as some of you may know, Daddy does a radio show on a local college radio station. he plays show tunes and sound tracks. the Tony Awards are awards that recognize excellence in Broadway theatre, and are on tv right now. which reminds me about Antoinette, a former foster kitteh here.

two years ago, on Sunday, June 13, 2010, a young kitteh showed up at our back door and applied in purrson to enter Furry Bambino Foster Academy.

of course, we accepted her application. Mom named her Antoinette because it was the day of the Tony Awards, which are named for Antoinette Perry.

initially when Mom saw Antoinette on the back porch, she thought i had gotten out! Antoinette bears a striking resemblance to me. don’t you agree? that’s me on the futon.

Antoinette has a gold flame mark on her forehead.

i don’t have a gold flame mark on my forehead, but Cookie does.

Antoinette was young, approximately 10 months to 18 months old. as we soon found out, ahem, she was strongly desiring a ManCat’s attention. loudly and repeatedly! not to worry, Mom got Antoinette an appointment for her ladygardenectomy just a few days later!

Antoinette was affectionate, but would abruptly swat at Mom and Dad (with claws extended) when she had had enough petting. Mom and Dad were concerned about how they would be able to get Antoinette adopted if she might swat at somebody!

in addition, Antoinette was VERY unhappy to be confined to the kitten room, but she hated all of us Furry Bambinos, so she could not have access to the rest of the house. she meowed out the front window to complain about her plight.

one evening, our next door neighbor and his girlfriend knocked on our door because they could hear Antoinette meowing. Tiger Lily, the girlfriend’s cat, was missing, and they asked if we had found a cat. the next door neighbor was a young big burly guy who worked at a fitness club. mom was worried what he might do about us having his girlfriend’s cat. (well, most of her anyway. heh.)

luckily they were just happy to have their cat back. so, Antoinette graduated from Furry Bambino Foster Academy and was “adopted by” (AKA “returned to”) the next door neighbor on Friday, June 25, 2010.

Post Script from Mom: When I tell this story to most people, they find it hilarious that I accidentally had the neighbor’s cat spayed. However, another volunteer in PAWS one-upped me and said “I spay my neighbors’ cats on purpose! If they let their cats outside and they have not been spayed or neutered, I catch them and have them fixed. They go missing for a day or two and then show back up fixed.”

Our now former neighbor let his house fall into disrepair (let the gutters fall off and left them off for several years as one example), quit paying the mortgage, and the house went into foreclosure. His house has FINALLY been sold at auction at a ridiculously low price, which has lowered the values of all the houses on our street. The house is currently being renovated by the new owner who we suspect will try to flip it.

So, yeah, we are REALLY glad that we got that cat spayed!!!  Would do it again, on purpose.

The “problem” with failed fosters is that sometimes foster homes decide not to foster again, because of the risk of “failing” again. After Mommy and Daddy adopted Caramel and me, the nice people in the animal rescue group (PAWS) asked Mommy if she would be willing to foster again. They asked Mommy if she would foster “just one” kitten.

Mommy said no.

She said it would be too dangerous to foster “just one” kitten. So she asked for a lot of kittens – and that is when Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Joann became fosters. All four babies got adopted into terrific furrever homes!

Since then, we have fostered lots more kittehs – Daisy, Bo, Luke, Niecy, Trish, Antoinette, Beyonce, Kelly, Michelle, Winnie-the-Pooh, Kanga, Hidey, Mr. Bibs, and Dakota. We will tell you stories about them some other time. This time, I will tell you about Mama Rose, and Her Babies. There is so much to tell that I will break the story up into several posts.

This past July, we began seeing Mama Rose in our yard – a calico kitten about 9 or 10 months old. She was usually carrying a mousie in her teeths! Then one day in August, we saw two bebbeh kittehs with her! And then another time, we saw Mama Rose with six or seven bebbehs! So Mommy got busy on the phone, borrowed humane traps, and started feeding Mama and babies in the traps. Dad made sure the traps would not close by using a hanger wire to keep the trap doors open. This was so the kittehs would get comfortable going in and out of the traps.

Mom asked our nice next-door neighbors Penny and Bob not to feed the Mama or the babies, even though they really wanted to! The reason they did this was to ensure that Mama and babies kept visiting us and eating from the traps.

In the meantime, Mom contacted people in PAWS about appointments for Mama to get her ladygardenectomy, and for the babies to have their ladygardenectomies or hoohaectomies. So the original plan was to keep feeding Mama and babies until the day before their scheduled surgeries.

However, the scheduled appointments were still about three weeks away. Mom and Dad were concerned that the older the kittens got without human contact, the harder it would be to tame them. They had learned from fostering Hidey and Mr. Bibs that by three months of age, feral kittens are REALLY hard to “flip” and may not ever decide to trust humans.

It was really hard to guess how old the kittens were since Mommy and Daddy could not get close to them. So, on Saturday, September 18th, when our nice next-door neighbor Penny called Mom to tell her that the kittens were hanging out on the deck in their back yard, Mom knew what she had to do.

She and Daddy brought the two traps and some cat food next door, in hopes of trapping as many babies as they could.

To be continued …

Mom dug up some dirt in the front yard and planted some stuff.

The nice people who live next door adopted a tuxedo kitten!

Mom and Dad went to visit Gramma and Grampa in August.  Mom and Dad took Cookie and Caramel with them.  Mom and Dad and Gramma went to a festival called a “Llama Plop”.

Grampa had surgery in August, so Mom and Dad visited Gramma and Grampa again.

Introoder kitty, AKA “Blackberry” has been introoding in our back yard!

Mom and Dad visited our friend Tammy Faye while her parents were out of town.

Mom and Dad visited our new friends, Clarence and Alabama, while their parents were out of town.

We’ll tell you more about each of these exciting events in our next few posts.  Just wanted to let ya’ll know we’re still blogging!

And, we have a Big Announcement. Coming soon to a Furry Bambino blog near you.