At the end of August, when Eva was not quite 6 months old, she spent the night at the vet's for her spay surgery. We wanted to have it done before school started so that Steve could be home with her while she was recovering. She came through the surgery just fine - the vet says she is very very healthy. The people who work at the vet's office just loved her - they said she is the most loving kitty they ever had! But when Eva woke up from the surgery, she tried to take the stitches out, so she had to wear an Ecollar til she was healed. And they said, "Try to keep her quiet for 10-14 days". What were they thinking?! She can't "be quiet" for half an hour! But she got throught the recovery time just fine, and actually was much more affectionate than usual!

Eva teh conehead.

Eva lubs her boi!! Aaaawwww!!

I am SOOO far behind on updates!!!

Poor Belinda died of the URI that she and Benny and Beauty had. Poor baby girl.

Beauty has been back and forth -- took her in on a Monday 3 weeks ago so she could go to a petstore, and she promptly started sneezing. Brought her home again. However, due to increasing inter-adult aggression, she went back on Friday, and will not be coming back here again. I'm praying she finds a wonderful forever home.

The Sneezies are definitely no longer sneezy, and are in fact more adorable and showing their very distinctive personalities better every day! Cory loves having them here, running loose in the apartment all the time now, and the Ben-Ben is everyone's little brother.

We have done a few videos. Go to our YouTube channel to see them, until I can get them posted here! Too much to do, not enough hours in the day!

Steve has this cute marionette - it looks like a sealpoint Himalayan cat. he got it out the other day, and Eva was terrified of it! Unique and Tira wanted to play with it, but Eva didn't want to be near it. It has little wooden feet that make clipclop noises on the floor - she especially didn't like that! She eventually got close enought to sniff it, then decided she REALLY does not like it. She would run from the room, come back a couple minutes later, and if she saw the puppet, even if Steve wasn't doing anything with it, she would run away again! So much for being a big tough tiger!!

Eva is getting to be such a big girl. She will be 5 months old tomorrow, and seems to have lost most of the kittenish look already . She and Tira and Unique get along quite well. The three of them play together, and a lot of times Eva and Tira play while Unique spectates. Unique has her grumpy moments, when she will hiss at Eva or Tira, but she never tries to hurt them. I think she is just trying to remind everyone that SHE is the queen of this house. The first picture is of Unique and Eva.

When Eva was with Steph, she likely had not met a dog before, since Steph doesn't have one. Our dog was a stray that showed up here one winter. It took us a couple months to catch her - she obviously did not trust any one. We weren't planning to keep her, we just didn't want this shorthaired dog living in the woods during a NY winter, trying to survive. But she loves the horses, loves us, and is a great watchdog. But - she hates cats! Our barn cats don't take any abuse from her, but we really had to work with her with the indoor cats. Unique wasn't a problem - she and the dog, Klepto, just accept each other, but don't go out of their way to be together. Tira, on the other hand, used to run up to Klepto, stand on her hind legs, and put her front paws around Klepto's neck!! That was when we decided we really had to get Klepto behave better around the cats. We worked with her for a while, and she got to where she and Tira would play together. She would still growl at the cats when they approachd her crate, where she sleeps at night, and she still would go crazy when she sees a stray cat (she once tried to kill a very friendly, very pregnant stray that showed up here), but she was friendly toward the cats that she know belonged here.
Then we got Eva. We knew Eva was unfamiliar with dogs, and we weren't sure what Klepto would be like with Eva, so we kept them separate until just about a month ago, when Eva was bigger. The first time Eva saw Klepto, her hair stood on end til she was twice her usual size, and she ran and hid. She would always act a little afraid, but interested, in Klepto. Klepto, surprisingly, really wanted to be friends with Eva! She would see Eva and wag her tail and try to approach her. Eva no longer gets poofy or runs away when she sees Klepto, and a few times has even stood her ground to let Klepto appraoch and sniff her. When Klepto is in her crate, Eva will sit near the crate and watch her. The second picture is Tira and Klepto.

For those wondering about the dog's name - she is a worldclass thief!! Before we had decided to keep her, she was living in teh barn with the horses. Things kept coming up missing - the dishes we fed her in, horse halters, fly masks, brushes, clothes that Ken would throw on the floor of the garage,solar powered lights that were by the driveway, even a short extension cord. Also, things would appear in our yard - balls, frisbees, various small items that didn't belong to us. The burglary spree ended the day she brought us a live chicken!! The chicken lived in the barn for a couple weeks til we could catch her and return her to her owner...the dog ended up with a collar and new license, a yard fenced with Invisible Fence, and the name Klepto!!

So, 3 things:

1) It has been pointed out to me that a previous post sounded unpleasant towards the Kingston Humane Society. It wasn't intended that way. I was angry that carelessness came so close to costing the lives of kittens, and the post's tone came out rather harsh. I'm not very forgiving of negligence that causes harm to the innocent, but I'm not putting down KHS -- with limited resources, heart-breaking decisions are going on constantly and unavoidably. That post has been edited a bit to be less angry.

2) Sadly, I've had to send Beauty back to KHS. Her mild sneezes were escalating alarmingly, and the first time I heard Benny sneezing, well... at that point, the only way to protect the babies she loves so much was to get her away from them. She's a wonderfully loving lapcat, and young, and it's been decided that she'll go into the isolation ward and they'll try to cure her. With a little change of luck, poor unlucky Beauty might still have a happy ending.

Her babies, however, are staying here with us. They're on a small dose of meds and should recover completely in no time. They're active and playful and cuddly and inquisitive -- about like you'd expect from a pair of kittens 4 or 5 weeks old.

3) The Sneezies started sneezing again a day or so after I ran out of meds for them. They're back on the same thing again, and seem to be responding with surprising speed, given that there was some uncertainty whether it would be effective after an interruption. They're more and more energetic, and want in the worst way to come out and play with Cory, and he wants them to! But it's not happening. They are very beautiful and affectionate, and I'll be hoping they recover quickly and find wonderful homes.

I'm off tomorrow (Friday) since I've been asked to help out over the weekend, so I'll try to get pictures of the Sneezies and of Belinda and Benny.