Sharing the kitten-love!

April will mark a year of volunteering with Project Purr, and in that time I have rescued almost 25 kittens and seen them adopted into good homes! :D Unfortunately I have been kitten-less for two weeks, since the weather's only just now warming up, and kitten season hasn't started yet. In my tragic, kitten-bereft state I thought I'd post pictures of some of the cuties I've raised, since adorable pictures of kittens are better when shared.

A group of my favorite bottle babies! Their names were Tesla, Heloise, Merit and Curie--all named after famous scientists, so we referred to them collectively as the Science Cats.



Curie has the sweetest face! My uncle--whose beloved manx cat died a couple of years ago and who swore off ever getting another cat--fell in love with her immediately and wound up adopting her, so I still get to see her from time to time.



Merit whines. She was good at that! She and Tesla (the orange one) got adopted together.



Chiclet, the cutest kitten in the world. She was a chubby, perfect bundle of aww.



She's so beautiful. Like a kitten from a calendar!



It's MC Escher's kitten basket--every empty space is actually another kitten.



Frito (left) and Cheeto, the Banditos. Talk about a calendar-ready look.



I was so shocked when it took these guys a full week to get adopted. Just look at them! Presh.



I didn't take these super-adorbz pics of Frito and Cheeto, btw--we actually have a pro photographer who's started taking the "official" kitten pictures. Fabulous, isn't she?



It's hard to judge the cutest kitten I've fostered, as kittens are all inherently adorable, but Cheeto is pretty high up there.



I can't help but feel that Frito looks affronted in this picture.

And that's all I have for now! Hopefully I'll have new kittens to fill the void in my heart--and the litterbox in my bathroom--soon. :P

ETA: Literally moments after I finished posting about my tragic kitten-zero status, I got a call on the kitten klaxon and had to drop everything to drive across town and scoop up these adorable orphans:



Meet kittens 24 and 25, Esther and Egon! Instant karma!

I have spent the last four hours or so cleaning, feeding, burping and widdle-wiping and them cleaning, feeding, burping and widdle-wiping again. I am over the moon!

Meet the Science Cats!

Hello, blog followers! Since last we left our heroine, she was harboring three adorable adoptables: Loki, Odin, and Peapod. Since then, all three of those cuties have been successfully adopted into love-love-loving homes! I then took in a pair of almost-ferals, Manchac and Maurepas:

They rehabbed into absolute sweethearts--both of them are total lap cats now. Manchac was actually adopted this weekend (Maurepas, a.k.a. Maura, is still available!), which, since I like to keep my foster-kitten count at about three, meant I had room for two more kittens in my home.

So, of course, I got four.

Meet the Science Cats!

So-called because my roommate and I were nerds and named them all after famous scientists: Tesla (the orange tabby male) after Nikola Tesla, Heloise (female torti) after the 14th century french scholar and nun, Merit (brown tabby female) after ancient Egyptian physician Merit-Ptah, and Curie (colorpoint female) for chemist Marie Curie.

Of course, none of these kittens have learned Latin or discovered a new element yet, but they're only two weeks old. Give them time!

And of course, since they're still so young and small, we're keeping them under close watch for signs of ickies like panleukopenia, which has been rampant in the feral community this year--we've lost several kittens to the disease at Project Purr this year, but so far my house has remained uninfected. Knock on wood that that remains the case and these little babies stay healthy!

Kittens: The new batch

I'm afraid I have been neglecting this thing awfully, but I have good reason! For awhile there, I was harboring six kittens! Three from the bottle-fed group, and three more from a new litter that was found and given to me to care for since no one else could take them. Six kittens, in my relatively tiny, 800 square-foot apartment, is beyond critical mass. (That's not including my two large adult cats, mind you.) I have been living la vida cat lady. I'm happy to report, however, that all but one of my six have been adopted. Only Peapod from the original litter remains.

They grow up so fast! She's gone from a wiggly, potbellied critter to a sleek young thing in no time at all. The fact that she hasn't gone to a loving family baffles me, since I've never seen a cat so ga-ga for attention--pick her up and she just purrs like a motorboat. And look at her gorgeous whiskers and handsome socks! Her Petfinder profile is here, and she'll be at the Best Friends on the Boulevard event this Saturday at the Mall of Louisiana, so you can meet her up close and see if you want a lovely tuxedo kitten in your family.

Of course, the house couldn't remain empty for long, and last week I found myself picking up two more strays--I got calls to take in two new kittens within a couple of hours of each other. The first was a three-to-four week old white kitten found at a gas station and turned in to animal control.


The second was a gray five-to-six-week-old kitten found in the back room of a party supply store.

Being, as I believe I've mentioned in previous posts, insane, I agreed to take them both on. Despite not being related in any way, I've dubbed the white one Loki and the gray one Odin, and they are both absolute dearhearts. Loki is currently confined to a bathroom, too small to be trusted even around a kitten-proofed apartment alone, but walk near his domain and he'll start crying noisily for attention. Pick him up and he cries even louder until you hold him close, whereupon he immediately begins to purr and nibble on your clothes. Odin has to be frequently pushed away at night because of his persistent habit of kneading my hair and purring like a small jet engine--he leaps against your hands for pets and scratches behind the ear.

I'll be putting up profiles for these two in the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes on the Project Purr Petfinder page!

So tired...

Oh my goodness, these guys are exhausting me. Fortunately, they exhaust themselves, too!

My college Japanese teacher (whom I still hang out with sometimes /dork) came over this weekend to visit the kittens and was cooing over them in Japanese, which was the highlight of my week:

Uwa, chiisai neko da na~

For the kittens' part, they really took to her, and congregated exclusively on her lap for the afternoon.

I always knew she was a warm person. (Ha!)

Later that same day, even more friends came over to play with the kittens, so they're getting lots of socialization. Hopefully will turn them into sweet little lap cats over the next few weeks.

Sweet sleepy babies. I'm going to get them vaccinated this week--next week, it'll be time for their first outing as pre-adoptables! So exciting.

This blog is brought to you by cute

I must have decided that I have too much free time. It's the only logical explanation for my decision to sign up as a foster "mom" for Project Purr. That and insanity. A good kind of insanity, insanity with kittens, but still.

Project Purr, in case you're not aware, is a Baton Rouge-based nonprofit dedicated to rescuing orphaned kittens. Our local no-kill shelters are chronically overpopulated and Animal Control has a standing policy to destroy young, motherless cats, because of the intense amount of care they require. Someone has to look out for the adorable adoptables. So, Project Purr stepped in and now Animal Control has the number of a group of lovely people with mad bottle-feeding skills and sanity/sleep to spare.

I've owned cats my whole life, and both of the cats I currently own, Kai and Bijou, were bottle-raised by yours truly. Still, there's something about kittens that's addictive. So when a friend and coworker told me about Project Purr, I knew it was just what I was looking for.

A few weeks ago I got the kitten-klaxon, and wound up with these three lovelies:

Meet Sugarbean, Peapod and Sprout. Their mamacat was tragically struck and killed by a car, and a caring citizen found these two-and-a-half-week-old babies not far away. When I got my mitts on them, they were obviously shaken up, exhausted, and in no mood to deal with a strange human trying to feed them unfamiliar milk. They hissed every time I got near and refused to eat. Constant coaxing and cuddling finally got some formula into them, and a few days later they were looking considerably perkier:



Now, three weeks later, they've outgrown their small bathroom home and are getting bigger (and chubbier, and more energetic) every day:

At five weeks old, they're almost ready for their first round of vaccinations and just started taking their first nibbles of real cat food. Their personalities are starting to come out, too.

Sugarbean (he's a boy, I promise) is the real lover of the group. Pick him up and he just starts purring immediately. He climbs into your lap and flops, and shoves his tiny head into your hand for constant skritches behind the ear.

Beansprout is a talker. He mews when he's hungry, he mews when he wants attention, he mews when he's bored. I think it's a consequence of being the runt--he's the baby, and wants everyone to pay attention to him right now. Fortunately, I find his voice melodious.

Peapod is a girl, but she's also definitely a tomboy. (Should that be tomcatboy? Hm.) She's the explorer--first out of the door when you open it, first to scamper gleefully up a pantsleg, first to pounce a new toy and start happily mauling it. I'm also pretty sure she has the most adorable whiskers in the entire world.
More pictures--and more on when and where you can adopt these adorable babies and others like them--coming soon!