March 25, 2009- Fortunately, I've had enough experience with weaning kittens that I'm not easily discouraged.  At least I shouldn't be.  It's still maddening.

After many training sessions of mashing soft solid food against the roof of their mouths, so they won't spit it out until they realize this is food, then getting them to eat it from my fingers, getting bitten in the process, gradually lowering the food to a dish to finally get them eating on their own out of a dish, and I feel all triumphant thinking it's smooth sailing after then.  Then at the next feeding, they act like they've never encountered solid food before, and we start over from the beginning.  So I got this pic of Agatha getting the hang of it since it may be days before she'll do it again.  Cuthbert hasn't gotten it yet at all.

I don't think Cougar is letting them nurse much at all, although she's still washing and playing with them.  Every time I see them starting to nurse, it doesn't last for more than a minute before she gets up and walks away.  Who can blame her with those sharp teeth? 

My Abigail is doing almost as much washing as Cougar is.  Although, since Abigail is also a brown tabby, it's hard to get a good pic -- there's no contrast.

Side note, though.  Notice how the kittens' paws are a much lighter color than their bodies.  You don't see that in Abigail, and I've been poking around the web for pictures, especially of Maine Coons and haven't seen it before.  I wonder if it's just a kitten phase and they'll outgrow it.

My Nicholas, and even Quentin on rare occasions, are cleaning the kittens, too.  That's Nicholas in the pic to the left.  Yep, he looks a lot like Cougar from that angle.

Of course, the kittens are developing so fast, it's amazing, not just growing fast, but getting noticably more coordinated and atheletic every day.  I've given up on trying to find a way to setup the cage to keep them in, but let Cougar get in and out.  They're even able to get up the steps into my bedroom.  Since Cougar isn't nursing much any more, I figure I can just shut the kittens in the cage and leave her out when I can't supervise.  Mostly, the kitten are very good about going back in the cage to sleep when they've had enough exploring.

March 21, 2009- Andrea came over for a visit last night.  I met Andrea while doing the Adoptions at Eugene's Petsmart where she's there answering questions about Blue Buffalo pet foods.  I complained to her the other day about how Cougar wouldn't eat much of anything but dry food and her coat is still not looking very good.  She offered to bring us some super quality food.  She feeds it even to her ferals and says she has some of the best looking ferals she's ever seen.
I was expecting one small bag.  Instead, she brought 3 bags of different foods, one of them huge, plus treats, cans and toys.  Cougar and my cats are enjoying it all.  One of the toys she bought is an especially big hit.  I would have gotten one for Cougar myself if I'd known there was such a thing.  It's called "Tweet Thing" and it's a light toy with feathers that makes bird noises when batted around.  We had a lovely visit, everyone enjoyed.

A friend of mine I met thought an RV group is busy fostering two Mama cats with litters, so I thought I'd pass on the link to her blog, in case you need more cute kitten pictures.  lilli-travel.blogspot.com

The postal scale I've been using for orphaned kittens for 20 years, and used for mail long before, has broken.  *snif*  I tried to take it apart and fix it, but they just didn't make them like that back then.  I'm finding it really hard to just throw out without, I don't know, a period of mourning.

I'm only partly joking.  I mean, this scale and I have been together a long time.  I'm not sure where I got it, but in my teen years, I had a lot of penpals, and I pasted the current postal rates over the ones printed on the scale.  I kept pasting new rates on every time they went up until they got to changing so often, I couldn't keep up.  The printed rates started at 4 cents for 1 ounce.  I looked it up online www.akdart.com/postrate.html and found the rates went up to that a month before I was born.  That was long time ago.  Really, it's pretty impressing that it's lasted this long.

I got a digital baby scale a while ago to track weights on adult cats.  The postal scale only went up to 2 pounds.  But I don't like it as well.  But, I guess that what I'll have to use from now on.  Cougar's weight is 6 pounds, 14 oz.  She's been on my lap a lot lately, and she fits so nicely over just one kneecap.  Diatima sits on my chest and covers me from arm to arm.

March 19, 2009- One of our fans, Andrea, a fellow WAG volunteer, tells me she's checking this site twice daily looking for updates and I've been disappointing her.  So, I'll try to keep up more in the future.  I'm always thinking of things to write and taking pics, but writing and downloading keeps getting put off.

Cougar's getting so playful, I can't get over it.  We play with the "feather on a string" toy and, like my sighted cats, may not be interested in it when it moves, but when it stops, she stalks it.  I guess she knows where she last heard it moving, and she does the freeze, butt-wiggle and pounce thing.  She's even started to do the crazy-cat-run-around-at-top-speed thing a bit, but I'm afraid I move things around too much for her to really build up speed, so she'll run into my shoes or purse or some such.

The kittens are very mobile.  They're big enough to get over the barrier I put in the cage, so I'm trying a new arrangement that I think will keep them in the cage when I can't supervise, and it may be awkward enough for Cougar to carry them out that she won't.  I didn't shut her in the cage when I went out to WAG today, and the kittens were still in there, so that's hopeful.  When allowed to roam, they tend to get under the couch were even Cougar can't get them out.

Cougar is playing with the kittens, and a roughly enough to make me nervous.  I remember going through this many times with orphans and unrelated spayed females before, but I don't remember seeing it in nursing moms.  She may start out washing then, then holding them down when they squirm, then wrestling and kicking at them, like kittens play with littermates.  The kittens will yell.  But then again, these are very vocal kittens.  Every time I pick them up, they yell, and if I don't get a bottle in their mouths right away, they get so loud, it's hard to believe anything so small could make so much noise.  And you wouldn't want to be in the same room with us when I trim their nails.

I remember worrying about if such play was too rough before.  With my last batch of orphans, when my Abigail would do this.  And before that, with Sirikit.  I took her in when pregnant and gave her some orphans to help with, as well as her own.  She got fixed at the same time as the kittens.  Hard to believe, but it took me a year before I could find her a home.  During that time I took in other orphans and, as with Cougar, I hoped she'd at least help me out by washing them.  Instead, she did the same sort of thing Cougar and Abigail are doing now -- a little washing and lot of rough play that makes me nervous. (picture is of my trying to get Sirikit to give Dulcinea a bath)

Maybe that's why I haven't done and update before: I sound really cranky.  Well, the kittens are, in fact, being a pain.  They've got teeth now, and if given a chance, will get a good bite in on my fingers.  They won't eat solid food, but often won't suck on the bottle either, instead trying to chew on it.  I don't think Cougar is nursing as much, either, and who can blame her with those teeth.  But all this is typical when kittens get to this age.  Including my being cranky.  Probably an overdose of adorable.

  March 16, 2009- On the last weigh-in The Mighty Cuthbert was a whole pound at just 3 weeks old, with his sister only an ounce behind.  The more I thought about it, the more I thought I might have miscalculated their ages or misremembered usual kitten growth rates.  So I rechecked everything.  Well, I know they're Maine Coons and those are Big Cats.  But I didn't see anything online about them growing especially fast as kittens. 

Well, they're big.  And they're fluffy.

I have a thing for graphs, I have to admit, so I made one.  I'll keep the most current one up towards the top.

Cougar's getting friendlier and more playful every day.  I don't think she'd had much experience with being brushed before, and it scared her before, but she's really enjoying it now.  She quite likes chocolate foil wrappers as toys.  I wouldn't have thought that foil would hold much scent, but at least the smell of chocolate might stand out more.  Given catnip toys, plants, catnip on scratching pads, etc, I'll bet my whole house smells like catnip.  So I got out a little aromatherapy oils to see what she thought about other scents on cat toys.  Nothing seems to appeal to her like chocolate.

March 15, 2009 - The Kids' new Mom, Theresa Moore-Silvanus, dropped in to visit them today.  She's a long-time foster home for West Coast Dog and Cat Rescue and has been on the waiting list for a Maine Coon kitten for a while.  She fairly recently lost her aging Maine Coon mix.  She's not sure if she's going to adopt one or both of the kittens, but she'll foster both from when they're weaned to when they're ready for adoption.

Meanwhile, I've still been doing a lot of catching kittens from wherever Cougar has moved them, and putting them back to bed.  She went while without trying to hide them (I think sometimes she just wants more room to be able to groom them) so I tried not shutting them in the cage when I went to bed last night, but before I even fell asleep, there was a kitten squeaking on my bedroom floor.  I don't know, she hasn't tried to put them in bed with me, and if she just wants to nurse them on the bedroom floor at night, I guess that would be okay.  I mean, I could put sheets and towels down.

The kittens are getting more mobile, so I'm letting them out for explores.  This is such a fun age they're at, both cute and fun.

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