Foster Kittens!

Holding Still For Just a Moment

Tuesday morning, Jim and I went out to pick up our two foster kittens.  They are littermates, about five weeks old.   They’re listed as domestic shorthairs, but they are definitely fluffy.  The male is black and white.  The female is cream with tigerish stripes.  Her paperwork speculates that she may be part Siamese, although maybe “just” tabby.  Either way, as you can see from the photo above, she’s very cute.

The kittens are very feisty and hiss a lot. When they’re not hissing, they meow.  That’s why we have them to foster.  Their entire litter really needs socialization, so they’re being placed in smaller groups so they can get attention.  They’re currently residing in our spare guinea pig hutch, which keeps them from wandering off and getting hurt, but gives them more room than they would have had in a shelter kennel.

The shelter gave them placeholder names (Spaghetti and Alfredo), but we’ll probably come up with other ones as we get a sense of their personalities.  One thing that will be important is that the names don’t sound like any of the names, or common nicknames, of our other three cats. Contrary to popular belief, cats do know their names. They can get confused, and even very unhappy, if they hear someone else being called by what sounds like their name. Ask, and I’ll tell you a tale related to this, perhaps next week.

Tuesday we focused on letting them get settled.  Later today, we need to give them a medicated bath, a preventative just in case they were exposed to ring worm.  That should be interesting.  Because, as I said, these kittens are very feisty.  Very.

The reactions of our resident felines to these new arrivals has varied.  Persephone is interested and has repeatedly gone over to look at them.  If they hiss at her, she hisses back, but almost politely, as she doesn’t add in a growl or paw swipe, which is what she does when she is seriously annoyed. If they growl at her, she doesn’t deign to growl back.  Mei-Ling is cautiously interested.  Roary is either indifferent or nervous.  Hard to tell.  Of our three, he’s the only one who has never had a new kitten move in.

This is an experiment.  We are to keep the kittens for three to four weeks, after which they will be neutered and will become available for adoption.  However, if one or both of the kittens seem to be a good fit for our household, we have first option to adopt.  However, if they do not seem a good fit, we will return them to the shelter, hopefully no longer so inclined to hiss at everyone and everything, and better prepared to find their forever home.

We’ve fostered before—that’s how Roary came to us, five years ago, in his case, as a medical foster—but never two at the same time, so this will be an adventure for all of us.

Now, someone is meowing… I think I’ll go see why.