This is what happened. My coworker asked me if i wanted kittens. I said no. Then she asked me if i knew anyone who wanted kittens. I said actually my neighbor is looking for barn cats. I agreed to take the litter for my friend/neighbor as barn cats. He then said he has enough barn cats for now. I then turned around and said nevermind. My coworker sent a picture. I decided i needed the white one. A patient’s son claimed the two tabbies. A coworker’s son claimed the two tuxedo kittens as barn cats. Everyone in my family thought i was crazy because i didnt even check if it was a boy or girl kitten. Well, at that age they’re kind of hard to sex but i did send a diagram about how it could be done but ultimately i had to wait until the kitten was in my possession to check because i was the only one in my friend group who wanted to turn the kittens upside down and try my hand at gender predicting according to a medical diagram. Everyone told me if it was a boy cat it would just spray urine all over my house. Quite possible but once ive made up my mind about something ive pretty much made up my mind about it. Id never seen a half siamese half tabby kitten before and it was pretty dang cute and before you knew it i’d adopted a cat.
One day at work my coworker’s husband drove up and pulled a palm sized kitten out the back seat of his truck and handed it to me and all of a sudden i had a bottle baby. Before you come at me for separating the kittens from their mom that young, the mom is somewhat feral. If you let them start teaching the kittens how to be a cat, they will teach them how to be what they are. So if you want a friendly domesticated cat , you kind of have to get them before they start emulating mom. We took them about a week early. Tractor supply sells kitten milk replacer and plastic bottles.
I turned the kitten upside down in the car and looked several times. I saw a dot and a line with no space between rather than a dot and a dot with space between so i thought it was a girl but i wasnt sure if i was just reading that because it was what i hoped the kitten would be. I was going to name it Oliver if it was a boy and Kiska if it was a girl. I told people at work i had a prediction about the gender but i wouldnt know for sure until the vet confirmed. They all thought it was a boy. They looked at the face and the brown nose and decided it was definitely a boy. I had never heard of using the face to predict gender. I pretty much thought you looked at the privates but i held my comments until the vet tech turned it upside down and said, “You have a girl!” Yes! Kiska it was.
She was very cuddly as a baby. She slept a lot and needed constant feeding. I kept her in a zip up play pen with a litter-box compartment in the hair salon room at work on days when the hair stylist did not come. I kept a litter-box in the car at all times and when i put her in it she’d dig a little hole and do her business, then cover it up. There was a kitten car seat which clipped onto a kitten stroller, a kitten back pack, a kitten playpen, and a kitten harness and leash.
I did what i needed to do to raise her and get her healthy in those early days while also holding a job. The thing people dont realize when they say, “focus, we have work to do here. Dont let anything get in the way.” Is that there will always be “work to do here” and you only live once. This is life, now. So do what you are wanting to do along the way because “later” will be retirement and then death. dont let them fool you. Live now.
She used to just sleep on my lap while i did paperwork.
Here’s where the antibiotics in her eyeballs twice a day paid off and her eye infection cleared up. I then realized that she had beautiful blue eyes!
Here we have entered the “F u mom I do it myself” phase of life. Im no longer cool to hang out with, we’ve picked up the skills of a world renowned ninja overnight, and the running theme of everything is “stalk, pounce, kill”. I think we’re also teething because absolutely everything goes into the mouth and must be thoroughly chewed on. Mom has nicknamed us opinionated and the vet is calling us “spicy”.
She started out at 1.5 lbs. two weeks later she was at 1.8 lbs. she is eating both wet kitten food and kitten milk replacer with water offered and available all day.
To be clear: though she was adorable in the tiny kitten stage, i did always know she was going to grow up. All kittens do. She is “spicy” and we will have the next year to work on “less claws equals dogs and mom play longer and yell/bark less”… she does retract them at times when she wants to play and no one will engage her so she is learning this. The ninja-kitty spicy phase is her prime time to learn and practice the hunting skills she would need to catch food as an adult. Sleepy or spicy, whatever state she’s in, i am aware that she is a very smart cat and i love her. She is the new baby of the gang. The dogs are adjusting well. Ever since she discovered claws and learned to run they mostly just stay away from her.