Apricot Likes His Baby Brothers

Waiting for Colby and Thimble

In the morning, Apricot comes to say hello to me, but he knows that at some point during the morning chores, I will be letting Thimble and Colby out of the pink room, which I am going to call the nursery (since they will be allowed the run of the house at night when they grow up).

This is where Apricot goes in the morning then. He waits patiently outside the nursery door for me to open it so he can get his little brothers back for the day!

Colby and Thimble Help With the New Microwave

My microwave, original to the house, started making popcorn noises whenever I ran it at full power for more than five minutes. After some half-hearted searching on the internet, I discovered accidentally while reading an article for something else that noises like popcorn popping when there isn't any in your microwave mean that your microwave is slowly dying.

It finally occurred to me that instead of viewing this as annoying, I should be grateful, because at least I didn't put my supper in to warm and have the microwave just quit on me, leaving me with a cold supper and a dead microwave.

My microwave is a "countertop" microwave but it's on a shelf above the counter, so I was space-limited. Finally I found one that sort of kind of matched the old one in size and also in the way it worked with the buttons on the front. I've encountered microwaves that are exactly the opposite of what I'm used to, and it's difficult. With mine, you put in the time and then, if you want to change the power, you put in the power. Some do it the other way around, and once you get used to one way, you generally screw it up constantly if you switch. Sure I'd get used to it eventually, but I didn't want the hassle.

So my microwave arrived on a Monday night, and I was so tired from work and everything else (been fighting off a cold or having severe allergies, not sure which) that I didn't unpack it until Saturday, last Saturday the 7th.

And I got helped! It's been a long time since I had a cat to help me when I did things like that. Colby and Thimble both gathered around and had great fun interacting with all the stuff.

At one point I was cleaning out the inside of the old one while it was on the floor, in case I wanted to donate it (it still warmed up food, after all; you just couldn't cook with it). I had kittens trying to get inside of it. I did not take pictures of that, since I'd probably get hate-mail from people taking it out of context! But it was fun to have to keep sweeping persistent pushy fur out of the way so I could wipe the microwave down.

Colby's sitting on the old microwave,
contemplating jumping in the box the new
one came out of.

Thimble sitting on the tray from the old
microwave, investigating the smell.

He actually sat there for some time.
It was like a cat trap!

No cats (obviously) just the completed installation.
I'm proud of this because things like this are
difficult for me to do. And it was heavy to lift up there!

In the end I decided not to donate the old microwave. I put it in the box the new one came in ... and now the box is a permanent part of the kitchen because the cardboard flaps on the top are chew toys. They sit on one side and chomp at the other side. As teething season is rapidly approaching, I want them to have as many allowable chew toys as possible!

Oh, are you wondering where Apricot is during all this? He came to the kitchen door opening, observed the general chaos, and retreated to a safe calm spot in the living room, where he stayed the whole time.

How to Give a Cat a Pill

Last Friday night, the 6th of February, Thimble got his first pill.

Now I have lots of experience giving cats pills. Pippin had to have a pill every day for his entire life, since his diagnosis at the age of three with cardiomyopathy. I would give him the pill and then give him a treat. Since I forget about giving treats at random times, that was the only time he got treats. He would actually remind me if I forgot to give him his pill, although his reminders were along the lines of, "I would like my treat please. You forgot it. You can keep forgetting the pill part, though." (Never worked; you remind me of the one, I remember the other, too.)

Here's how I give a cat a pill, in this case, Thimble.

I put him on the litter box's box in the living room so he was in the corner between the window and the boxes of drawers at the side. Then I sat down on the box with my legs at an angle so I was in the way if he tried to leave.

If you have a more cranky cat than Thimble, you'll need to do more than that to confine your cat for the initial pill giving, but for a trusting kitten who has never been afraid or mistreated, this was fine.

Now a cat's mouth has those long sharp teeth at the corners called, funnily enough, canines. Right behind the canines there is a small gap in the teeth. If you push gently on this gap with your finger, it wedges the mouth open and is much, much easier than trying to pull a cat's mouth open from the front. It baffles me that most vets don't seem to know that cats have an "open button" for their mouths, although, granted, you can't open it as far as you can from the front, and since vets are trying to examine the teeth, perhaps that is why they do it the hard way.

So I take the pill in my right hand between my thumb and forefinger, and use my middle finger to press the "open button" on Thimble's mouth. The other hand is holding his head steady, just cupping the side of his head so he can't lean away from the pressure on his mouth. As soon as his mouth comes open, I drop the pill down his throat.

At the same time I'm opening his mouth, I'm also tilting his head back slightly to give gravity a chance at the pill as well. You can't tilt their head back completely vertical because it becomes difficult to swallow (you try it on yourself sometime), but an angle does help matters.

It's important, especially if the pill tastes bad, which this one does (I was told--I didn't try one), to attempt to get the first contact between pill and cat mouth to be behind the "hill" that the tongue makes. If you get it on the tongue, or against the back of the mouth on either side of the throat, then they have to move it around to get it into swallowing position, and that's harder (on both of you).

Once the pill is in Thimble's mouth, then I let his mouth close (all I have to do is take my finger out of the side) and try to keep it closed so he can't spit the pill out. Mostly this involves gently holding his chin up against the rest of his head (cats usually won't open their mouths by lifting the top of the head; they do it by dropping their jaw, so you don't have to worry about the other direction of opening, so to speak).

Stroking their throat from chin to chest stimulates swallowing. So does blowing on their nose. I'd always heard that and it never worked, but I finally figured out with Thimble what my problem was. You're not blowing a candle out. Instead it's a soft huff of air, rather as though you're letting them smell what you just had to eat. (You know, you've eaten something a cat would find interesting, like tuna, and you're on the couch petting the cat and all the sudden they get a whiff from your mouth and they plant their noses right at your lips, wanting you to breathe on them so they can smell it better? That kind of huff.)

And it really does make them swallow. Kind of cool, since the throat stroking doesn't always work.

A really clever cat can manage to not-swallow their pill throughout all this, but keep it tucked in their mouth like a squirrel with a nut and then spit it out later when you're not looking.

However, this is where the treats come in. Once you have the cat fairly calmed down and the pill theoretically swallowed, you give the cat treats. This both rewards them for putting up with the pill (no matter how badly they might have behaved--it's not a reward for good behavior, it's a reward for putting up with you shoving a pill down their throat) and it ensures that they swallow whatever was in their mouth ... just in case they were trying the spit-it-out-later trick.

Thimble was rather surprised at the first pill, and so didn't react. The second one, Saturday morning, went a little rougher, but he knew he was getting a treat afterwards, so he didn't protest as much as he could have.

Something I hadn't realized would also be a motivator ... Thimble was the only one getting treats. The other two were on the box with us, seeing what in the world I was doing that I was giving just Thimble a treat (or two). And Thimble quite enjoyed being the only one receiving goodies.

By Sunday night, he reminded me of his pill time, because he wanted the treats ... and the chance to say na-na-na-na-na to the others. This was actually really good because on Sunday night my on-again off-again sore throat was on in quite a severe way, and I had forgotten!

Thimble is quite used to taking his pills now, and will actually leap up on the box when I get the treat bag and pill bottle out of the drawer next to it, and wait for me to give it to him. He has also figured out that if he doesn't try to close his mouth but instead gives me half a second to actually line up the pill with the back of his throat, he won't taste it as much.

Because you see, for all that this sounds simple, it's really quite a challenge for me because of my clumsiness. Pippin, too, figured out that if he didn't try to rush things, it actually didn't take nearly as long.

Of course, then I got to see how Colby did ...

Thimble Gives Me a Scare

I can't remember if I mentioned the rattle mouse skeleton before. A few weeks ago when I was vacuuming I found a black plastic thing that rattled, and upon further investigation, held the remnants of orange fur to the seam where the glue was strongest. That was all that was left of the orange rattle mouse.

Now Ginger had pointed out to me that kittens by this age would have been eating mice and other prey whole, so their digestive systems can handle whole feathers and hide and things like that. So while I kept an eye on Thimble, I didn't think much of it when his poop started going all floppy again--just figured the orange fur was passing through.

He started acting like he had a hairball, though. He would wheeze and sometimes dry heave after drinking. So I asked what Ginger recommended for hairball medicine. I remembered giving hairball medicine to Pizza and Tiger, and what a struggle that had been. It was malt-flavored (who thinks cats like malt?) and you had to smear it on their paws and if you had a bump of it, they'd fling it off the paw.

Well, there is a better version out there, called Lax'aire, that most all of her cats adore and will eat directly out of the tube. Unfortunately, the company who makes it transferred the formula to a different company, and that company is having manufacturing difficulties getting the formula to work. It's not available right now and won't be till April ... or later.

But it's made from petroleum jelly, cod liver oil, peptonized iron, and a palatable base. I don't know what the iron is for and I can't get the base, but the first two ingredients are the most important ones anyway, as they are the lubricant and laxative, respectively. And you can buy those.

So I finally got around to going to a store that had them (Walgreens, to my surprise) and then when I got home I mixed some up. Just in time, as Thimble went to the litter box three times in my view, tried to poop, and had nothing happen, much to his confusion. Once he even half-heartedly covered the place he'd prepared to receive the poop, as if to say, "well, I know I'm supposed to be doing this, but there's nothing there, so really why am I bothering?"

If you decide to try this mixture, I can recommend that you transfer both the jelly and the cod liver oil into a bowl much larger than the contents, since the cod liver oil has a tendency to splash when you first start trying to mix them. I emptied half the petroleum jelly and then tried to mix it in the jelly container ... I did succeed in getting the attention of all three cats.

And I did succeed eventually in getting it mixed up. Just a little more sloppily than I had intended. Since I was doing this on the floor in the pink room, I got a bit of cod liver oil on the carpet. It doesn't smell as bad or as intense as I thought it would, even the straight oil doesn't, so this wasn't the disaster it sounds like!

The two kittens eagerly ate it off my fingers. (The next night I put it on a plate and they ate off of that, but Tuesday my fingers were already messy from the mixing, so I thought, whatever, here, have some.) The next morning showed evidence in the litter box that it had worked like a charm, for both cats.

Apricot won't eat off human fingers. Even if it's tuna juice. He would love to in some cases, but I'd learned he simply won't lick your fingers, so, although I offered him a finger covered in goo (so as to include him and make him see I wasn't deliberately giving it only to the kittens), he refused to have any.

The instructions for Lax'aire say two nights and then weekly. I was going to stop with Wednesday night, but then Thursday Thimble meowed once while trying to make a poop in the litter box. He didn't sound completely distressed, but by the time I woke up Friday, today, I decided for his health and my peace of mind, we had to go to the vet.

Friday: I came home around 12 so I didn't have to rush in, grab Thimble, and leave for our appointment at 1 pm. Thimble had previously meowed in the cat carrier during a car trip. He didn't do it much, but I thought I would try something different since he'd also never been in the carrier by himself, either.

I wore the tan cat bag carrier and put Thimble in it. Not only did he not meow at all in the car, but by the time we went home, he climbed into the carrier from the vet table all by himself. I had to help sift the back feet in, though, as he didn't quite get them inside. The top is an elasticized band that you can have open or mostly closed or anywhere in between, so the edges shift from the time a cat's front end goes in to the time the back end tries.

When we were waiting in line to make a left turn off a busy highway, the cars going straight were speeding by at a very fast pace. Thimble watched them and was absolutely fascinated. His head was doing that tennis match thing, back and forth, back and forth, zoom, zoom.

If he wasn't watching cars, though, he was looking up at my face, seeking reassurance and strength there. I'm glad he feels that way about me. Apricot simply hides and I can't reassure him or help him. It was good to be able to get Thimble to feel better about the situation by simply being there for him.

At the vet's office, he had an xray of his tummy and a fecal exam. The xray showed no blockages, so he has passed the rattle mouse fur all the way through. And the fecal exam showed no parasites, which is also good. However, it's not a positive that it's negative because in some cases it could still be positive.

(Did you follow that last sentence?)

Anyway, the vet gave him some anti-parasite liquid (orally) and then I have to give him five days of antibiotics, twice a day. The anti-parasite is just in case there is some, after all. She, the vet, wanted to give him a back-of-the-neck treatment that covers more parasites, but I would have had to keep Thimble away from Colby and Apricot for two hours.

Yeah, that wasn't happening. Plus, without proof positive that parasites were the problem, I didn't want to give him one of those skin-soak-through treatments. I've never had good luck with them; my cats have always reacted badly to them.

The antibiotics are because his colon is inflamed. She said that could be because of a bacterial infection; a parasitical infection, or one of those two that has come and gone, because once it gets inflamed, it has a tendency to be self-perpetuating. And she said that the antibiotic has some anti-inflammatory qualities as well, which should help.

I haven't given him the first pill yet ... this should be interesting. I've never had to give him a pill--he's only been with me a month and a half, after all.

When we got home, Colby and Apricot investigated him thoroughly, sniff sniff sniff all over, and then agreed that he was undamaged and I was off the hook since I'd brought him back as promised. I got out a brand-new rabbit Spider toy (it's made of rabbit fur and has pipe-cleaner legs and they love these toys).

Right after they decided he was okay.
It only occurred to me late in the sniffing
that I should take a picture. So I didn't
get the actual investigation of Thimble,
just the "okay, you're all right" movement.

So they spent the next hour playing quite hard, and then they crashed and slept, which is what they are doing now.

During the playtime I found what had happened to the other three rattle mice I hadn't been able to account for. Apparently, much to my surprise, you can stuff toys under my fridge. There was a veritable cornucopia of toys under there. I found this because Thimble stuffed the Spider under there while I was watching, and then wanted me to get it back.

I don't have a yardstick, the tool of choice for under-the-fridge toy-fishing expeditions. I do, however, have a plant stake. It is a long piece of metal, round and painted, with a circle at the top (for the plant to go through, to hold it upright). I used the non-circle end to go fishing and was successful. My phone's "flashlight" function came in handy as well.

Now there is a folded piece of cardboard under the fridge to prevent further fishing expeditions from being necessary. I made sure (I asked my dad) if that was okay for the fridge, but he said as long as it has ventilation around the coils, it's okay. The coils are on the back, not the bottom.

My mother didn't actually say it this time, but I know she was thinking it. "You're no fun!" The cats enjoy watching me go fishing, and the results thereof, although Colby and then Thimble both took turns "helping" me. I had to move paws and tails several times trying to get the toys to come out without instantly being batted back in.

Apricot Joins Bedtime Playtime

The nightly routine has developed into the following: I announce we are going to bed and get my bedtime snack, which doesn't take long. Then I walk into the pink bedroom, preceded by and followed by very excited kittens. This is because then I sit in the middle of the room and play with them with a wand toy, running them round and round and back and forth. Apricot recently (like a week or two ago) started coming in and watching this from the sidelines.

Sometimes he ended up retreating back into the hallway, and watching from there, though, because despite my best efforts to keep Colby from running into him, sometimes Colby launches at the toy and overshoots and, while turning, skids into whatever he was originally headed for. Sometimes it's the furniture, but sometimes it was Apricot, who was rather not prepared to have seven pounds (and some) of kitten bowl into him.

Thimble is rather less heedless of his surroundings and slower in his attacks, but even so he was the one who tumbled into Apricot a time or two as well. But despite this, each night Apricot would come along with the three of us and watch from the sidelines.

On the rare occasion that both kittens were taking a short break, I'd run the toy over to Apricot, who would sniff it cautiously.

Thimble and Colby do share the wand toy; one will wait while the other plays. I move the toy back and forth between them, as they indicate they want to slow down and let the other one play. This is usually less than 30 seconds per cat, and requires me to pay attention to their body language, but we're all getting good at it. Often the resting kitten will sit on my legs while watching the other one play, because it's a safe place that doesn't get hurtled into (Apricot hadn't figured that one out, or perhaps he'd observed that the lap was often occupied by a kitten anyway).

Apricot's cautious sniffing of the toy did not count as playing with it, and the kittens wouldn't let him be and would go after the toy, and I'd have to hastily pull it away (and sometimes fail and have a collision occur).

Last night all his careful observations came together, and Apricot tried playing with it the second it arrived in front of him.

Sure enough, both Thimble and Colby held back, allowing him his 30 seconds of playtime before the toy moved on to one of them. I was using the rabbit-on-a-stick wand toy, and Apricot likes that one much better than the furry one with a bell that I often use for the kittens.

So playtime involved all three kitties last night, and it was really quite fun to see them all taking turns and being patient like that.

Now after they are "done" (a time limit determined by me and my arm strength, usually), I put the toy away. The bell toy is in the bookshelf in their room (I may have to move it once they get big enough to get at it), but the rabbit toy is on the big bookshelves in the living room, so with that I have to wrap it up in my hand to "put it away."

Then I kiss the kittens both good night, turn out the light, and Apricot and I leave the room and I shut the door behind us. To my amazement, this actually works. The two stay in the room and don't rush out with us, and Apricot does come out with me without my having to pick him up or anything. I still, each night, expect this to not work as smoothly as it does, and each night it's been working just fine.

(An odd thing happens when I write something like that on the blog--the next time the incident I wrote about occurs, it works quite the opposite way. So we'll see if I jinxed tonight's playtime wrap-up!)

After that, I go out into the living room with Apricot and I get out a grownup wand toy or his ribbon and play with just the two of us for a little while. With the rabbit-on-a-stick, since I had it in my hand anyway and he'd been having fun with it already, I used that last night. He was much appreciative of being able to play exclusively with it and take the time he needed to sniff it and race after it without interfering kittens underfoot.

Then I put the toy away and finish getting myself ready for bed, and last thing before I go to bed I kiss Apricot goodnight. He's been doing more and more hanging out in the bedroom with me while I'm getting ready (changing clothes and whatnot) and fairly consistently he's been coming up on the bed after everything (including his good night kiss and my light going out), and walking up to my head where I'm under the covers, and then walking away again and getting himself a snack back on the floor where his food dish is (I hear the crunching of the food).

I'm not sure ... is he confirming that yes, I'm in bed, so everything's "done" for the day? I don't respond to his presence because I'm not sure what would scare him or not. Perhaps one day he'll curl up and stay.

Colby Pees Oddly

So yesterday I was in a hurry to clean the litter boxes because I was late for meeting up with my friends. I could smell that Thimble had pooped, and while I was scooping that, I might as well do the whole box.

Colby always seems fascinated by the scooping process, and often gets in the box and sits on the litter and watches me. When I need to scoop where he's sitting, I'll just keep moving the litter slowly out from under him until he gets fed up with the eroding surface and leaves.

Well, he was doing this, sitting there, in the corner, watching me, but he wasn't leaving.

If I hadn't been in a hurry and been able to put two and two together, I might have realized that there was a very good reason he wasn't leaving. I might even have remembered that I've seen him pee before.

And unlike every cat I've ever had, Colby sits on the litter to pee, instead of crouching above it. I knew that some cats did this, but it's still a bizarre behavior and not one I remember that Colby does.

Yes, that's what the poor beleaguered cat was doing. He was trying to pee and there I was, eroding the surface he was peeing into, out from under him! And I still didn't realize there must be a good reason he was being stubborn, so I grabbed his harness and moved him. He must have good reflexes (or been almost done) because he didn't leave a stream of pee behind him, but the poor kitten was much offended, as well he should have been.

So when I realized what I'd done, I had to be even later to my meet-up, because I had to find Colby and apologize profusely. I also apologized when I came back later, but with good-natured kitten behavior, he had already forgiven me.

Poor Colby. I still feel bad about it. Of course, I'll probably remember he pees like that from now on! Nothing like learning the hard way.

Terrified Tuesday

Last Tuesday I was sitting in the settee after supper, with a kitten or two on my lap or with me. I don't remember specifically where everyone was; Apricot was in the room with us on one of the cat trees. It was dark outside.

All the sudden there came this angry pounding on the door. Not a knocking sound, but pounding, like with a fist. The cats scattered after the second repetition of this. I saw the Rowdy Boys flee into the kitchen, but I didn't see where Apricot went.

I was frightened. The guy just kept pounding on my door, over and over again. I looked out the peep hole in the door to see it was just one man, white, dark haired, and not a teenager or 20s, but with my prosopagnosia, that's all I could remember, if I called the cops and he left before they came.

Even with that handicap, I was about to call 911 because he just wouldn't leave. I even had the phone out. I was terrified of what he would do if I didn't open the door, but I was more scared of what he would do if I did. He finally left right as I got the phone app open. (Yes, I know I can dial it from the password screen. I forgot.)

But I was still afraid. He sounded so angry and demanding, that pounding over and over again. I fully expected a rock to come through the window, a petty retaliation for my not answering the door when he knew quite well I was at home. I'd already turned off all the lights, and I huddled in the middle of the living room, away from all the windows, waiting with my heart in my throat.

Since the noises had stopped, the kittens came out of the living room to see what was up. They both checked in with me, coming up to me and getting petted, and then, to my shock, Apricot came out of the kitchen and came over to me as well. I would have expected him to go hide in one of his normal hiding spots, not in the kitchen with the other two!

As I was still scared they picked up on it, and although no one left the living room, even Apricot, they dispersed away from me. Except for Thimble. Poor 3 month old Thimble came back to me and was reassuring me that it would be okay. I haven't had a cat do that for a very long time; Pippin was like Apricot, and I had to reassure him, not the other way around.

I greatly appreciated Thimble's efforts, which did help make me feel better. But I felt sorry for him, having to be the grownup when he's still such a baby.

Nothing happened, but when I cautiously went into the kitchen, I saw my neighbor's motion sensor light go on. I waited until it went off and then called them, to see if perhaps they had opened the door and found out what the guy wanted (or if I needed to call 911 because they'd opened the door and he'd wanted something bad and they weren't able to answer my call).

Turns out they'd just gotten home from grocery shopping, and the man accosted them in their driveway as they got out of their car! And he wanted them to sign a petition about voting. Like changing what kind of majority is needed to pass a certain kind of vote ... he wasn't clear to my neighbor and of course I got this second hand so I'm really not clear on it.

My neighbor said he told the guy straight-up that going door to door after dark in a street of mostly elderly people was a really stupid idea and he was going to get the cops called on him if he kept it up. Did I mention it was also 39 degrees (F)? What idiot goes door to door after dark when it's that close to freezing?

When I called my dad, he said that someone with a similar sounding petition had come by their place shortly before Christmas, so it sounded legitimate. My neighbor said he thought the guy was legitimate too, just deeply stupid.

I didn't call the police then, because a description from me is worse than useless, but it did occur to me that my phone may be capable of taking a photo through the peep hole, and so next time something like this happens, I can take the person's picture and give that to the cops.

It was a very scary experience for me. I suppose it wouldn't really be that scary for most people, but I'm not most people, and with three anxiety disorders to my name and counting, I get scared easily. (An anxiety disorder should really be called a fear disorder but then people would get it mixed up with phobias.)

But there's two good things that came out of the whole incident. First, Apricot is starting to trust the Rowdy Boys enough to hide with them, instead of by himself. And second, I have a kitten who wants to take care of me, too. I've really missed that. Now I have a cat I have to "be strong" for, and a cat who can "be strong" for me. Kind of completes the circuit, so to speak!

Here is Thimble, from a different day, when I discovered that if you have a sleepy kitten on a heated throw blanket on your lap, and you've turned the blanket on high because you're feeling ill, said kitten may just toast himself into an absolutely blissful state instead of leaving because it's too hot.

A Toasted Thimble