The brats will be 90 days old on April 12th. I hauled Victoria and Lizzy to the vet today for shots - can you believe that the vets here want THREE HUNDRED SEVENTY DOLLARS to spay EACH kitty?? I find that unbelievable. My mom just paid $75 to get one of her cats spayed. Seriously. I’m thinking about driving to Kentucky with the girls to get them spayed there - it would be cheaper to spend the gas money driving there and back!

Victoria did NOT enjoy her shot. The vet wasn’t holding her down enough and she moved, and I’m pretty certain that the needle did more than just skin - and as I recall from my own personal experience when the Dr. had to drain fluid from my stomach after my tummy tuck years ago and accidentally knicked my abdominal muscles. Victoria had the same reaction I did, which is to say there was a lot of hissing, spitting and tension. They also gave the ladies feline leukemia shots with a weird hypospray gadget. No needles involved on this one, but after a slightly delayed reaction Victoria jumped about three feet straight up in the air! Good thing the vet was holding her or I would have had a cat landing on my head!

Elizabeth has gone into heat. Estrus. So she’s walking around caterwauling and raising a ruckus.

Mr. B isn’t quite sure what to do.. he’s been fixed since he was a little tom cat.. but instincts kick in and half the time he’s.. you know… … …better be shooting blanks.

The other half of the time he’s hiding under my desk or in a kitty carrier trying to keep out of Lizzy’s sights, bless his little orange heart.

I am a sad panda. Bennie went to her forever home on Monday, and I miss her. I think Victoria and Lizzie miss her too, but since they still have each other it is hard to tell. Victoria sure does a lot more sleeping without Bennie constantly attacking her. Something’s up with Lizzie’s milk machine too - all of her milk-makers on the right-paw side are swollen. So I get to call the vet tomorrow to find out if I need to haul her fuzzy but all over Tempe. She isn’t acting any weirder than normal, and is currently romping around the house with midnight crazies, so who knows.

On the plus side, Lizzie and Mr. B are getting along a lot better now - the other day Mr. B just walked right up to a snoozing Lizzy and started giving her a kitty-bath.

Kitties are so weird.

Some new disgustingly cute pictures are posted on my flickr account. The kittens are doing quite well now - they’ve learned manners and are eating solid foods and using their cat-boxes like civilized kitties should. I’ve decided to go against the feelings of my inner-crazy-cat-ladyness and find a home for both Victoria and Elizabeth. As much as I love Lizzy and Victoria I really don’t want multiple cats right now - maybe some day when I’ve settled and have a house or a steady location I can get more kitties, but for now, eventually, I think it just needs to be the old man Bigglesworth and I.

Of course I’m enjoying it all as much as I can right now I think Bennie is going to go live with Eric after ASU’s Spring Break is over. Its going to be hard on me to see her go, even if she’s just going about 200 feet east. sigh

As I sit here this morning, sipping on some coffee, the kittens are wrestling and Lizzy is making her funny coo and chitter noises. Its a lot of fun to watch the babies at this stage because they’re still more wobble than anything and its really funny to watch them act tough when they pounce on each other or Lizzy. Mr. B is less in denial now, which is good, since in a week or so these kittens are probably going to be all over the place and he won’t be able to avoid them any longer!

Click on the images for a larger view.

Not too much has happened since the last update. The kittens kinda stay in the same place - little lumps of fluff attached to Lizzy.

They’re both getting both growing, Dim more rapidly than Sum.. over the last few days their little kitty ears have started to open up, and Dim’s eyes are just barely starting to open now! I’m sure Sum’s eyes will open in the next day or two as well - then all hell is going to break loose as they start their reign of cuddly terror.

The kittens are about 7 days old now, and they’re growing so fast! Dim seems to grow by the hour which Sum seems to be the pokey little kitten as far as getting bigger goes. They’re both still amazing little beings. Dim is going to be a beautiful cat - I am really starting to see some calico come out. Sum will likely look a lot like Lizzy - tiger striped & tabby. I really hope they both have Lizzy’s emerald green eyes too.

I spent a lot of time just admiring the babies today - it is really quite a site to watch them go from nursing monsters to sleepy lumps of baby cat. I swear to you they dream already - Dim even makes noise while sleeping - and I can see their little feet move like they’re running. This could be total projection on my part, but if the patterns fit…

Its funny watching them. Last night I came to the conclusion that the easiest ways for these creatures to move is not by attempting to walk, but simply by wiggling and rolling themselves around on the floor.

Just a few moments ago, I grabbed Mr. Bigglesworth and took him to see the babies. Lizzy didn’t do anything (she sure kept her eyes on Mr. B though) and after ten or fifteen seconds I let go of Mr. B and after a moment he turned around and FLEW out of my room. I’m not sure if he is in denial over it all or what. It will be a fun household when their eyes open and they can move around better. I can’t wait!

The kittens were born sometime between 6 pm and 11.30 pm on January 13th. Unfortunately I wasn’t home at the time, which is something I would have preferred - I’m the over-protective type when it comes to my kitties and I would have liked to have witnessed it! Oh well.

Lizzy delivered three kittens total, but one of the little guys didn’t survive the process somehow. Since I wasn’t home I’ll never know what happened. But the surviving two are the most amazing little creatures! I already have homes for them, but I needed to call them something until they go off to their new lives so I named them Dim and Sum, since they look like the little chinese dumplings you’d see at a dim sum restaurant. And of course its a terrible pun.

Dim is the bigger of the two and is the one with the orange spot right above the nose. Sum is visibly smaller but is VERY feisty when Dim is pestering him. Its been a while since I was around newborn kittens and I had forgotten just how tiny they are! Lizzy is a fabulous mother though - she’s really protective and makes the funniest noises! Whenever I pick up a baby to give it a kiss her paw always shoots out and lands on my hand with that sort of “YOU BE CAREFUL WITH THAT NOW OK??” look on her face. Amazing.

Weeeee!!.

Size comparison of Momma kitties foot to Dim & Sum’s heads… plus Sum is all "Weeeeeeeeeee! That tickles!!!"