I just brought our 4 month old foster kitten, Spitfire, back to the shelter for spay surgery and to go to the adoption floor. We had her for a couple weeks for socialization and while she recovered from an upper respiratory infection. Spitfire came from an overcrowded living situation and while she was used to having her owner around the house, she wasn't handled at all. She was a spitting, hissing ball of fluff. She's the fluffiest kitten we'd ever had and looked over twice her 4 pounds. Under all the fur, she was very skinny. She gained a whole pound while she was with us and is no longer underweight. She's also probably the most beautiful kitten we've had with her white bib and paws, brown tabby stripes on her legs and tail and tortie coloring elsewhere. She's officially a torbie in our computer system but I prefer tortie-tabby. She should be appearing on the AHS website later this afternoon and she can go home tomorrow.


I knew we'd be fine because while she hissed and growled, she never did anything else, so you could pick her up. The first few days, she mostly hid in her box with her ears flattened. She came out occasionally to rub against Alan's legs and would alternate hissing, growling and purring. I knew we'd be fine when I saw that and heard the squeaking of the bungee mouse hanging on the door of her room in the middle of the night. Alan wanted to call her "Sink" because she spent a lot of the first week hiding in there. We had to move our toothbrushes into the kitchen. This last week, she's been pretty much a normal kitten, chatty like many torties, and even trying to escape out of the room to see our dogs. Despite occasional hissing when she's caught by surprise, she's the most gentle and good natured kitten we've ever had. I never once had to deal with her playing with claws or teeth. Growing up with a big group of cats must have really trained her well!

I'll be working the Walk for Animals this year but am raising money with the Woodbury staff team. Please consider making a donation! http://events.animalhumanesociety.org/site/TR/Walk/General?px=1007393&pg=personal&fr_id=1150

I've held it in my hands now and it still doesn't seem real! My copies of the book arrived today. It's now available on the Aqueduct Press website: A Brood of Foxes . It is the 29th volume in the Conversation Pieces series and I'm honored to be included with such a wonderful group of writers. If you want a description of the novella, there's a good one at the link above. I have a very time describing it to people myself.

I brought two of the four kittens back to the shelter today for spay and neuter surgeries and to the adoption floor. We've had this group for a few weeks and have been through round and now lung worms with them. These two were the healthier and better body conditioned of the two.
The bigger female black one, Kerrigan, hit surgery weight last week by a hair and we decided to keep her until the grey one, Mulligan, caught up. They are now 1.78 pounds and 1.53 pounds. 1.5 pounds and good body condition are the minimum requirements for surgery. They will be available to be put on hold this afternoon (we close at 6:00 pm) and will be available to go home on Tuesday after the MLK holiday.


We had a great day today with the little, skinny male, Morgan, finally getting completely over his diarrhea and starting to put on body mass. The other one, Callaghan, is filling out nicely. I'm guessing I'll still have a couple weeks at least with them as they finish the de-worming treatment and their little bodies finish recovering. (Sorry about the photo--I'm not doing this from home and I can't seem to get the photo to display the other way.)

I'll have a post about the new book shortly but in the meantime, here are foster kitten pics!

We've had this group about 2 weeks now. The solid grey and black kittens are doing pretty good and should be at spay and neuter surgery weight by next week. The two grey tabbies aren't doing so hot and will take a little longer. They've gotten the normal de-wormers and some extra panacur. Partway through we found roundworms. They got their second round of de-wormer and we hoped that was that.



The little ones still weren't gaining weight so we retested and today we found... lungworms! I hoping another, longer round of panacur (de-wormer) will take care of them, so we can get them onto the adoption floor and into their new homes.