We are just taking it easy today. Breakfast, then a nap pile. Feel free to join us if you like to nap! Here is a baby picture of us when we were itteh bitteh! This is taken three years ago today – the day we were born!

This photo was taken a few weeks later. Caramel is the black fuzzball, and I am in front serving as a pillow to my sisfurs. See how big my gold flame mark looked compared to my tiny little head?

Mom and Dad brought us some fun nip toys from Coventry Cats, including a new nip nanner!  Rumor has it there is a new Da Bird, but we haven’t seen it yet.  (We dedded our old Da Bird.)  Come on over to play and eat and nap!

Purrs,
Cookie and Caramel

Cookie here.

I have a bone to pick with Mom. She says that this Simon’s Cat video was made with me in mind. I have no idea what she’s talking about. The nerve of her!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWIPZvwcnX8&feature=player_embedded

I have never once unplugged her computer.

But if I would fit, I would probably sit on the keyboard, like I did when I was a wee kitten.

(Mom’s Edit: Cookie, Caramel, and Panda Bear are the three Furry Bambinos who are the most “helpful” when David or I am sitting in front of a computer. But the video reminded me of Cookie the most, because she takes FOREVER to get situated when she climbs into your lap.)

Hmmpf! Well, I may resemble that remark a tiny bit. But a cat’s gotta do what a cat’s gotta do when a cat’s gotta do it.

Mommy and Daddy had a great time at BlogPaws. They saw some furriends Mommy met last year like Carol 0f Coffee, Cats n’ Yarn and Teri of Curlz and Swirlz.  Flat Panda Bear got created at the Flat Tyler session, and is featured in many photos.

Karen (AKA The Food Lady) was there too! LOVE the glasses!

Pictured below are Karen of MouseBreath (AKA The Food Lady), Mom, Nancy (Mr. R.W. Emerson’s Mommie), Flat Skeezix, Flat Mao, Flat Mr. R.W. Emerson, and Flat Panda Bear.

We love Brighton’s outfit! Teri’s shirt is really cool too!

Coco is a very pretty kitty!

Mommy and Daddy sat with the BlogPaws photographer, Brad Smith (left) for Saturday dinner. Daddy is wearing The Furry Bambinos shirt.

We Furry Bambinos stayed home, but Louisa the Foster Kitten went along.  Here she is with Carol of Coffee, Cats n’ Yarn.

And the Very Handsome Moshe Moshi, one of Carol’s Naked Kidz from Coffee Cats n’ Yarn:

Louisa got to sample many laps during the conference! Louisa napped on Desiree’s lap in two different sessions!

Napping with Desiree again:

Louisa also got to be held by lots of friendly cat people. This is Rebecca, one of the BlogPaws staffers:

Claire from the Sheraton registration desk really enjoyed getting to meet Louisa.

Check out this little cutie! This is Snotface! He attended BlogPaws with his person, Stephanie.

Mom and Stephanie introduced Louisa the Foster Kitten and Snotface. Unfortunately, Louisa was not sure what to make of a ferret, and was not on her best behavior. We sincerely hope that Stephanie and Snotface were not offended.

Next, Louisa seems to be in a better mood, with Susan Getgood of Blog Her.

And here Louisa is pictured with one of the PetSmart representatives.

Mom and Dad met Caren Gittleman, of Cat Chat with Caren & Cody.  Louisa enjoyed meeting Caren at the Flat Tyler workshop, where Flat Panda Bear was created, with the help of Bev Van Zant of My Flat Pet: The Adventures of Flat Tyler.

They also met Deborah Barnes, of Zee & Zoey’s Chronicle Connection blog, and author of the soon-to-be-published book “The Chronicles of Zee & Zoey”! Louisa enjoyed sitting in Deb’s lap, too.

On Sunday morning, Mom, Dad, and Flat Panda Bear chatted with Guido the Italian Cat’s Mom Judi, Dusty Rainbolt (VP Media & Communications for Adopt A Shelter and author of Cat Wrangling Made Easy, Kittens for Dummies, and others), and Janea Kelley, Webmaster of Paws and Effect.

More about BlogPaws next time!  And catching up reading and commenting, too!

Mommy and Daddy love Mama Rose, even though she is terrified of them. On Thursday night, Daddy got home just after Mommy had put out the food for Mama Rose. Daddy could see Mama Rose eating on the porch. So he called Mom from his cell phone to say that he would come in when Mama Rose finished eating. He didn’t want her to get scared and leave, so he stayed in the car until she was done eating. This is a photo of Mama Rose’s feeding station on the front porch. The grey tub in the background under the bush is the shelter that Daddy built for Mama Rose. We don’t think she uses it.

Mama Rose’s bebbehs started out feral too. When they were trapped, the bebbehs were about eight weeks old. The older kittens get without human contact, the less likely it is that they will become socialized to trust humans. When a kitten goes from feral to trusting, we call that “flipping”.

In early October, when Mama Rose and her bebbehs were getting spayed or neutered, Mommy had to decide which bebbehs she thought would definitely “flip”, and which she was unsure about. This is because while they were under anesthesia, ear tipping would be done. Ear tipping is the universal mark that a feral cat has been spayed or neutered:

We use the word “eartip” to describe when a small portion of the tip of a feral cat’s left ear is surgically removed during neuter surgery, to denote that the cat has been neutered and vaccinated. Eartipping is done while the cat is anesthetized and is not painful for the cat. Eartipping is the most effective way to identify neutered feral cats from a distance, to make sure they are not trapped or undergo surgery a second time.

– Alley Cat Allies

By early October, Marigold, the only female in the litter, and a Mama Rose lookalike, had completely “flipped”. She trusted Mommy and Daddy enough to climb into their laps of her own free will.

So had Rusty, one of the orange boys in the litter.

Woody was close behind, but too close to call. Hunter was less trusting than Woody, but more trusting than Sky. Sunny was known as Mr. Wild Child, if that gives you an idea of what he thought of Mom and Dad! So Mommy had a sleepless night trying to decide whose ears would be tipped. Reluctantly, she agreed to ear tipping Woody and Hunter, in addition to Sky and Sunny. Sky and Sunny were were still mostly feral in early October.

Marigold was the first of Mama Rose’s kittens to get adopted – on October 16, 2010 – National Feral Cat Day!!!  Marigold has been renamed Mia by her adoptive family, and was a birthday present for the teenage daughter.

A few weeks later, on November 12, Rusty and Woody got adopted –TOGETHER!!! Into a wonderful family – with a Mom, Dad,  Son, and Golden Retriever to keep the boys company! The Mom was initially interested in adopting Rusty …

but when she read their cage card and saw that Rusty and Woody are brothers …

she knew she couldn’t break up the brothers.

And then in December, a wonderful family with Mom, Dad, and Little Girl adopted Hunter!

Which just leaves Sunny …

and Sky, waiting for their furrever fambly.

Doesn’t everyone want a Sunny Sky in their lives?

On Wednesday Mom came home for lunch like she usually does. Except she didn’t stay to eat. She searched high and low, calling my name over and over. The other four Bambinos and fosters Sunny and Sky showed up, but not me.

Because I knew why Mom was looking for me.

Mom pulled a dirty trick and opened the back door to let us smell the fresh air. I simply couldn’t resist, so I came out of hiding, and that’s when Mom nabbed me and shoved me into the PTU (prisoner transport unit).

“You don’t know how lucky you kittehs!” I meowed from the PTU to my horrified siblings and the fosters.

“I am going back to the V-E-T’s!”

All because of a little dry heaving.

(Mom’s edit: Multiple times for the previous three days, you made these horrible coughing sounds. It was not quite like yakking up a hairball, and not quite like vomiting. It was almost like a cross between having the hiccups and an asthma attack. I don’t even know what to call it, so I am calling it The Sound. I made a complete fool of myself imitating The Sound for Dr. Amy and Mary-Kathryn, so they could better help you. They laughed, and offered to videotape me to use as a demo in other cat visits, so they wouldn’t have to imitate The Sound themselves. They would just ask “Does it sound like this?” and play the video.)

Dr. Amy and V-E-T T-E-C-H Mary-Kathryn are nice and all. They even complimented me on my orange flame mark on my forehead. But I simply do not care for being held. BY ANYONE. Not Mom, not Dad, and not by anyone at the V-E-T’s. (And I don’t like having my Spot #13 violated, either.)

You don’t know how lucky you are kittehs.

Because I went back to the V-E-T’s, now I have to have a ginormous pill shoved down my throat every day, for like, furrever.

(Mom’s edit: 1/4 pill of Pepcid for 5 days. It’s so small it barely fits in the pill popper.)

I still don’t like it.

(Mom’s edit: Have any of you kittehs made The Sound? Do you even know what I am talking about? Dr. Amy seemed to know what I meant. She said that it is hard to tell if this is due to gastric issues or breathing issues. Cookie did not have a temperature, and her tummy felt fine to Dr. Amy.  Of course, Cookie has not made The Sound since Tuesday, that either I or my husband has heard. Clyde, One Who Came Before, used to make The Sound occasionally, when he came out of the litter box, like he had ingested too much dust. Padre and Panda Bear make The Sound, but very rarely. Cookie certainly did not make The Sound for Dr. Amy.

We are treating Cookie with Pepcid and Laxatone for now, and if The Sound returns and persists, we will pursue other options, like x-rays. In the meantime, we are keeping an eye on Cookie, and doing some online reading. A site recommended by Dr. Amy is The Indoor Cat Initiative, which has recently been expanded to include dogs, and has been renamed The Indoor Pet Initiative. It is based at The Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. It has lots of useful information.)

Next time, we WILL repurrt on Mama Rose’s itteh bitteh bebbehs and their adoptions into their furrever homes!

My sister Floofs (Caramel) and I (Cookie) would like to say a big THANK YOU to all of you fur coming to our birthday party last week! We really appreciate all your birthday wishes, getting to visit with you, and especially for sharing some of your loose furs with us! We are also making the rounds to visit each of your blogs purrsonally.

As you may recall, Mommy and Daddy had recently dragged the rug sucking monsters around, and removed all our furs from our cat trees. So we decided that the theme for our party would be shedding. Thanks to all of you, we now have furry cat trees again!

Thanks for helping us put the Furry back in The Furry Bambinos!

We hope you all enjoyed yourselves! We got some more Temptations treats to share.

We also received some new nip mousies.

Floofs (Caramel) is giving the new mousies a good sniff.

Panda Bear and Floofs are playing with a nip mousie that looks like a bumble bee. Floofs is doing her signature tag maneuver.

Nip mousies are great!

In other news, we had another big snow storm on Thursday night and Friday – the most snow we have had this season. Before this snow storm, all of our previous snow had meltified due to heavy rains. So all the snow you see in the photo below is just from Thursday night and Friday. We got about 15 inches here. Mommy stayed home and worked from home on Friday.

My sister Floofs and Panda Bear are taking a deep sniff of the cold fresh air. We are looking forward to warmer weather when we can have the windows open.

Next time, we will pick up where we left off telling you about Mama Rose’s bebbehs – and some adoption stories!

After so many chatty posts about Mama Rose and her babies, I thought I would let the photos tell more of the story this time. The little brown tabby is Woody, and the orinch tabby in the litter box is Rusty. Sky (grey tabby) and Marigold (calico) are pictured later.

Sniff sniff …

“Hey, what are you doing back there?”

“I’m not quite done yet …”

“Do you mind?! I’d like some privacy!”

“Thank Bast, he left me alone!”

“He’s back …” Sigh … scratch scratch scratch …

Sniff sniff … scratch scratch scratch …

Sniff sniff …

Woody: “What would Rusty do without me?”

“Sky, cut it out!!!  Don’t you start in on me too!”

Yeah, brothers can be really annoying! Next time, Panda Bear is going to tell you about getting to meet the bebbehs in purrson!

TNR stands for

Trap

Neuter (or Spay)

Release (or Return)

As much as Mommy and Daddy like Mama Rose, she dislikes them. More accurately, Mama Rose is afraid of Mommy and Daddy.

It was obvious early on that there would be no taming of Mama Rose. EVERY time Mommy or Daddy reached into Mama Rose’s cage, they were greeted by a HISSSSSSSS!!! So each and every time Mommy or Daddy would place a food bowl, a water bowl, or a freshly scooped litter box into Mama’s cage, Mama Rose was frightened by the experience. Sometimes, Mama Rose would hide under her bed.

This made Mommy and Daddy very, very sad. They knew that they would have to release Mama Rose soon after her spay surgery. All the feral kittehs were spayed or neutered in early October, so the weather here was still mild. As regular readers of our blog know, we live in northeast O Hi O, in a suburb of Cleveland. While we have moderately hot Summers, beautiful Autumns, and Spring seasons that range from 2 days to 2 months, it’s the Winters that earn Cleveland its reputation of being an unpleasant place to live. In fact, Cleveland was recently ranked second for snowiest “big” U.S. cities.

On average, the official reporting station for Cleveland gets about 60 inches of snow a season. It is at the airport, in western Cuyahoga County. We live in the bulls eye called “The Snow Belt”, and get about 90 inches a year at Casa de Furry Bambinos.

Now, imagine if your home is outdoors, like that of a feral kitteh like Mama Rose. So Daddy built Mama Rose a shelter, using directions he found at Alley Cat Allies web site. We will save that for another post.

So back in October, after Mama Rose had a few days to recover from her spay surgery, Mommy and Daddy released Mama Rose. Watch the video to find out what happened!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBODY8priiE

Mommy and Daddy are committed to feeding Mama Rose every day, as long as she chooses to visit us.

Mama Rose is currently showing up for dinner around 6:00 pm (shortly after sunset). If the wet food is not out there, Mama Rose sits on our welcome mat by our front door and waits, all but tapping her little footie. Mommy and Daddy have learned to place the wet food out as close to the time they expect to see Mama as possible. In the winter, the wet food freezes pretty quickly. Mommy is looking into buying a heated food dish. If any of you have suggestions about caring for outdoor feral kittehs, we would love to hear them.

Next time, we will tell you a funny story about Rusty and Woody!

Fostering is not all fun and games. Foster kittehs sometimes get sick. That means that Mommy and Daddy must give the foster kittehs medicines. Like all good cats, fosters are no different in what they think of taking medicine.

Mama Rose and her babies had nasty cases of tapeworms. Giving pills “the usual way” to feral Mama Rose was simply NOT AN OPTION. Neither Mommy nor Daddy wanted to risk losing a finger, hand, or an eye trying to pick up Mama Rose to give her a pill. So Mommy bought a pill crusher, and then Daddy mixed up half a pill into some people tuna, and gave it to Mama Rose. Later, they mixed the other half pill into more people tuna. Mama Rose ate some of the Drontal-laced tuna fish. It was the best that Mommy and Daddy could do for her.

On the other paw, giving pills “the usual way” to feral bebbehs was a possibility. Mommy’s friend Christine, as well as Amy, the director of PAWS, recommended using “Squeeze Cheese” to mix the pill into to get the bebbehs to take their medicine. So Mommy tried to give Marigold and Rusty their half-pill crushed and mixed in Squeeze Cheese. It was a complete failure. The kittehs were too clever, and the pill tasted too nasty.

So, Mommy decided to give Woody, Hunter, Sunny, and Sky their Drontal half-pills “the usual way” using a pill popper. In case you have not heard of a pill popper, they are about as big as a pen, and have a rubber grabber at one end to hold the pill, and a release mechanism.

You can get them at your V-E-T’s office, or buy them online. As much as we kittehs hate getting medicine, it is much less stressful this way. Mom says she wishes she had known about these gadgets years ago, when Mohawk and Clyde had been sick. It would have helped a lot.

Mommy and Daddy teamed up to give Hunter, Woody, Sunny, and Sky their half-pills. I will let the videos tell you the rest of the story.

How To Give a Pill to a Feral Cat: Part 1

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFpfUm6AQGA

How To Give a Pill to a Feral Cat: Part 2

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU–K2GEMLE

Next time: releasing Mama Rose! Complete with video!

Christine (Mommy’s good friend and advisor in PAWS) reminded Mommy about using positive reinforcement with the magical elixir, food of the Gods, Gerber’s Chick-hen Bebbeh Food:

(Turkey flavor will also do. Just read the label to make sure there are no onions!) So, each time Mommy picked up a bebbeh kitteh and held him or her, Mommy dipped her finger in bebbeh food, and let the bebbeh kitteh lick it off her finger. The bebbehs loved the bebbeh food!!! They began to associate getting held with getting bebbeh food.

Eventually, Mommy was able to figure out that this little one is a boy, so she named him Sky.

It is therapeutic to start out taming feral kittehs by keeping them in a cage. However, you must move them into a larger space at some point in order to continue working with them. The next step was getting the kittehs to trust Mommy and Daddy enough to come to them. When Mommy reached into a cage to pick up a kitteh, it did not serve this purpose.

Luckily, we have a foster kitteh room (AKA The Mohawk and Clyde Shrine) that is perfect for this. Once our current fosters had been adopted into great homes, Mommy and Daddy moved the feral bebbehs into the foster room. After a few days, the bebbehs became comfortable in the room, so Mommy and Daddy started to “make the bebbehs work for their bebbeh food”.

This meant that Mommy or Daddy would start out by bringing a finger covered in bebbeh food to the kitteh to lick. The next taste, Mommy or Daddy would put a finger just out of the kitteh’s reach, forcing the kitteh to work up the courage to come a little bit closer. Mommy and Daddy kept this up until the kitteh was very close to them.

Before the bebbeh realized what was happening, they were touching Mommy or Daddy!

Once the bebbehs became comfortable approaching Mommy and Daddy for bebbeh food, The Kitten Whisperer (Daddy) got to work teaching the bebbehs how to play with toys.

Daddy chose to use toys that let the still-timid bebbehs keep their distance. For example, he started by using the orange boa toy on a stick. Daddy waved the toy around, and the bebbeh kittehs had fun playing with the boa. The three bravest kittehs were Woody, Marigold, and Rusty.

Hiii-yaaaa!

Mommy taught the kittehs how to play with the trackball toy. Again, that is Rusty, Marigold, and Woody having a high old time whapping the little ball in the track.

After several days of this, with all the baby food as rewards, and the fun games, some of the bebbehs began to trust Mommy and Daddy. This is Rusty, Woody, Hunter, and Marigold with Daddy’s legs.

Sky and his brother Sunny (Mommy was finally able to determine his gender) were still much more timid than their siblings. They both still hissed a lot, at Mommy and Daddy as well as at their siblings. Woody and Hunter got big hiss from Mr. Airplane Ears, Sky.

Sunny and Sky both still flattened their ears a lot. Sunny spent most playtimes cooped up in his pink Man Kitten Tent.

Mommy had read that not all feral kittehs from the same litter will tame at the same rate. She read that she should continue to work with the shyer bebbehs, and to be patient as they took their time getting used to people.

Next time: How to give a pill to a feral kitteh! You don’t want to miss this one! Complete with video!