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Annakie
Apr 20, 2005

"It's pretty bad, isn't it? I know it's pretty bad. Ever since I can remember..."
I don't know why it didn't occur to me until last night that PI would have been interested in this story as it unfolded, but seeing as how it's not quite done, I thought I'd make a thread for the fostering situation I've been going through the last several months.

My neighborhood has a lot of stray cats. There's several that are regularly hanging out in my back yard there when I let my dog out. The only easy access to my back yard is through a sliding glass door from my master bedroom. I started noticing them when I got my dog in 2008.

One of the strays in particular caught my eye, because she's a gorgeous Calico I started referring to as Patchy. This is the first picture I can find of her, taken in October 2009.



She's the only one that's consistently been around for five years now. Sometimes I'd go a few weeks without seeing her, and she'd come back starved and I'd feed her. (It's illegal in my city to feed stray cats, apparently.) Three or four years ago I found my first litter of kittens in my backyard. The first two I found, I gave one away and kept the other. Somewhere in the cat questions megathread are posts where I asked for advice in raising my cat Fry from being bottle fed. Since then I've gone on to rescue about a dozen kittens from my back yard.

Early on I'd just find homes for them right away or turn them over to the city. I soon learned how inhumane my city was to animals so I stopped doing that. I started raising them until they were 6-8 weeks and well socialized and then gave them away.

About a year ago Patchy and one of her now-adult children who I call Brown-Nose to distinguish her from her sister, Pink-Nose, had litters at the same time, or days apart at the most.



From those guys, I saved two. I now wish I would have done more, especially after with what I know after the last few months.



The tabby went to my co-worker's family. He's now one of the most loved, spoiled and happy cats. My co-worker, who was at first like "We're just doing this for the kids, I don't want a cat but we promised them a pet" is now coming to my desk every few days and giving me an update about Simba and describing every detail about how great his cat is to everyone in earshot.

(Simba likes to sleep under the covers. Also he loves playing fetch and hates ceiling fans.)

The longhaired calico, like with several other cats, were taken to the vet to be cleared of FLV/Leukemia and other obvious diseases, then given away on Craigslist for a small donation, which I donated to the rescue group where I got my cat, Leela.

These gorgeous sisters were rescued, tested and given away -- together -- back in the fall.



Anyway, all of that is just introduction. There's Patchy, she has a lot of litters of kittens, which I have sunk a lot of time and money into bringing inside, socializing, and giving away. I've been meaning for awhile to do something about it but never quite had.

Until February 13th of this year, when Patchy showed up at my back door, pregnant again. It was also a particularly cold night and she looked both starving and freezing. I was getting together something to (covertly) feed her and left the door open a crack so I could hear my dog when he wanted to be let back in. When I opened the door a little bit more, she ran inside and under my bed.

Fine, I thought. You can stay. But this time we're going to take care of this once and for all.

A lot more story (and pictures!) coming, but I need to go get ready for work. But before anyone suggests it, I did get help this time. :)

Annakie fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Jun 26, 2014

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kinmik
Jul 17, 2011

Dog, what are you doing? Get away from there.
You don't even have thumbs.
You're doing god's work, my friend. Between this thread and pizzadog's, PI's set up for a whole lot of :neckbeard: and :3:. I'll be following this story with interest.

Annakie
Apr 20, 2005

"It's pretty bad, isn't it? I know it's pretty bad. Ever since I can remember..."
Hey thanks for the response kinmik! :) If nobody else cares, I'll close the thread, but thought I'd give it another go.

Part 2 - Newborns!

Patchy has always been skittish, but never violent. Occasionally before she came into the house I could feed her a treat from my fingers, but otherwise I couldn't touch her. So I tried for awhile to get her used to being near me by feeding her wet food at night with the dish at my legs.



That was about as good as it would get. If I walked into the room, she ran under the bed. If I hung out in there reading, she'd usually come out and lay on the floor away from the bed but felt comfortable enough to fall asleep. I was still sleeping in the room and occasionally I caught her on the bed with me, but if she realized I knew she was there, or I moved, she'd go hide.

We had an easy truce. She was quiet and a good roommate, I gave her food and water and a clean litterbox, plus the security of knowing her kittens would be safe. She never really tried to leave after the first day. It was a small challenge keeping my most rambunctious of my 3 cats out of the room, but otherwise the entire time was peaceful.

I thought from the beginning she was REALLY pregnant and right about to burst. I was wrong. It took 40 days for something to happen.

On March 24th, I woke up to the sound of tiny newborn kitten squeaks. Patchy was a champ and hadn't made a sound through the entire process. She chose to have the kittens underneath my bed. I was hoping she'd choose one of the boxes I'd prepared for her, or the master bathtub, but no dice. There were some towels down under there, so it wasn't too much of a mess.

Before I left for work that morning, there were three. When I got home that night, there were four kittens.

Thankfully, when I got home, she'd moved them into one of the boxes and I was able to wash the towels from under the bed she'd had 3 of them on. I think she may have had the last one (or the afterbirth at least) in the box.

Once I realized that (after I took the pictures below, sorry!) she was so exhausted she let me change the towel out from under her. It was by far the most I've ever gotten to touch her, and it still wasn't much, she did most of the moving herself, I moved the kittens.

But anyway, here's newborn kitten and exhausted momma cat pictures.





I ended up moving her food within eating range of the kittens. She was really hungry and grateful. I am pretty sure that before this she'd always had to have kittens without any food nearby and have to go hunting for food whenever she could. Just seeing how tired she was with food mere feet away made me even more glad I was taking care of her.



Eventually, they'd all be named, but for their first several weeks of life I didn't know who were boys and who were girls as Patchy wouldn't really let me close enough to touch them after that first night. I earned a few swats and hisses when she got tired of me taking pictures and watching over the next 2 or 3 weeks.

But after awhile, when I figured out who was who and could tell the 3 brown kittens apart, here's who they were, all named after characters in my favorite show / podcast.

Annakie fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jun 27, 2014

Quincyh
Dec 24, 2011

He's stolen the fire chief's hat!
Awww, this is a good story so far. Looking forward to more.

Radio!
Mar 15, 2008

Look at that post.

This is a very good thread with very good pictures :kimchi:

Annakie
Apr 20, 2005

"It's pretty bad, isn't it? I know it's pretty bad. Ever since I can remember..."
Thanks guys! I appreciate the feedback. :D

Part Three: Little Kittens

For several weeks after Patchy gave birth, not a lot happened. After the first two or three nights, she moved them all back under the bed. This time, the liner underneath my boxsprings had started coming off, and since my boxspring is just basically a wooden platform with some padding on top, it made a great place to hide.

I also quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to sleep in my bedroom anymore with kitten squeaks all the time and Patchy being very nervous. So I moved myself into my guest bedroom. Yeah, I let a cat kick me out of my own bedroom.

I'd taken my dog to live with my parents for a few weeks as I was going to be traveling a lot, so really, from late March to the very end of April, I'd go in the master bedroom to check on Patchy and the kittens probably three times a day, and to refresh food/water/litterbox, and that was basically it. Not much was going on.

But here's some pictures, anyway! It was pretty hard to see them under the bed there, so mostly I took these pictures as visual proof they were all okay as much as to remember them later. :)





They opened their eyes April 7th. (At least that was the first time I saw their eyes open.)

Even when they were that tiny, it was easy to tell that the brown one with the most white on him was the most brave and social. As soon as they were able to move on their own he'd come say hi at the edge of the bed every time I'd take a look and see how they were doing, and the orange one usually wasn't far behind. Once I got brave and pulled them out one by one to check genders and just take a quick look to see if they were doing okay. Patchy came and retrieved them as soon as I had checked the brave one and his orange shadow.

I went on a long-weekend trip to LA near the end of April. I was gone 5 days, (a friend checked in on the kittens a few times) and when I returned, they were out from under the bed and clumsily wandering around the bedroom on their own, with mom keeping a watchful eye nearby.

So then I started getting pictures like these.



Forgive the state of the carpet, btw. By the time I took these my dog was home and it was rainy outside. He brought some mud in with him, the kittens started playing in the litterbox and they, and Patchy, were terrified of the vacuum to the point where I think it set me back significantly with just getting Patchy to trust me when I used it. With my unfortunate choice of white carpet, every spot shows up.





I put a basket of laundry and an interesting-shaped box in the room for them to climb/play around in, removed the sheets off my bed and left a towel or two for them to climb up on and a few more things to give them plenty of opportunity to physically develop without wreaking too much destruction on things that I actually liked.

And yeah, that mostly-white brown kitten, Frank? He right away established himself as the dominant one, with the orange (Sparks) one as his second in command. Amelia, with the white streak up her back, was the momma's girl and scaredy-cat, while the most-brown one, Sadie, was the cuddler.

Next up... separation for socialization and maybe we'll get to the reason why the thread title doesn't match up with the kitten count.

SchrodingersFish
Mar 9, 2012
Love this story and all the kitten pictures! My husband is very very allergic to cats so I have to live vicariously through PI. Keep it coming!

Quincyh
Dec 24, 2011

He's stolen the fire chief's hat!
^^ This is true of me also. Please post more pictures of the kittens so that I can show them to my husband who will, once again, tell me I can't have any.

Daikatana Ritsu
Aug 1, 2008

Annakie posted:

I also quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to sleep in my bedroom anymore with kitten squeaks all the time and Patchy being very nervous. So I moved myself into my guest bedroom. Yeah, I let a cat kick me out of my own bedroom.

loving lol.

Jamwad Hilder
Apr 18, 2007

surfin usa
wow what a zany story

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I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

I love this story so much. I am eager to know the twist that's coming up!

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