Eva’s Playpen and Exploration

Well, Eva’s now 8 oz! She has more than doubled her weight in the past twelve days, along with the eyes and ears opening and the increasing strength.

She’s still teething, and uninterested in anything we try to help her with. She only likes chewing on us (a potentially bad habit to get into) and on the nipple while she’s eating — and ONLY while there’s milk coming out. Her abdomen feels a little bloated, but she’s peeing, pooping, and burping with no problems, and shows no distress when I (very gently!) palpate, so I’m suspecting it’s a reaction to the teething, since I gather a list of gastric upsets can happen. We’ll be watching her very closely.

It’s hard to say how much of her desire for food right now is actual hunger, and how much is that the nipple feels good against her gums. She held on for quite a long time after the milk ran out, last night, purring madly the whole time.

I don’t know how well her eyes work yet, since her pupils don’t seem to react well, but she appears to recognize the other cats and be interested in them, and I suppose to her, Sean and I are huge moving mountains that give her food and comfort and make her eliminate. Whatever she’s able to perceive with her very young and not-entirely-developed senses, as far as we can tell she’s aware of the difference between her “bedroom” and her “playpen” and open spaces like the bed and the couch.

She spends her days now, at least when Sean or I is present to supervise, in her “playpen” in the living room. She seems to really enjoy it, whether anyone is interacting with her or not. She’s in a high-traffic area, with humans and cats passing by frequently, the older cats hopping up to nap on the couch, Sean typing on his computer only a few feet away, and even noises outside our apartment, in the hall or below our balcony. She has a dark warm quiet spot to curl up in when/if she wants to, yet she tends to arrange herself facing towards the outside, often very close to the edge of her “cave”.

As you’ll see in the videos, she’s getting stronger all the time, and she’s very curious. She has an alarming tendency to head right for the edges of couches and beds, which is why the playpen is necessary. It’s much harder to have her out and involved if we have to watch her every instant.

Angel has decided to be Eva’s protector, apparently. She slept yesterday against the outside of the playpen for a while. Today, Sean tells me she chased Trick off when he stepped into the playpen and tried to look into the “cave”. She’s lying very nearby again, as I write this. I don’t know if they’re going to make friends, but at least there’s no hostility now, and even if Eva isn’t getting intimate contact with them, anything is better than nothing!

I took a couple of pictures of her curled up in her “cave” by drawing the roof back briefly while she was sleeping; I also took a couple of videos. The first one has a special guest star who surprised me quite a lot!

A tour of her playpen:

a very short feeding video: