Yep, Eric is another year oldner now in the time that's passed since my last post... His birthday was May 24th, which if i remember correctly was a Thursday. I had made plans for a day out for he and I that saturday, however, complete with a baby sitter (yay!), a trip to Atlanta to Turner Field and two tickets to sit inside the lexus level and watch the game. Its only been about 3 weeks since then, yet i still can not remember which team it was we even saw them play...but anyhow, the braves lost.
Eric's mother watched the kiddos and we took in the game alone. We had a great time, which happend to include a few margaritas for me and some crown royal for him...although it was really too hot that day to enjoy them. When we got home the kiddos followed shortly behind... and much to our surprise, so did 6 kittens :0 .
Apparently, the 'outside kitties' that we sorta adopted a few years back (sisters, they were orphans) have both had a litter of kitties a few prior. Well, when we got home from the ball game we heard some weird whining noise and searched everywhere until we found a baby kitten under our lawn mower. It was stuck under there. We brought it in and slowly over the evening we've had 6 kittens (obviously from two different litters, we can tell by size and development levels) drug up onto our front porch and left by the kitties. We had to bottle feed them every 4 hours for the next 3 weeks...all i needed was more babies to feed, for real...
5 of 6, the sixth one didnt show up until a few days later
We brought the mama in, and clearly she's not interested in feeding them...
Introducing them to the girls the next morning, which was also grace's first birthday!
They were truly adorable-All tabby cats (striped) one orange and white, five black and brownish/grey striped. They each weighed less than a pound. I surely didnt want any of them to die, but they really werent drinking enough at first. I had them on a hot water bottle thing and some old baby towels in a smaller plastic tote and they snuggled peacefully each night.
We decided to keep the orange one; Eric fell in love with it immediately! From the first minute that next monday rolled around, I began trying to find an animal resuce organization to take them or help us find people who could. If there were none available we'd decided we'd have to take them to the shelter (which i do not want to do after losing our 6 wk old puppy we'd raised since birth a while back). The last thing i wanted to do was take them to an overwhelmed humane society shelter who didnt have the staff or will to feed them around the clock. I knew they'd more than likely die there. So at least there was a plan of action of some sort in place....
Tuesday rolled around (it was memorial day weekend) and i immediately started searching for groups to take them off our hands. Unfortunately most of my emails went either unanswered or came back with the same sort of replies. They all read about like this..."Sadly we are unable to take in more kittens at this time. There is an over grown cat population at this time of the year and we are at capacity in both our shelters and our foster homes. We are truly sorry, but are very thankful that you are doing all that you can to give the animals a fair chance at life." Many offered free spaying for them though, which was nice.
So after coming up basically empty handed, we turned to family and friends to help bare the load of sleep deprivation and exhaustion that i was feeling after a while. Luckily we have great people in our lives who stepped in and took some of them. Robby and ashley took two of them...two of the ones out of the 'funny' litter. They couldnt walk real well, sort of in circles. It would get better then they'd get worse...we were always afraid they'd die... Those three kitties had something wrong with them. I dont know if they were ill, or what...but we lovingly referred to them as the "Short Bus Kitties." Eric's sister Holli took the other one out of that litter back to her cousin in NC. Sadly all three of those kitties have since died. The rescue group i spoke with told me that they were likely infected with feline AIDS or FIV...since they were from outside kitties. That is apparently pretty common. Up to 50% of cats in the US have it.
Shelly and Angel took two, to keep as barn cats...right....but after having nursed them for a while they've still not let them go outside. They probably never will, hehe. We kept the one we found under our mower and he's thriving well in my living room right now. He's a lot of fun...and he's sydney's baby. She thinks she's his mama. LOL. I will be having him spayed in a few more weeks for free by the rescue group, whcich is nice. His name is "Lucky Punkin Schwebel," because Eric said he was lucky to get to stay with us...typical man comment. Syd picked out punkin...cause he's the orange one. He's now eating canned food and today we started mixing in some hard food in it too, since his teeth are mostly in by now.
Since all this happend, we've found out that there were stray litters of kittens all over our subdivision, at least four that we know of right now. There was one horny little boy cat running around here...all of the kittens are about the same age and spread out in the woods, neighbors' back yards, storm drains... they are literally everywhere. Our friends down the street own and build racecars and they found one stuck up into the motor of one the other day. They have since kept him too... ;P He and his litter are white with orange and black spots... We had another three kittens start hanging out with Dingo in the back yard, all three black with white sox. This week we've managed to catch all three of them. Two we've managed to get rid of already, one still hanging out in the crate in the garage. He will most likely have to go to the shelter tomorrow morning...sadly. But we're doing all we can here. Syd and i will be going out tomorrow evening to search for more and set the traps that our neighborh brought us. I found out the other day that our next door neighbor works at rescue group, so she's helping us out with all this now. That's nice to have.
I'm still not sure why i've developed such a heart for these animals since Rock died. I'm soft i guess...but someone has to do it, right.....?
