HELP! WE'RE OUTNUMBERED!

On Saturday, Mom took Jacen to an adoption event at a Petsmart store, and he had to stay there in a little cage all day so that people could look at him and see how cute he is.  He told me that there were lots of kittens and cats there, and he was scared, so he stayed all sort of huddled up, even though Mom told him to be nice and friendly, so that people would want to adopt him.  But nobody adopted Jacen, so in the end, Mom had to go back and get him and bring him home again.

Hazel and Hamlet

Then after Mom abandoned Jacen at that horrible place, she went to the shelter because it was the annual Pet Reunion.  Last year, Mom took me with her to this fine event, and I got to eat some people food such as cookies and cake.  But this year Mom did not take any dogs there.  She only took some cookies.

Anyway, while Mom was at the shelter, two women came in and brought a box with 3 kittens in it that they had found.  Mom went back into the clinic area to see the kittens, and the clinic director asked Mom if she could take them home and foster them.  Mom looked at the kittens and said, "They're kind of dirty."  But the clinic people said they could give the kittens a bath, and also that the kittens looked healthy.  So Mom agreed to take the kittens home, without even asking us dogs if it was okay to bring a bunch of extra cats into the house, which is something we might not have agreed to.

Hallie

These kittens are only about 4 weeks old, so they are pretty small, but they can meow really big.  Mom put them in Jacen's big crate, which she was only using to feed him in since he runs all over the house all the time anyway.  And now Jacen has to eat in the bathroom downstairs, so that nobody else will steal his yummy-smelling food.

When the kittens came to our house, they were kind of stinky because on the way home, they had diarrhea in their carrier and then they crawled around in it.  Mom said the reason they had diarrhea was probably because they got some de-wormer stuff at the shelter.  Also they got something to kill fleas because they had a bunch of them.

Hazel

So now we have these 3 baby kittens, plus our middle-aged kitten, and 2 adult cats, which adds up to 6 cats in all, and that is a LOT of cats!  Especially when there are only 4 of us dogs.  But Mom made this situation happen, and I can't really do anything about it.

Mom gave the kittens names, and they all start with "H."  The reason she did this was because we were originally supposed to get a little calico kitten on Saturday to foster, but sadly, she died a couple of days before Mom could even bring her home.  The name Mom had picked out for her was Hazel, so Mom decided to go ahead and use that name and find two other "H" names to go with it.  And the names she found were Hallie and Hamlet.

Hamlet

Hallie is a tuxedo kitty, and she is pretty much the alpha cat because she is very bold and has a lot to say and wants a whole bunch of attention.  Hazel looks way different from the other two kittens, so we think maybe she had a different daddy.  She might be part ragdoll or birman or siamese.  Mom doesn't know a whole lot about cat breeds, but she looked at pictures in a book, and that's what she figured out.

Hamlet is the boy kitten, and he is all black.  He is sort of like our poor little Kitten Carson, except that he is not blind, and he doesn't totter around in circles.  But we were a little worried about him at first because he didn't seem as perky as his sisters.  He acted more shy and didn't come out of the kitty bed to eat when Mom put the food there for the kittens.  We think this was because Hallie and Hazel beat up on him, especially Hallie.  I saw Hallie use her little white paw one time to push Hamlet away from the food dish.  But he is getting braver now, and he doesn't pay any attention to his sisters.  He just worms his way in there and eats!

On Tuesday Mom took the kittens back over to the shelter so they could get weighed.  Also Dr. Beth drew some blood out of their tiny veins to find out if the kittens have Feline Leukemia or Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, which it turns out they don't have, and that's a good thing.

Jacen

Jacen likes having the kittens here because he thinks they are really fun playtoys.  Yesterday Mom took the 3 kittens and Jacen in the room that used to be Jacen's playroom, and they all got to play together.  Mom watched them the whole time to make sure Jacen didn't play too hard with the little kittens, and after he jumped on Hallie and she screeched at him, he played very nicely.

Chloe

Anyway, that's enough about kittens.  Now I need to tell you that Tuesday was Chloe's birthday, so she's 7 years old.  Except that none of us remembered it was Chloe's birthday until Wednesday.  And Tuesday while Mom was giving us Supper of Dogs, Chloe jumped up on the counter and ate Nicky's Soloxine pill, which was in a yummy ball of dog food.  So right away, Mom got worried, and she called the vet's office, and they told her to bring Chloe in, so that's what Mom did.  And Dr. Griswald looked at Chloe and tried to get her to puke the pill back up again.  But Chloe wouldn't puke for Dr. Griswald, even though cats are usually very good at puking because they are all the time getting hairballs.

So then Nurse Debbie stuck some charcoal down Chloe's throat because the charcoal is supposed to soak up the medicine that Chloe wasn't supposed to swallow.  After that, Mom brought Chloe back home, and she was fine.  And I think that the reason Chloe ate Nicky's pill is because it was her birthday, and she wanted a special birthday treat and some extra attention, even though nobody remembered it was her birthday.

Well, that's all the news, and mainly I am just worried about cats taking over the whole house, which they could easily do as soon as those kittens get a little bigger.  But I'm not going to worry too much until then because I don't want anything to keep me from getting a good night's sleep!