Today the kittens are 8 days old! These fluffy little balls of joy have been our main source of entertainment this week. Kittens are born deaf and blind, and by day 8, they start to slowly open their eyes. A few days later, hearing starts to develop. You can see in the picture below that one of them has indeed started to open her eyes. Yes, if I'm not mistaken, that's our only little female in the litter of 5. She beat her 4 brothers in the eyesight race, as her eyes started to open around day 6. They have all grown and their fur is softer and fluffier than ever.
This morning, as I was taking these pictures, I heard this little clicking sound. It was coming from a little orange male who was drinking milk. I realized that sound was actually purring! How adorable! I hadn't heard it from a baby until now.
You might be wondering how our other cat, Precious -a very territorial Bengal has been coping with sharing the house with not just one, but 6 other cats? In the picture above, Mitsy is looking directly at Precious. The first day, Precious was furious. She's always been a bit of a princess. We didn't let her see the kittens, so she didn't really know what was going on, except that to her, the house probably smelled like cat hell.
The second day, we slowly introduced her to the babies, and that actually seemed to calm her down. She was still angry at Mitsy, but didn't seem too threatened by the kittens. By day three, we let Precious get up close and personal with a kitten. She sniffed it and looked very relaxed. Now she's back to her usual self. We now know that Precious has no intentions of harming the babies, and Mitsy is very protective of them anyway should she try anything naughty.
Mitsy still needs to work on her carrying skills with her babies. Every now and then, she tries to pick one up -with difficulty. She tries to grab them by the tail, the behind, the head! Once, she got it right. She managed to transport one (by the neck) all the way to the basement.
As for our human babies, Emma and Théo, they know that no matter how cute the kittens are, we will only be keeping them until February 2018. Of course, it will be impossible not to get attached to them, but we all understand the "risks". That's life. We can't prevent ourselves from loving deeply even if that means we might have to face the pain of a broken heart somewhere down the road.
We have given them temporary names. The black and white ones (males) are
Rogue (the alpha of the bunch) and
Buddha (because he really is a zen little fella). The little orange female is
Zelda, and the two orange males are
Archie (daughter picked that one!) and
Chewbacca (chewie for short).
It looks like we have found potential families for almost all these guys, but until things are 100% confirmed by the foster families, I am still considering other foster parents at this point. If you would like to provide a forever-home for a kitten in February 2018 and are close to Edmonton, please speak up now or forever hold your peace! :)
With Love,
Lise
www.lisevilleneuve.com
