32 Flavours...and then Some!

...when I went into the kitchen for a cuppa coffee.



Ded from the kyute...

Today marks Dorene's First Gotcha Day!! Yes, it's been a year since we brought that black bundle of energy home!! :) Dorene and I sorta picked each other out--I was looking for a somewhat quiet but young cat who wouldn't mind lap sittings and pettins and she definitely obliged at the shelter with great joy. Then we brought her home and once she was out of the Safe Room she turned into a bit of A Wild Child for awhile. Talk about a Bait and Switch. Little shit! ;)

She's calmed down a lot since then and has become quite a bit of a love, but on her terms, of course. Her antics never cease to amaze and amuse us.

Happy Gotcha day, baby girl. We love you!! :)


Dorene in the Safe Room 5 February 2014


Dorene, Lars and Me 24 December 2014

Happy Christmas from our home to yours! Here I am with a lap full of cats, something that's become a somewhat regular occurrence. Mama is quite happy with this development! Dorene and Lars have become quite good buddies, as you can tell from this picture. ;) We were watching the news together when J snapped this pic with my phone.

...to bring her in. She's slightly dehydrated from not eating and Dr. Choy is concerned about the fact she's not eaten or pooped well in the past days.

She got a short blood draw, which verified signs of dehydration, but was otherwise very good numbers. Therefore they administered fluids to boost her hydration levels. Physical exam turned up nothing save for that she's lost just over a pound since her last weigh in back in December. Teeth and mouth are fine. Belly palpation was fine. Heart and lungs clear.

The trick now is to figure out why she's not eating and to get her to eat. Just in case, she got a shot of the antibiotic Baytril to stave off any possible infections that might be going on, a vitamin shot to boost her immunity and a quarter of a tab of mertazepine (a strong appetite stimulant med) and hand/force fed about half a can of A/D crisis food. They tried to get her to eat it on her own, but I think she might have been too shy/scared to eat it in front of Dr. Choy and Veronica; damned cat. :/ She got some sub-cutaneous fluids for the dehydration and I'm to watch her intake of water along with the food intake.

Dr. Choy suggested feeding whatever it is that Dorene will eat, so I went over to PetSmart and asked the folks there what they would suggest for a gravy loving small morsel eating cat. They suggested Nature's Recipe in chicken flavour--their experience with sick cats is they prefer poultry flavours over the stinky fishy flavours, with cats having colds being an exception to that rule (as it's the only thing they can really smell, and they rely on sense of smell to want to eat). So I picked up one each of the chickeny flavours of that brand that they had and I'll sort through the bag of Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers cans for the poultry flavours and feed those as well. They also, interestingly, suggested I try putting her back on kitten kibbles temporarily because it's full of calories and more nutrients than adult kibble and tastier to them to boot. I picked up Blue Buffalo Freedom grain free kitten in chicken flavour as well. Will be slowly integrating those into her diet. The last thing I want is for her to get a more upset tummy from switching over to a new food(s).

Sigh. All this and my other set of eyes (J) is leaving for an out of town work trip tomorrow morning and he won't be back until Tuesday. So all this sick kitteh stress is all mine. Sigh. Like I said in my other email--can't not have a broken kitteh in our household... :/

This morning was The Great Debut of Wellness wet food...

...and it largely flopped!

I gave her the sliced chicken with gravy along with a bit of Fancy Feast Salmon Gravy Lovers mixed in with the hopes that the mix of old and new would help with any potential tummy upset that might result in a food switch. She ate off all the gravy from both, ate the salmon meaty bits, but largely left the Wellness chicken bits alone. :/ It wasn't until I put more Fancy Feast on top of the leftover Wellness meaty bits that she showed any interest in the Wellness meaty bits at all, and only when I was in the room sitting with her, watching her eat. Odd, that, but at least she ate about 2/3 to 3/4 of the Wellness meaty bits when I kept her company. She, like her two brothers from other mothers, is an odd duck. ;)

Seems as though Dorene, like her brother from another mother Lars, is A Gravy Lover, and not a fan of bigger sized meaty bits. :/ I did give Lars a tiny portion of the Wellness (we're talking maybe a half teaspoon to a whole teaspoon) and he LOVED IT--wolfed it down before it even had a chance to stain his wet fud bowl. ;) He then downloaded a not exactly solid one in the litter box soon thereafter. At least he left it in the litter box and not on our living room floor, thank Bast, but...yeah...I think even that little bit upset his tummy somewhat so I'm not sure if I'll give him a taste again tomorrow morning...

I've not ruled out the possibility that Dorene might have something weird going on with her mouth/teeth that's made her adverse to the kibble. It might also be part of why she didn't want to initially eat the larger Wellness meaty bits, too. I tried taking a looksee in her mouth this afternoon but she was having none of it. Hard to say--she's only two years old so I would think her mouth and teeth should be fine and she checked out fine with the vet back right before we took her home in February, so...who knows?

At a buck forty nine a small can, I'm decidedly not amused that she's not liking it better so far. :/ I just might have to give up the fight after a good College Try with the Wellness brand stuff I bought and go back to feeding her the Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers stuff that I know she'll eat with whole-hearted enthusiasm. Sigh. She's just plain weird! :/

J took this picture this morning before he left for work. That's Lars, of course, on the upper shelf, and Dorene on the lower one. ;)

We've been bringing her out of the safe room to interact with the boys for ever longer periods of time over the course of the last week. It didn't start off well--the boys were having NONE of her being out of there and they were hissy, swatty, and pouty at first. No major fisticuffs were had, though, so we had that going for us. ;) As the week went on, everybody slowly got adjusted to each other and, gradually, less hissing, swatting, and pouting was to be had.

Yesterday we had her out after we ran our errands and left her out while we took our respective naps and all was well. The rest of the time went well, too, so we decided to try leaving the door to the safe room open for her last night to see what would happen.

Either we both slept soundly for a change or things went really well. ;) Neither of us woke to fighting in the middle of the night. :) There were minor fisticuffs between Dorene and Ra this morning not long after I got up when they were together on the bed, enough that Dorene's breakaway collar came off (we should probably tighten that a little more), but no other damage. Just a lot of noise on Ra's part.

Of the two boys, Ra is taking it harder. I'm not surprised. He's had a lot of change over the course of the last year involving other kitties (losing Diva in July and Jazz in December, meeting Lars in August and now Dorene last month) so I'm sure he's sick of all this feline change shit going on in his world. He's quite the Curmudgeon, hissing and posturing and the occasional swatting and attacking towards both Lars (occasionally still) and Dorene. But he's slowly getting less surly. This is A Good Thing. I think it'll take a little more time, but eventually all three kids will get along with each other just fine...Here's to hoping, anyway...

She's acclimated just fine to the Safe Room. In fact, she spent very little time hiding under the bed in there upon coming here, which is definitely a good sign!! :) She's explored the room about as much as she can, and has yet to play with any of the toys in there, but that really doesn't surprise me, either, since none of the other cats have played with the toys in there...perhaps it's time to put new toys in there? ;) She spends most of her time loafed out on the bed near the foot of it, ready to meep/meow at us when we come in for visits. ;) It's very cute when she does this. It's not every time someone goes in there, but she'll usually vocalize a little "hello" when someone enters. Sometimes she continues to be chatty for awhile after we're in there, which is even more cute. She's full of purrs and lovins and wants her chin scritchens when someone's awake in there.

I've slept in there the past two nights, and after the requisite pettins and lovins for a bit of time she settles in by my feet to sleep. It's a bit nippy in there without a space heater, which we can't run without tripping the breaker if both our PCs are on in the office, so J has had his PC turned off since last night so we can run the space heater at about 70F when one of us is in the house to keep an eye on it. I was a bit wary of running it while we were asleep, but it's a high quality space heater and we know good room placement so nothing starts on fire, so we're about as safe as one can be with a space heater running.

Having the heater on last night made spending the night in there a bit more pleasant for both of us, I think. I didn't need the extra blanket I'd brought in to be comfortable, so that's saying something for how much warmer it was in there with the space heater running as needed. That being said, it's not terribly cold in there without the space heater running, so at least there's that so we are able to turn it off for safety's sake when neither of us is in the house. It takes awhile after the heater's been running for the room to get nippy, too, so there's that as well...

Because of the chill in the room without the space heater and not wanting to run the space heater on a regular basis (it's got it's own thermostat built in, so it turns itself on and off according to room temp, but still...), I'm hoping to get her integrated into the rest of the house within a couple of weeks vs. the month or so it took us to get Lars integrated into the house. Part of why it took so long with Lars was his attachment to the Safe Room and his reluctance to leave it and be part of the rest of the house. I don't think we'll have that reluctance problem with Dorene. While shy and cautious, she's not as neurotic and drama queeny as Lars can be. ;)

As for how the boys are acting with a strange kitty behind Door Number Three, they're doing just fine. Lars still wistfully looks at the closed door and keeps an eye on it from a distance, but hasn't hardly banged on the door to get in since we brought Dorene home. I did catch Ra sitting outside the door with his nose to the crack at the bottom of the door, hissing, once yesterday afternoon, but he's largely steering clear of the door, too. (BTW--she hissed back at him, LOL) We'll have to try to get them to go up to the door so they can meet each other at some point, but we're not worried about that quite yet...

So, yeah--overall things are going quite well so far! YAY!

About a week after Jazz passed I started "interviewing" new girl kitty candidates for the "open slot" in our household. Why a girl? I've always had girl kitties, and to not have one in the house has been quite strange and uncomfortable for me. I didn't want to rush any decisions, and I was hoping one of the girls at the shelter cattery would "pick" us out for their new owners.

Turns out two girls did just that! Eclipse, a feisty and affectionate long haired calico and Dorene, a serene, calm and purry short haired black kitty with a white smudge on her forehead. Eclipse picked us first, but I'd heard that on her very first trek from the cattery to PetSmart adoptions she was picked by a nice couple and will be going to her new home after she's recovered from her spay which will be happening in the coming week or so. :(

I "interviewed" Dorene almost exclusively yesterday during our shift at the cattery. I took her out of her cage gently (she still had her spay stitches, so careful handling was required), and sat down on the step stool with her to see if she'd take my lap and some pettins. She quite graciously accommodated my request for pettins and lovins and she sat on my lap for a good 20 minutes just purring and lapping up the attention before she jumped down and went off to do kitty things! She was just plain content to be held and petted and given chin scritchens. SO SWEET!!

She's a bit quiet and shy at first, but she does get along well with the other kitties at the cattery, which is a big plus over Eclipse, who didn't seem to like other kitties, at least upon sight--she'd hiss at other kitties when we'd pick her up and handle her outside her cage. Dorene, while initially cautious, does warm up to both boy and girl kitties of all ages at the cattery according to our experience and what has been written in the socializing book. She's "four wheel drive" like most cats are at our shelter, so if she does get into a scrap with one of our boys (read: probably Lars) she should be able to hold her own just fine.

The shelter's vet figures she's about two years old, so she's in the age range we wanted to have for a new kitty. Still kitten enough to want to raise the roof and play, but not wild eyed like one, and old enough to be calm and not want to climb the curtains or door frames. ;) She likes to bat at feathery toys I found out yesterday, but I didn't try to see if she'd interact with any other sort of toy. She's not a "fussy eater", eating the standard Science Diet adult kibble and random brands of gooshy fud the shelter cattery has to offer. She's petite, but not too small to be terribly vulnerable to the rough housing of two somewhat feisty boys. She reminds me a lot of Jazz in many ways, but not too many as to be a "replacement".

So last night I emailed the shelter's cats coordinator about both Eclipse and Dorene, and found out today that Eclipse is, indeed, being adopted post-spay. I was a bit disappointed, but that's okay as long as she's getting a good home. Dorene got her stitches out of her tummy today and was promptly taken to PetSmart to the cat pods for open adoption. Which means time is of the essence if we would like to adopt her. So Carol suggested we might want to come to adoption hours and spend more time with her and perhaps we'd want to "bring her home for a try-out"? J and I discussed it, and the answer to that question is "Yes". I will skip bowling on Wednesday to go to PetSmart during my normal bowling time and we'll both spend some more time with her before we bring her home to our freshly opened Safe Room for a "Try Out."

Lars has still been taking his meals in the Safe Room up til now, though I've been working at moving his bowl out of there into the office for about a month now; he'll take his first meal out of the Safe Room in the office tonight. I've moved "his" box out of the Safe Room and put the dome box in there for Dorene. He keeps looking at me with his head all cocked to the side as if asking me what's up, which is very cute. Ra is pretty much unmoved by the changes as it's not "his" box that's been moved. We'll see how Lars adjusts to not having access to "his" room...I hope it goes smoothly... :/

I will post pictures of her once we get her home. I hope this all works out!