Welcome, Cory!

Yesterday afternoon, I got a call from the Humane Society: "Can you take another orphaned kitten?"

It turned out I'd already seen him once before. On Monday, when I had a class there, one of the staff (who are great people, by the way!) told me they had a black male orphan, ten days old. They were trying to get a lovely gray female with a litter slightly older than him to accept him, but it was a bit rocky -- the kittens kept shoving him away. Would I be able to take him is it didn't work out? Well, I know Sean was hoping for a break, but what could I do? I told her I'd do what I could to convince Sean.

Yesterday, foster-mom rejected him completely, which led to the call. I haven't asked about his previous history yet, I was more concerned about getting him settled.

The staff there called him Licorice (somehow, that spelling looks wrong... y'know, the ghastly-tasting black stuff); I really dislike using names for cats that have hissing sounds in them, so we shortened/changed it to Cory -- also implying coeur, or "heart," (thanks, LCB!) and corvids, or crows and ravens.

As you might guess, he's black, with a small white dot on his chest. As of last night, he weighed 6.5 ounces. He arrived with his own kitty-carrier, a new bottle, more kitten milk replacer, and an upper respiratory infection plus meds for that. Poor baby has the sneezes, and weepy eyes. He's not being introduced to any of the other cats until he's feeling better, and my hands are getting dry from all the constant hand sanitizer in an attempt to reduce the odds of the others catching his URI. As I type this, he's sleeping in an improvised sling against my body, which seems to calm him enormously.

Compared to Eva at this age, his fur feels less dense and plushy, and I can feel individual ribs, although he certainly doesn't look like he's about to starve to death. He's having a little difficulty getting the hang of syringe feeding, but he'll let me squirt KMR into his mouth a little at a time to swallow, and a couple of times he's actually latched on briefly, so I'm optimistic. No problems getting him to pee, and I'd be surprised if he actually pooped without interruption, after what he's been through (he hasn't) -- we'll watch him. Or rather I will, since he's going to be in contact with me as much as possible right now.

It's hard to get good pictures of a black cat! Here's a video to introduce him, though: