Kitten Integration

New kittens mean new craziness.

Sparky had her second regular vet visit today although it was her third actual visit. Ten days ago she was rushed in to the vet's office due to an unexpected sighting of blood on her fanny. Ten days of liquid antibiotics later and that trauma is over. No today was the last of her kitten shots. When she gets bigger we'll do the rabies shot thing ... maybe before her surgery but maybe after. 

She's been here three weeks now and the others are mostly used to her. Honey of course continues to snarl and hiss although not as much as she did at first. Purrcy seems to be happy to have someone to play with but considering the size difference he plays WAY too rough. She squeaks and he seems to think she's a squeaky toy and doesn't let go. Rumba is learning what it feels like to be chased for a change. There have been some awful fights between Honey and Rumba as well as Honey and Purrcy. This has happened before and appears to be Honey taking out her frustrations on the others. I don't worry about Rumba but Purrcy doesn't fight back. He's huge and could really hurt Honey but he won't fight her. He won't fight anyone. I did find some blood on the floor with Purrcy's fur tuffs but couldn't find any injuries on him. Last thing I want is to have to deal with another kitty with an abscess. Poor Purrcy, it's almost like Chaos all over again when we used to say "poor Cha-Cha (pronounced Kay-Kay); it's awful to be Cha-Cha". Both are/were gentle giants with absolutely sweet dispositions. Biggest, most well-armed kitties in the house and neither would hurt a fly. Seriously, neither Chaos nor now Purrcy will even chase flies.

Sparky is a cutey-pie. Has a personality much bigger than she is at a mere 11 weeks old. At 3.7 pounds Miss Sparky Paws is a tiny little thing right now with dark marmalade patterned fur. Not quite a mini-me for Rumba but close. However she has rather large paws for a girl so we may be looking at yet another monster-sized fuzzball.

Unlike her two predecessors though, Sparky isn't into as much or doing as much damage. She has broken two flower pots but that's it (so far). She is quite clever though. She figured out that if she couldn't catch the feather stick's feathered end she would just pounce on Mama's hand and make it stop. No one else but Pouncequick ever figured that out and he was a good year old before he did. That's a little bit scary actually. Pounce was scary-smart and if she's half as clever as he was ... I may be in trouble.

Sparky spent a few days at Grammy's house while I was in Texas. This gave the big kitties a bit of a break but apparently terrified my mother's two cats. Three days later and Callie is still slinking around waiting to be pounced on by a small striped ninja and SHE is the brave one. I asked my mother how it went and by the end of five days she said she was exhausted. I suppose it could be worse. I could have had human children. 

The oddest thing though ... Sparky doesn't purr. Only briefly when she first wakes up or when she's nervous at the vet's office. She doesn't purr even when she hops up in your lap, which isn't often because of course kittens have WAY more important things to do. I've never met a kitten who didn't purr. But perhaps having been through everything she has at such a tender age she hasn't relaxed enough yet to realize that she's safe and she can purr. But we'll work on that.