AN UPDATE ON OUR FOSTER KITTIES

Our three kittens are now 12 weeks old.  Every day they eat some more, and they grow some more.  They have now got so big that they all weigh more than two pounds, which means they can get spayed or neutered.  Mom made an appointment for this to happen on Friday.

Mingo

Mingo is still the biggest and most handsome of the three kittens.  He actually weighs three pounds  He is a seal point Siamese.  Mingo isn't quite as cuddly as the other two, but maybe he will mellow out as he gets older.

Mingo taking a bath

Moxie without the flash

The little girl kitten, Moxie, just weighs a little over two pounds, so that makes her the smallest of the three.  She likes to climb up Mom's leg or jump on Mom's shoulders.  Also she likes to sit in Mom's lap and fall asleep.


Moxie is a torti point Siamese.  It's very hard to get good pictures of her because right before the flash goes off, she closes her eyes.  Either that, or she looks kind of grumpy.  But she's not really a grumpy kitten.  She just looks that way in flash pictures.

Moxie thinking hard about how to catch the cat toy

Morgan

Morgan, the other boy kitten, has long hair.  He has an undercoat that is kind of grayish-tan, like the color of his brother and sister.  We think people will want to adopt him because he is going to be so pretty, even if he is a black cat.

Morgan has enough hair between his toes
so that he could be a snowshoe bunny!

A couple of weeks ago, the kittens got the sniffles, so they had to take some pink antibiotic stuff for 10 days.  They are all better now, which is good, because they wouldn't be able to get their surgery if they were still sick.

Latifa's ugly boo-boo

Meanwhile, we still have Latifa here.  One day she hurt herself somehow, probably in the basement.  Mom thinks maybe Latifa got against a hot water pipe while Mom was taking a shower, but we don't know for sure what happened.  Mom did not see the wound until late in the afternoon because Latifa spent a lot of the day snoozing, like all the cats do.  Also, since Mom is much taller than Latifa and was looking down at her, she couldn't even see the wound from that angle.  But finally Latifa got in Mom's lap, and then Mom did notice it.  So she took Latifa over to see Dr. Vodraska when she went to pick up Barry, who got his teeth cleaned that day.

Latifa almost all healed up

So after that, Latifa had to take antibiotics for about two weeks.  But she is all healed up now, except for her hair growing back, which it is starting to do.  Soon you won't be able to see that there was even a wound there.

The other thing that's going on with Latifa is that she got some x-rays taken on Friday.  The reason for this was because when Latifa jumps up on things, she sometimes doesn't make it and she falls off.  Or else she gets up there, but she lands with three feet and then brings her right hind leg up afterwards.  Mom told Aunt Tania about this, and they agreed that it would be nice to know what was going on, so they could tell anybody who wanted to adopt Latifa.

Dr. Vodraska thought Latifa probably had an old injury that didn't heal up right, but when she looked at the x-rays, she found out that Latifa has hip dysplasia.  Usually it's just dogs who get hip dysplasia, but sometimes cats have it, too.  Latifa only has it in her right hip, where the ball socket of the hip joint is really shallow.  Tomorrow the radiologist will come to the clinic and look at all the x-rays for the past week, so after that we will know more about Latifa's hip.

In the meantime, she is not letting it slow her down at all, because she is always jumping into every weird place in the house.  I think she is wasting way too much energy with all this exploring and jumping and snooping.  But nobody asked me, so I guess I will just shut up about it -- for now.