Well, the kittens are back. Minus one.



My sweet little girl, Zippy, didn't make it. :(

She was the sickest. I knew that. But I wanted her to pull through so badly. She was full of purrs all the time, and always ready for cuddling. I'm glad I gave her lots of pets before she went.

They didn't tell me until they called to tell me to pick up the kittens. They were like "by the way, I don't want you to be surprised that there are only three." And this was on my break at work so then I had to work for a couple of hours all sad. I wish they had told me one of the four million times in the past two weeks that I called them to see how the kittens were doing.

The others are big, much bigger than before, and super energetic. They have the sneezes, but they're romping around my room like they never left. Albus, the shy guy, is kinda scared of me again. But I think he will warm up. He did before.

Part of me wonders if there's something I could have done differently. If I had only given her more water, or taken her back to the Humane Society earlier, or not given her a bath since that was probably a shock to her poor system. Or maybe they didn't give her enough love, or enough attention, at the Humane Society. But of course I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes at the HS, and I have no idea if I could have done anything to save her. Probably not. She was so tiny. But it still hurts to lose her. She was special to me, even though I only knew her for a couple of days.

I named her Zipporah, which means "bird." I guess in the end she just flew away.

Well, after that sad news, comes some... surprising news! I was playing with Matilda Rose when I noticed something under her tail. I checked, and... that's right, "Matilda" is a boy! They neglected to tell me this at the Humane Society, ha. I just took their word for the genders because they put blue collars on the boys and red ones on the girls, and Matilda had a red one when the kittens first arrived. So I never checked for myself, and maybe I wouldn't have been able to tell anyway, but now, I can DEFINITELY tell.

Anyway now I need a new name for the gray tabby sweetheart. (Not that cats care about gendered names, but the humans who adopt them do.) I can't stop thinking of him as female right now so it will take me a while to find a boy name that feels right. Suggestions are welcome.



"Matilda" two weeks ago--note the RED collar!

There is also a possibly worrying thing--Albus has blood in his urine. Or maybe it's really watery bloody diarrhea? Hard to tell. Blood in the urine can be a huge warning sign for kittens so I'm wondering if I should call the Foster emergency line--I already left a message on the non-urgent line. If a cat or kitten develops a blockage in his urethra, toxins can become backed up in his system and he can go downhill VERY fast. Albus isn't showing any other symptoms and he's very energetic, but the internets say if the urethra becomes blocked, a cat can go into kidney failure and die within 24 hours.

I really do wonder how close attention they pay to the little kittens there because literally his first time in the litter box since getting here was something bloody. Maybe the symptom just showed up today, but if not, I would have expected them to notice it.

I don't want to lose another kitten :(