknowledge it and say goodbye, even if you didn't know at the time that it would be goodbye forever.

Syd and I actually happen to be volunteering at the Children's Museum again before this change takes place. I usually just ride the carousel once to Will's dozen, but this time I might have to take a page out of her book and ride multiple times. The giraffe! The antelopes! The black horse AND the appaloosa! 

And, of COURSE, my precious, notorious stag.

Week 3 with the Foster Kittens: Six Weeks Old, and Sort of Starting to Make Sense!

Athena

 Six-week-old foster kittens are MUCH better house guests than four- or five-week-old foster kittens! They've ceased their habit of simply dropping trou whenever they have the urge to pee, and now mainly hurry off to their designated litterboxes. Alas, old habits die hard, so there are still a few sneaky little corners that they're reluctant to be dissuaded from. If I can't completely block off a tempting pee spot, I'll liberally sprinkle it with a stinky but cat-safe essential oil, or put a food bowl or litterbox directly on top of it. 

Athena

My favorite kitten is still a sleeping kitten--

Taboo

Athena

Anchovy

--but it's also fun to see the kittens awake longer and playing more. We still need to introduce them to more people, but we've socialized them to vacuums and flushing toilets and other in-house chaos, although Will is still doing her best to turn Pickle into an ipad baby:

Pickle

And Syd FINALLY managed to wean them off of baked and pureed chicken and back onto wet kitten food and dry cat food. Athena is also down to eat her chicken straight from the source:

Athena

When we had them for two weeks, we passed the incubation period of all viruses they could be potentially carrying, which means that we got to introduce them to the other pets! Spots hates all other animals and just avoids them, Luna is mostly okay but I don't think she'll ever be predictable with other animals so I don't really let her around them, and Jones...

They are obsessed with Jones. He is their reluctant god. I thought he'd be a little more into them than he is, considering how much he pesters my uninterested Spots, but mostly he'll just wrestle with a kitten for a bit, then try to steal their food and get told off by a human, then ask to leave the room.

Taboo

It's good socialization for the foster kittens, at least!

We've probably got 1-2 weeks left with this litter of kittens. They need to be approximately eight weeks old but definitely two pounds before they can be speutered, and these guys are currently ranging between 1 pound 6 ounces and 1 pound 8 ounces. 

Athena

They're adorable and we all love them, but five kittens is a LOT, and I don't think we're going to be weeping into our handkerchiefs too hard when we send them off to their forever homes!

Anchovy

If nothing else, I don't tend to buy paper towels or commercial spray cleaner, but I think I have bought more of both those items than I have since the first time I saw them in stock after the pandemic started!

Pickle and Athena

Now, off to go help Syd move kittens to my larger bathroom that she and Matt deep-cleaned last night, then scoop litter, dish out new cat food and clean water, put down a new fluffy pillow, and wash dirty cat dishes, put soiled fluffy bedding in the washing machine, and deep-clean the kids' bathroom. 

And THEN we can snuggle kittens while we study Paleolithic cave art!