News for Apricot and I

October 9, 2014

I got some very welcome news.

Hey, Apricot! Guess what?

Your baby brothers have been born!

Okay, well, actually Apricot just rolled his eyes at me the way he usually does now when I'm trying to explain something that's going to happen in the future. 

He actually seems to be missing his shelter cat buddies. Since those cats weren't the same cats from week to week (as some got adopted and others took their place) it's not a particular cat he misses. Just other cats around in general. If what I (and my vet) believe is true, he spent most of his life (10 months) in the cat room at the shelter, and only 4-6 months outside by himself. And some of that he was a baby and probably doesn't remember much, plus, another cat (mom) would have been there at least long enough so he could survive away from her.

I'm hoping he will welcome the two little kittens that were born (starting at) 7 am October 9, last Thursday morning.

Cinder is the mom's name. She takes very good care of her kittens but occasionally needs some help from her human because, well, apparently between Cinder's personality and her hormones, she believes her kittens are the be-all and end-all of the universe, and actually eating and drinking for herself comes a far distant second. So human mom is having to coax her into eating and drinking, and also occasionally offering the kittens supplemental food in case Cinder's reluctance to take care of herself is leading to not quite enough milk at the moment.

Cinder is the gray one parked on my lap.
This is from my visit back in June

There's another person ahead of me in picking order who wants a single boy. Cinder obligingly had four boys. One of the boys is being kept for the breeding program. So whenever these other people pick, I will get the remaining two boys. So I don't know which of the three my two are yet!

I am having to apply liberal amounts of patience and I am rapidly running out. Not that I can do anything if I run out of patience other than drive my friends and family crazy by fussing about it!

Oh. Where you all waiting for pictures of the kittens? 

They are mostly just furry wiggles right now, not very kitten like! These pictures are all from Saturday, when they are just two days old. She sent me a newborn headshot of each kitten but I wanted "fluffy" pictures. She protested they aren't fluffy yet. I clarified that I mostly just meant dry.

Black and white kitten

This is one of the kittens I could be getting. Notice he is sleeping on Cinder's paw. Now I know she's a Maine Coon, but she isn't actually an overly large cat. She's what you'd think of as more normal size. Probably twelve pounds more or less (and that's a guess based on my memory of her size compared to Apricot). And that's her paw and leg underneath that tiny, tiny kitten. He's 4.5 oz, Mrs. McFadden said.

Brown tabby with white, left side of the face

The other two kittens are brown tabbies with white. Oddly enough, you've seen one, you've seen both of them as long as you have a mirror. The other one looks like the mirror image of this one. They're chiral!

For those of you who don't already know or for whom I haven't explained this before, chirality is the chemical property of being a mirror image of each other. Molecules can be chiral. DNA is chiral. It has a mirror image that twists the other way. We're all made of DNA with left-hand twist but the right-hand twist does exist in rare examples (not humans, other really weird life on our planet). 

Since I am a chemist, I find it quite funny that two of the three kittens I could end up with are chiral kitties! Well, their faces are, anyway. I don't think the rest of their markings are chiral too, pity that.

Look at his toesies! They're translucent!

That's the black and white one again. He has a bellybutton too, a black mark on his white tummy.

And look at that tiny little tail!

It's hard to believe these tiny, tiny beings grow up to be massive cats like this one:

That's Tank. He's Cinder's daddy.

Of course I have not yet decided on names for them. I had names all picked out, and then decided I didn't want to use those names after all. I think I will bow to destiny and pick food names on purpose this time. My best cats have all been food names: Pizza, Pippin, Apricot. Even though I specifically chose Pippin's name because (I thought) it wasn't a food name. Yeah, then I found out within six months of naming him that there is such a thing as a pippin apple.

I can't wait for more pictures. The internet says two weeks till eyes open. I suppose they just look like bigger furry wiggles until then ... 

I will know which of the three kittens are mine at six weeks. More patience must be applied ...