I gave away two kittens the other day.
Jan. 31st, 2012 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyThey were my two super-friendly, ultra-needy kittens, so I was thrilled to be able to pass them off to the same person. It was a huge worry of mine that either of them (but especially the tom) would be miserable and depressed in a single-cat household if they didn't get enough attention. And by "enough attention" I mean "at least three hours a day devoted to play and snuggles". Self-sufficient, these kitties are NOT.
Plus, the two of them are very close with each other (as a side effect of constantly trying to BOTH sit on my lap, chest, or shoulders), so it's a good pairing. It was a real weight off my shoulders, both literally and figuratively. I have no regrets over how this turned out. (I always take it as a good sign when the person taking your cat is willing to buy the exact cat food and litter you recommend. It's not that the brand is so important (although you want one that's as much meat and as little filler as possible, especially for cats!), but that they're willing to make the effort to do things right. And the brand is important when it comes to litter, as these cats are used to pellet litters, not clay litters, and you really want to minimize problems in the bathroom when transitioning a cat to a new house. That's got to be the worst time to change litters.)
Of course, to move those kittens as fast as possible I lent out one of the two carriers in the house. THOSE, of course, are on loan to me, but I figured "What're the odds she'll need them back this weekend?" (Guess what? She needed them back this weekend! Damn it, I knew this would happen and I ignored the voice of reason. Yet again. Why do I keep doing that?)
So now we're down to two kittens and mama. And you know, even at "half grown" they're still kittens, they're still learning new things all the time.
Right before they left, Butterscotch (my pathetically needy tom, the hair eater) learned to perch on the door and on the backs of chairs. He was very proud of himself. And he discovered mirrors for the first time! (We don't exactly have an abundance of them in this house.) It was adorable to watch him staring at the mirror from my shoulder and then making sudden jerks as though Mirror Cat would do something different!
Miss Tiny, who went with him, had started trying to learn the jump and cling to me move her brother did. (Now you know why I was so eager to get rid of the pair.) She also learned to shove her biggest brother off the bed... her biggest brother who is already the size of his mom (and outweighs her by a fair bit) while Tiny is two months smaller than you'd expect. (This was every bit as hilarious as you think. She trounced him.)
Sandy, the big cat, has in recent weeks learned that running water is way cool. He no longer chases me into the bathroom to sit on my lap, he does so so he can start tapping at the faucet in hopes I'll turn on the magical flowing water. (He really is huge and he's only going to get bigger. He's in his early adolescence now, and I fully expect him to keep growing until a year and a half or two. Bigger cats keep growing longer, enabling them to get enormous. Tiny might stop growing by one or just after, though at least she won't have kittens sapping her size like so many cats do. But there really was a huge variation in size and build between the smallest and largest kittens in this litter!)
Callie, who is my favorite, is growing more social with both humans and cats every day. This cat has had to learn everything. She had to learn, slowly, to trust humans, moreso than you'd expect a kitten to have to. And the more I pay attention, the more I suspect she had to learn how to communicate with her own littermates as well. She couldn't tell the difference between play fighting and real attacks until just recently, so at first she'd fight back vigorously when her siblings were trying to play with her, and then she'd just wait there passively until they gave up and went away. It's only in the past few weeks she's been having fun the way they do. She didn't understand the difference between getting in her face for an attack or to nuzzle, no matter if it was a cat or a human going near her. She'd just pull back until VERY recently. Even when she learned to tolerate and then like human attention, she had no idea how to ask for attention. Not for her the swift jump onto a lap and tail in the face! Not for her the mew and the kneading right in front of your human! Oh no! Her method until two weeks ago was to sit near you, not face you, and wait to see if you pet her. It's only within the past two weeks she's learned she can meow and maybe you'll pet her then.
(Just watching this cat grow and change and learn is an education in and of itself. I have no idea where she falls on the cat intelligence scale, but I know she's got hidden potential in there. Every day she's getting a little more able to get what humans are trying to say to her, and a little better at communicating with us. I don't expect sonnets, but it's nice when you and your cat can at least convey messages like "Food!" and "Come this way!" back and forth, isn't it? She's only just this week learned how to say "Come on, this way!" to me, though right now she's not very good at it and stands too close as she tries to lead me places. So what if all her siblings grasped this basic message a month ago? She's trying harder. You get kittens like this sometimes, and I've never worked out why, but it's like they're born half-feral and just can't pick up as easily as their siblings the intricacies of inter-species understanding. All domesticated animals have to be taught to trust humans, despite the thousands of years of careful breeding towards that end; but with kittens, at least, some of them have a tougher road ahead of them and I just don't know why. Callie's still painfully shy, but with the people she knows she's sweet and friendly and trusting, and she's a real success story.)
It's like watching children, but compressed and they never learn to talk or do math. (Well, I did have some cats that were very clever and whom I suspected at the time had a reasonably large vocabulary of English words, more than just "food" and "come" and "off" and so on. But large for a cat would be small for even your average two year old. You know what I mean.)
Plus, the two of them are very close with each other (as a side effect of constantly trying to BOTH sit on my lap, chest, or shoulders), so it's a good pairing. It was a real weight off my shoulders, both literally and figuratively. I have no regrets over how this turned out. (I always take it as a good sign when the person taking your cat is willing to buy the exact cat food and litter you recommend. It's not that the brand is so important (although you want one that's as much meat and as little filler as possible, especially for cats!), but that they're willing to make the effort to do things right. And the brand is important when it comes to litter, as these cats are used to pellet litters, not clay litters, and you really want to minimize problems in the bathroom when transitioning a cat to a new house. That's got to be the worst time to change litters.)
Of course, to move those kittens as fast as possible I lent out one of the two carriers in the house. THOSE, of course, are on loan to me, but I figured "What're the odds she'll need them back this weekend?" (Guess what? She needed them back this weekend! Damn it, I knew this would happen and I ignored the voice of reason. Yet again. Why do I keep doing that?)
So now we're down to two kittens and mama. And you know, even at "half grown" they're still kittens, they're still learning new things all the time.
Right before they left, Butterscotch (my pathetically needy tom, the hair eater) learned to perch on the door and on the backs of chairs. He was very proud of himself. And he discovered mirrors for the first time! (We don't exactly have an abundance of them in this house.) It was adorable to watch him staring at the mirror from my shoulder and then making sudden jerks as though Mirror Cat would do something different!
Miss Tiny, who went with him, had started trying to learn the jump and cling to me move her brother did. (Now you know why I was so eager to get rid of the pair.) She also learned to shove her biggest brother off the bed... her biggest brother who is already the size of his mom (and outweighs her by a fair bit) while Tiny is two months smaller than you'd expect. (This was every bit as hilarious as you think. She trounced him.)
Sandy, the big cat, has in recent weeks learned that running water is way cool. He no longer chases me into the bathroom to sit on my lap, he does so so he can start tapping at the faucet in hopes I'll turn on the magical flowing water. (He really is huge and he's only going to get bigger. He's in his early adolescence now, and I fully expect him to keep growing until a year and a half or two. Bigger cats keep growing longer, enabling them to get enormous. Tiny might stop growing by one or just after, though at least she won't have kittens sapping her size like so many cats do. But there really was a huge variation in size and build between the smallest and largest kittens in this litter!)
Callie, who is my favorite, is growing more social with both humans and cats every day. This cat has had to learn everything. She had to learn, slowly, to trust humans, moreso than you'd expect a kitten to have to. And the more I pay attention, the more I suspect she had to learn how to communicate with her own littermates as well. She couldn't tell the difference between play fighting and real attacks until just recently, so at first she'd fight back vigorously when her siblings were trying to play with her, and then she'd just wait there passively until they gave up and went away. It's only in the past few weeks she's been having fun the way they do. She didn't understand the difference between getting in her face for an attack or to nuzzle, no matter if it was a cat or a human going near her. She'd just pull back until VERY recently. Even when she learned to tolerate and then like human attention, she had no idea how to ask for attention. Not for her the swift jump onto a lap and tail in the face! Not for her the mew and the kneading right in front of your human! Oh no! Her method until two weeks ago was to sit near you, not face you, and wait to see if you pet her. It's only within the past two weeks she's learned she can meow and maybe you'll pet her then.
(Just watching this cat grow and change and learn is an education in and of itself. I have no idea where she falls on the cat intelligence scale, but I know she's got hidden potential in there. Every day she's getting a little more able to get what humans are trying to say to her, and a little better at communicating with us. I don't expect sonnets, but it's nice when you and your cat can at least convey messages like "Food!" and "Come this way!" back and forth, isn't it? She's only just this week learned how to say "Come on, this way!" to me, though right now she's not very good at it and stands too close as she tries to lead me places. So what if all her siblings grasped this basic message a month ago? She's trying harder. You get kittens like this sometimes, and I've never worked out why, but it's like they're born half-feral and just can't pick up as easily as their siblings the intricacies of inter-species understanding. All domesticated animals have to be taught to trust humans, despite the thousands of years of careful breeding towards that end; but with kittens, at least, some of them have a tougher road ahead of them and I just don't know why. Callie's still painfully shy, but with the people she knows she's sweet and friendly and trusting, and she's a real success story.)
It's like watching children, but compressed and they never learn to talk or do math. (Well, I did have some cats that were very clever and whom I suspected at the time had a reasonably large vocabulary of English words, more than just "food" and "come" and "off" and so on. But large for a cat would be small for even your average two year old. You know what I mean.)
