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!

Eric called me this afternoon in a complete tizzy. There is a scorpion loose in his house and he wanted to know if it was OK if Bennie came back here for a couple of days until maintenance could spray. Of course it was fine - I’d rather have crazy kitty back than have her get hurt trying to tame a scorpion.

So the household is now brimming with kittens again, much to Mr. Bigglesworth’s chagrin. The kittens are almost a full 11 weeks old - it is amazing how much they’ve changed in those short weeks - Victoria is just the sweetest most gentle kitten, and Bennie is the total opposite. Lizzy and Mr. B get along super-fantastically now too, which makes me completely happy of course Kitties are far better to the repairing of mental health than any doctor or pill. MmmmHmmmm

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

You know that commercial where there are anthropomorphized pipe-people and they talk about how you have ‘leaky pipes’ and that its a ‘going problem’? Well, the kitties all have going problems.

Mr. B has a urinary tract infection and had to make an unscheduled visit to the veterinarian today.. he’s OK now but needs to be on antibiotics for two weeks.

On the other side of the equation is the kittens. Their going problem is that they just kinda stop and go when the urge strikes them. Twice on my bed, and twice on my floor, that I’ve observed. Even after putting out lots of little tiny kitten-sized litter pans, they still have no manners. So this evening I invested in a kitty-gate and locked them into the kitchen after kitten-proofing the cabinets (hopefully). They’re not allowed out until they have proper manners.

Lizzy doesn’t seem to be too terribly upset over the location change either. She’s kinda lounging just on the other side of the kitten gate. But this is about the right time to start the weaning process anyway so she’s probably slightly relieved

You know what else is feeling relieved? My wallet.

Goodmorning Kittens.

OK - everyone, on the count of three…

1….
2….
3…..

"Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww"

It has finally happened. The kittens have learned how to climb onto my bed.

Peace shall reign no longer.

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.

So return of kittycam didn’t last very long - Lizzy moved them almost as soon as I set it up. I guess I was being the obnoxious human and interfering too much. Whatever.

They’re now in a kitty-tunnel kinda cat toy thing at the foot of my bed. The babies are growing so rapidly now! Bennie (formerly Sum) is still being out-paced by Victoria (formerly Dim). Bennie also has some kinda of visible deformation of his/her ear - I really don’t think its anything other than a cosmetic feature. Since Bennie seems to be doing fine otherwise, I’m not really worried too much about it. If it is a cosmetic problem, there’s really nothing to do other than wait till the cat is full grown. The only thing that looks odd is the pointy-ear-tissue. It looks like its torn or not closed up somehow. Other than the ear and being a bit smaller than Victoria, Bennie seems to be doing just fine.

They’re both more adventurous and are starting to be able to move about - its a lot of fun watching a kitten learn to walk since before now the fastest way to get from Nipple A to Nipple B was to roll. Ah, those were the days.

Soon they’ll be all grown up and off to college!