Kiki is on the adoption floor

Kiki is on the adoption floor has been adopted! Less than a week from frightened and hiding under her chair to gone to her new permanent home. Good luck, Kiki, and thank your new parent(s) for us!

Kiki came back to the shelter last Friday. She is all better now, and ready to find her permanent home. I went down to see her this morning, and she is still a little frightened. I had to coax her out from under a chair, but she was happy to see me once she was out.

A happy ending for Marshall

This is Marshall. Marshall was with us in August of 2008. He had a upper respiratory infection to get over, so he was only with us for a few weeks while he got better.


While he was ill he was a quiet, studious kitten.
You can see here he is studying. I am not sure what topic it was, but it was not proper cat behavior. I think it may have been abnormal psychology, and he thought it was instructions.

As he felt better, Marshall turned out to be a very, very active cat. Like pounce on your head and bite you active. He never calmed down enough to really be a happy house pet, so we were very worried for him and his potential for adoption. And his appetite for camera lanyards.
We ended up placing him with a friend of a friend who had a barn which needed a cat. We have had a couple of updates since then, and apparently he is a very happy barn cat now. Hooray for happy endings!

Catching up -- May 2008 -- Ursula and family

KITTEN FIGHT!

And then something to eat


and a nap.

These are Petrov

Michail
and Ursula.
We hosted them during May and June of 2008. They were healthy, just too small to adopt, so after some growing time we forced ourselves to bring them back to the shelter. Except for Ursula. Ursula was snatched up by my brother and is now called Noodles. You can see more of her on his more or less abandoned cat blog Bob and Noodles (bobnnoodles.blogspot.com) and on the Sunday Cat update of his food blog called Cooking Stuff (icookstuff.blogspot.com) where he, um, cooks stuff. And takes pictures.

I think poor Michail was the kitten who languished the longest in the adoption room of all of our foster kittens. I think it was almost six days before he got picked up. Kittens just move faster than adult cats -- you would think they were cute or something.

Puffy is no longer available

Puffy finally got adopted! Yay! He spent a long time waiting for the right person to come by, but at last Puffy has found his permanent home. That is one of the reasons I like kittens best -- when you bring them back to the shelter they get picked up very quickly...

Kiki update

Kiki is feeling much better now. She is grooming properly again, so it looks like we are not going to have to give her a bath after all. Which is good. Another thing which has surfaced as she gets stronger is she appears to have an archeological bent. When she uses the litter box, she spends a considerable amount of time digging around as though she were trying to excavate Pompeii. If you are thinking of adopting her, a covered litter box would be a prudent investment...

But on to current business

It is not all kittens in the foster program. Currently, we are hosting Kiki, a beautiful two year old (seven year old? There is some confusion in the records...) who is stricken with calicivirus, and needs to be quarantined for six weeks. She does not feel well, so we have had a hard time getting her out from under the bed to give her medicine to her. Until last night.



There is a wonderful moment in fostering where the terrified, possibly slightly wild, likely ill cat suddenly realizes that you are one of the good guys. We call this the moment they "break". We have experienced this with feral kittens, and it can take anything from hours to weeks depending on the condition of the animals and how badly they need you. Bottle feed kittens break almost instantly (it never hurts to be the food bringer).




Sick two year olds take a few days, but it is worth it. I will see if I can get some good video with the monster purr she produces.

UPDATE: There will be no video, for Kiki has returned to the shelter. She is going into surgery today and should be available to adopt this weekend.

Puffy the Cat

Say hello to Puffy. Puffy came to us with an eye infection. Have you ever tried putting antibiotic ointment (like neosporin) in the eye of a strong cat? Not lots of fun.
Here he is squinting at you so that you know his eye is uncomfortable.

The rest of him on the other hand, is squishy, fuzzy and large. Look at that vast expanse of belly!


And here he comes to say hello to the camera. Not shy, this one.

I would also like it known that even though the shelter named him Puffy, we resisted calling him Puff-Kitty, P-Kitty, Sean or any other such thing. Nope, never even crossed our minds.