The Visit: Overview

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Today I got to see my kittens for the first time in person.

My first impression is that of terminal adorableness. They are so cute! I've never been around such small kittens (relatively speaking) before. Young, how about that. The youngest kitten I'd interacted with was Pippin at 4 months. So these little ones at a month and two weeks were quite the youngest I've met.

They are so soft and fuzzy. And also the ends are prickly. I don't think they can retract their claws yet, and they aren't heavy enough for the claws to do much damage (I did get one minor scratch).

They were hanging out in the bathroom. Ginger lured them out into the bedroom and we both sat down on the floor.

To my surprise, Colby came right to me. He seems to be very outgoing but also easily distracted (I think that part describes all kittens though) and while he wanted to be petted and played with, he also lost interest and dived back into the kitten group (which sounds like they were all together, which they weren't).

Thimble held back a little and took a while to warm up to me, but after he did, he was the one who ended up in my hands the most often of the two.

The others all have names now, too. The one the other couple picked they've named Hero. Ginger is keeping Wolf, the no-white brown tabby. She named him that because he's always by himself and has been that way since day one (so it's a very good thing that I couldn't get him!). The little girl is named Spice to go with her big sister (possibly genetically related but possibly not) that the couple getting Spice had gotten last year. They'd named the first one Sugar, so this one is Spice.

Back to the youngest kittens: they felt so very fragile. I had to "calibrate" my hands to make sure I wasn't using too much force or too little. Like holding an egg. It took me about half an hour of picking them up gingerly and putting them down to get the hang of it, but then it was lovely fun.

We played with them with a wand toy that has five strands hanging from it and the strands each end with wooden beads. If you hold it just right each bead group spreads out from the others and you can get all five kittens involved at the same time. Of course, the kittens found each other's beads more interesting than their own, so it's not like it was one strand per kitten.

It was challenging to get Thimble to play because he'd step back and let the others rampage through the space he was just in, and that meant he wasn't getting a chance at a bead strand.

I have this vision of people coming to my house (that didn't meet them as kittens) and Colby comes out and they're all like, he's so friendly and so very big, as they're petting him. Colby is going to be the smaller of the two. Ginger estimates a final weight of 17-19 pounds on him. Thimble is probably going to be 22-25 pounds, she thinks. He's also got this massive head already, and simply looks big. So my visitors are exclaiming delightedly over the friendly out-going Colby, when in comes Thimble, ambling in slowly, like he did when I first met him, only his full size. And my visitors take a slow step back and go, "that's a cat?" and I'll be all, "don't worry, he's a sweetie."

Thimble in the back,
Colby in the front.

I also discovered something I found surprising. I decided to see how they'd take to an over the shoulder hold, the way I used to carry Pippin. Apricot doesn't like that kind of hold. He prefers to be held in front, so he can see out. I thought it was because of his feral background that he wanted to see what was around him in front.

Nope. Turns out that might be part of it, but it's also just a preference. Colby likes to be held the same way, in front, supported by both arms. That makes it difficult to pet him and hold him at the same time!

But Thimble ... I put him up against my shoulder, and he snuggled right in. He even inched himself up so his front legs were over my shoulder and his upper chest was right on top of my shoulder, which is exactly the way Pippin would do. (And when Pippin was frightened, he'd wrap one long paw around the other side of my neck, holding on to me. Sometimes he could hold so tight, just his muscles, no claws, that it got challenging to get a full breath!)

Shoulder cat!

Ginger very sweetly took pictures of me and Thimble and Colby, because it's difficult to take selfies when your hands are occupied with sweet fuzzy kittens.

I've been doing arm and shoulder strengthening exercises since I met Ginger and her cat family back in June. I wasn't actually expecting a large improvement. It's only me holding my walking stick out in front of me (and to the sides) and holding the pose for a count of forty (I'm edging up on fifty) while I'm out doing my daily walk, and repeating each hold for ten times (because I have ten fingers to count with).

But when I got a 28 pound box of litter for setting up the third litterbox, I was surprised at how not-difficult it was to get in and out of the grocery cart. So when I visited this time, I wanted to lift Wally again.

Wally is the neutered boy who is a pet cat and lives in the house. Wally is the benevolent uncle cat to the kittens. He loves kittens. He's apparently got good memories of being a kitten and loves to watch over them. While they were playing on the floor with the wand toy with Ginger and me, Wally was on the bed, his long arms stretched out over the edge and crossed comfortably, and a sappy look on his face. He's funny. Thimble is likely going to resemble him a lot, at least physically.

Wally is the one where I can put my hand on his head between his ears and my fingers don't touch the ears on either side. Big broad head. So he weighs (Ginger's estimate) between 17 and 19 pounds. Last time I visited, I could lift him, but it felt very unsure and he thought so too, because he gave me a "please put me down before you drop me" look.

This time I lifted him and it was easy. I could even hold him for a short while before putting him down. I am quite impressed with my progress!

I am going to put more pictures and commentary in separate posts. The day was very busy and I'm sure I'm forgetting things.