Happy 3rd Birthday, Little Kids (AKA The Greeks)!

Wow how times flies. Golly Whoopers, Batman.

Our Little Kids, formerly known as The Greeks, are three years old today (and, at least until July, the same age as Pete and Lily). I can't hardly believe it, due in some part because they just don't LOOK like they are three years old. They are mini-cats compared to their older siblings and some of the monster kitties I've had in the past (Buda, We'um and Clyde come to mind). Also, how can three years have gone by so quickly?

Those who have read my Blog over the years know full well the story of how these three kitties came (and stayed) in our lives; Ares and Athena with little fan-fare (they just seemed to become part of our family by osmosis) and our sweet guy Apollo became a permanent fixture after quite a bit of drama.

Although they are not generally as friendly as Pete and Lily, they have come a long way in this regard. They are not nearly as fearful as they were three years ago, and, in fact, don't appear to be afraid of us at all any longer. They do, however, remain gun-shy of people they don't see all that often (unless said persons happen to be coming around to feed them, right Grammy?)

I managed to get pictures of all three of them today (although Ares wasn't really cooperating).

I had just finished grooming them, something they all, thankfully, enjoy (this because I started them out right off the bat when they were fosters, something I wish Pete and Lily's foster mom had done because they HATE being groomed).

A rare shot of all three Little Kids 3.31.12. Too bad they wouldn't look at the camera!

I gave Apollo and extra turn because he loves it so much. Heck, he'd take the turn for the other four, if I let him. But, hey, who can resist combing and petting a kitty who is having such a great time; purring, rolling around on his back, etc.? It really is cute; if I turn away for a second, he jumps up onto the grooming table, whether there is a sibling there or not.

And Athena, well, Little Miss Bossy Pants is such a lovely kitty, really.

I bought them a special treat (Fancy Feast Appetizers) for their birthday dinner (which they'll have to share with P&L) and maybe dad will give Apollo and Ares some extra turkey.

Anyway, even though we never really counted on having five cats, our lives just wouldn't be the same now without Ares, Athena and Apollo.

Mrs. B

Our Path to Five Cats Part Three: The Routine and The Naming

In all honesty, it was not all that hard fostering the Greek Gang, especially once I got into some sort of routine.

I expected (and received) quite a bit of hostility from them initially. Seriously, who could blame them? They had been pulled from a storm drain (IBM at RTP) at around 7 weeks; one week shy of officially being feral. Frankly, it's near impossible to tell, exactly, HOW old a stray animal is (case in point; we were told by APS when we got Lucy 1.2.07 that she was 2-3 years old; our vet said she was definitely no older than 18 months).

Anyway, Dan (another Hobbes House foster person), who works at IBM, saw them one day when leaving work; their mother was also there. Because he keeps traps in his car (a very dedicated soul), he was able to get four of the five plus mama trapped. One of the grey ones was left alone for a few days until he could get back over there and trap it (I am fairly convinced now that this was Ares).

Mama was fixed, given shots, and sent back out into the wild (way too feral to socialize/adopt out). This left the Greeks, who ended up housed with Christy, locked in a bathroom with no windows. Now, in fairness to Christy, this was only because she already had several other foster litters scattered about her house (included three bottle feeders who were hanging out in the garden tub in their master bathroom (being too small to get out; this was a perfect "cage" for them!)) So, no wonder she was looking for someone to take same of these kittens off her hands (I had told her NO WAY would I foster babies/bottle feeders).

Ok, so, The Greeks were pissed off when they arrived. At least, though, they had this nice bedroom to stay in, two windows to look out of, and a huge bed to hide under when mean new foster mom came in to try and play with them.

I found right away that, as scared as they were, they came out almost immediately to eat and use the litter box (good signs); so long as I wasn't in the room, that is. They arrived on a Thursday; it wasn't until Saturday morning that I was able to lure some of them out from under the bed to play with a wand toy (ONLY if I was sitting on the floor; the moment I moved, they all ran for cover).

The initial daily routine was something like this: Go into the room in the morning, give them fresh water, fill up their dry food bowl and scoop out their litter box (they initially had an open box; I changed this to a big closed box once they were big enough to climb in and out of it).

An hour or so later, I'd go into their room and we'd "play" (which typically consisted of me sitting on the floor with the newspaper and waiting for one or more of them to get curious enough to come over and check me out; then, I'd get the toys out and most of them would scamper about having great fun). It was during these first few morning play sessions where I realized one of the grey males (almost impossible to tell apart from his grey brother) was definitely the bravest and friendliest and that the others tended to hide behind him. I decided he'd be Zeus, the leader.

I also had to pay particular attention to the non-grey male (AKA Shy Boy) since he was the one Christy was the most concerned about regarding socialization. And, rightfully so. He'd come out from under the bed and hang out on the edge of the action, maybe even venturing close enough for me to lightly touch a paw or something, but, the MOMENT I moved, he'd be under the bed.

Zeus and the other grey male had no trouble running over to get attention; the two girls also seemed ok with it (but one was certainly more friendly than the other).

The Greeks would settle down for a long nap around 10 or 11; I'd leave them alone until mid-afternoon when I'd go up there with turkey lunch meat, which they'd all pounce on (it didn't take them overly long to come out from under the bed, even if I was standing there, so long as I had either lunch meat or wet food).

Early evenings meant wet food, followed by another play session, this time with Mr. B usually with me. I'd scoop the litter box again (a necessity with five kittens and one cat box) while Mr. B would keep them entertained. After a few nights, we began to let Pete and Lily in (who alternated between hissing at and playing with the kittens).

After several days, I'd pretty much settled on naming the female kitten with the beady eyes/sort of suspicious attitude Hera (if you know anything about Greek Mythology, this will make perfect sense to you)

which meant the other girl would be Athena.

This left the naming of the other grey male and the shy male. I considered naming the shy one Ares; hoping that perhaps giving him this fierce war god name might help him become less fearful. In fact, I sort of referred to him as Ares for a day or so, if only in my mind. But, the real Ares claimed his name one night while I attempted to pick him up and hold him. He brought up one of his rear feet, clawed at me with it, clawed at me with his front paws and promptly bit me. No doubt, he was Ares (and Ares STILL brings that back foot up when he's being held and he doesn't like it (about 99% of the time)) and he's just as liable to attack your hand as you are petting him as to accept it.

This left the name Apollo for the shy male, and, given that he has golden highlights in his fur, this, too, turned out to be highly appropriate to name him after the sun god.

Alas, Apollo remained quite shy and was near impossible to corral on the afternoons the Greeks were let out of their room to explore. After one particularly traumatic experience where he got wedged into the mechanisms of the elliptical machine, I called Christy to discuss his progress. We both decided it would be a good idea to isolate him for several days so that he would, hopefully, stop relying on his siblings to interact with the humans.

So, Apollo went into the bathroom and he did, in fact, become much friendlier. He allowed himself to be petted, picked up, held, cuddled, etc., SO LONG AS HE WAS IN THE BATHROOM. He also didn't mind hanging out with Lucy (who I'd bring in from time to time to keep him company).

After a few days of this, we made the executive decision to bring him back out. He promptly started running away from us/hiding under the bed again. So, back in he went. Repeat. Over the first month we had the Greeks, we ended up putting Hera in there once or twice as well as we realized she, too, was tending to run and hide.

By the end of the third week, we'd pretty much decided to just let them run free (although we did maintain the litter box/food station in the guest bedroom). This was certainly easier on me and it afforded them the opportunity to a) get used to other pets b) learn to behave in a house (not scratch, continue to use the litter box), c) get used to household noises/activities and d) become accustom to seeing people around going about their business. It also meant I no longer had to worry about little kitty torpedos rushing the baby gate every time I opened their bedroom door!

However, it also meant a big hassle on Thon days trying to get them into the cat carrier to take them to the show!

Mrs. B

Our Path to Five Cats Part Two: Fostering The Greek Gang

As previously mentioned, I kept in touch with Pete and Lily's foster mom; occasionally sending her updates/pictures of The Twins (her name for them, not mine). When we went to Petsmart to get Lucy, Pete and Lily's picture taken with Santa, Christy's husband Brian WAS Santa. That was an amusing adventure, by the way; trying to get two kittens and one prancy dog to look at the camera at all at once. Well, they didn't so we ended up with two separate pictures that I sliced together to make one decent shot. We were not supposed to be in the picture, either, but Santa couldn't manage all three (I wonder what THIS year's photo shoot will be like?)

Lily would not look (in this shot)

At one point early this past Spring, Christy asked me if we'd consider fostering kittens because, "You'd be a perfect foster home!" Yeah, right. But, over time, I started thinking about it more and more; another adventure, something else to experience. So, after we got back from our anniversary trip to Charleston, Christy and Brian came over to a) see Pete and Lily (who hissed at them, go figure) and b) talk to us about fostering.

Long story short, we decided to give it a whirl. Mr. B, however, made me promise up front that we WOULD NOT adopt any of the kittens we were about to foster. I promised (oops).

Christy had a litter of kittens in mind for us; a batch that were not too young (they wouldn't require bottle feeding or dosing for worms...ugh) but WOULD require a lot of attention because they'd been found in a storm drain at IBM (what IS it about kittens and storm drains, anyway?) at seven weeks and they were borderline feral. She told me there was one in particular who was going to really need extra special attention because he was terribly, terribly shy. In fact, she was so concerned about him that she was considering handing him over to Sue (the owner of Hobbes House), who obviously had a lot more experience dealing with this situation than the B's. In the end, though, we all decided he'd be better off coming along with his siblings.

Ok, true confessions here; one of the things I was most looking forward to about this whole deal was naming them. Obviously I knew it was likely that their forever home would change their names (after all, we changed Pete and Lily's (they'd been part of "The Scooby Gang")) but, still, what fun! Mr. B and I tossed ideas around and finally decided on Greek Gods as the organization prefers the kittens to be named things in sets or groups so that they can refer to them as such; "Make sure you bring The Greeks Saturday!" or, "Hey, how many of those bean cats do you have left (Lima, Pinto, Cocoa, etc.)?" BTW, even though I have NO intention of fostering ever again, I still come up with cute names for groups of kittens.

So, we'd be getting three boys and two girls. Mr. B and I decided on: Zeus, Hera, Ares, Athena and Apollo (I wanted to be true to Greek mythology and use Artemis instead of Athena (Artemis and Apollo were twins) but Mr. B did not like Artemis and since he was putting up with this whole fostering thing, I acquiesced). We'd assign each kitten their name once we got to know their personalities a bit.

Even I am not sure who is who in this picture, although I am pretty sure Athena is right up front

The Greek Gang arrived on a rainy Thursday in early June. Before they came, we'd prepared our middle guest bedroom for them; removed the big dresser, but a small night stand in the closet (this is where the cat box went), put plastic sheeting on the bed and an old comforter on top of it, etc. In hindsight, it really would have been better had we moved the bed out of the room entirely, but, we had no place to store it (as it was, the big dresser stood out in the upstairs hallway for several months).

They were so tiny (9 weeks at that point) that all five of them fit inside a small cat carrier. Most of them were huddled together in the back but one of them looked out at me and gave me a little hiss (turns out this was "Shy Boy"). After we got the cat box and food and water set up and toys scattered around (and the door shut), Christy let them out where they immediately made a bee-line for underneath the bed (the primary reason why the bed should have been removed; it definitely made it more difficult to get at them/made it easier for them to prolong their socialization).

After Christy left, I put a baby-gate on the outside of the bedroom door to keep them from running out when I opened the door up (although at that point, this seemed an unlikely prospect given their sheer terror). Pete and Lily immediately went over to the door and started to sniff about. I went downstairs to ponder our new responsibilities.

In addition to providing food, shelter, care, love and affection, we'd have to take them to get fixed at 12 weeks (plus rabies and other shots). A week after that, they'd be given the green-light to go to Adopt-A-Thons, "Thons" for short. Thons happen every Saturday and Sunday, 3 hours each day, at the same Petsmart where I first met Pete and Lily and Hobbes House. They asked that we commit to at least three per month, but, obviously, the more you attend, the quicker the kittens will get adopted (ha ha ha). So, three weeks before they were due to get fixed and 4 weeks before their first Thon, our primary responsibility was to get them SOCIALIZED. I mean, people are not likely to adopt a kitten that hisses, shies away, runs away, won't allow itself to be petted or picked up, won't purr, etc.(that is, most people except yours truly).

With them all huddled under the bed refusing to come out, this seemed like quite a tall order indeed!

The one who will be Zeus emerges as the fearless leader (the next day)

To be continued after we return from Orlando...

Mrs. B