Another Battalion in the Kitten Army

Before I forget!

I uploaded the final segment of season one of the Witches Advice Column that Maria Schneider and I did. Enjoy!

(I'll update the graphics when I start working on season two.)

Bursting at the Seams

There's one more reason the shelter calls me directly to take kittens — I only live a few miles away. There are foster homes all over the county, but for some that means a 45 minute drive.

Anyhow, that explains why I picked up kittens #9-13 on Saturday. They came in right before the shelter closed for a holiday weekend, and I was nearby. Luckily, these guys are easy. They're weaned, and their upper respiratory gunk is mild. The biggest issue is going to be socialization — three of the five run and hide when I appear — but my secret weapon (Elisabeth) is making extra trips to my house to help.

The other problem is that I need to come up with five more names. I really need to start making lists when it's not kitten season. Sleep deprivation makes it hard to be creative.

Also present in the house:

Little blind kitten Sunburst, who is almost finished with quarantine. She is now eating solid food with the aid of the emotional support spoon, so maybe she'll be completely weaned in the next week.

The seven elementals who are eating some food but also going through eight bottles of formula every day. They might also be weaned within a week.

Raindrop and Foghorn

Skylark, Cloudberry, Stardew, Moonshine, and Mistbow

And finally, Nimbus. He's sad because Lulu went back to the shelter for adoption last week. I may let him hang out with the elementals because he shouldn't be infectious and he loves being around other cats.

And now? 

With a house full of foster kittens, what am I doing at this very moment in time?

Yes, that's right, I'm trying to get MORE kittens. Or rather, one kitten and its mom.

After not seeing any kittens for five weeks, I'd come to the conclusion that none of the babies had survived. But then last night I saw a little black kitten when I was returning from a walk. And this morning mom and that black kitten walked by while I was sitting here. So it's back to hanging out in the alley watching the trap. At least the weather is nice enough.

"Sleep is for the Weak"

(The title is a direct quote from fellow foster mom Jennifer. Yes, it was sarcasm.)

Life stuff

What's better than two tiny kittens? Seven tiny kittens!

(Note: this does not actually scale.)

Here are the other five. They all still need names.

Yes, after a sleep-deprived weekend with the previously mentioned duo (code names: Stardew and Moonshine), I picked up another five who are just a couple days younger. Everyone is now about two weeks old, so feedings have moved from every two hours to every three hours, which is a huge improvement.

Would I still kill someone to get an uninterrupted night's sleep? On the advice of my lawyer, I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that it might incriminate me.

Writing stuff

I have a new book coming out on the 16th! Woohoo!

The Dragon's Librarian and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that I've written for my Patreon supporters over the last few years. What kind of stories, you ask?

• A Treasure of Stars (retired space pirates save the day!)
• Watching Blue Skies with the Parcheesi Gang (be careful of the Fae)
• Gestures (a Cupid murder mystery)
• The Dragon's Librarian (it's not wise to steal anything from a dragon)
• Butterflies (sometimes bad luck is just a clue there's a problem)
• Ten Clues Your Rice Cooker is Haunted by Your Great-Grandmother's Ghost
• Mayday (paranormal plants!)
• Guerrilla Gardening with the Ancient Oak Protection Society (fighting back against the HOA)
• Seeking Pemberley (Perhaps Pride & Prejudice might save your life)
• Game of Crones: an Advice Column for Spellcasters
• Preparing for Winter with Special Guest Baba Yaga
• Aunt Hazel’s Notes to the Bride on the Occasion of the First Hydran-Human Wedding
• Working the Night Shift at Lucky Eddie's 24-Hour Laundromat (Knitting and aliens!)
• and a whole bunch more!

It's in Kobo Plus and should also be available from libraries. Or, you can order it here: https://books.tmbaumgartner.com/DragonsLibrarian

More Fun Writing Stuff

Maria Schneider and I did an audio collaboration of the Witches Advice Column recently, and I've chopped things up and made them into YouTube shorts. I'll add more to the playlist as I have time, but here is the first one:

These columns are a lot of fun — give it a listen!

Yeah, It's My Life Now

What have I been up to lately? Not sleeping, that's for sure!

The disaster kittens went off to the SPCA, and then I picked up this baby:

His front legs were messed up — I'm not exactly sure what was going on, but I suspect trauma, maybe caused by the placenta getting tangled up. So I had him for a couple of days until he went off to a rescue group that has cats with wonky legs. (Yes, there's a rescue niche for everything.)

He was almost immediately replaced by these two:

They were about two days old when I got them, which means I've been feeding them every two hours (give or take) around the clock. After latching onto the bottle beautifully for the first day, the tabby girl has since decided she doesn't like the bottle anymore, so now she's getting tube-fed. Because not eating isn't an option when you're a few days old.

And, of course, I have already splattered formula everywhere when the tube came off the syringe while I was feeding her.

Anyhow... Have I released the fun audio that Maria Schneider and I did recently? No. Have I uploaded my short story collection to all the retailers yet? No. Have I even finished writing the second digital bonus for my Patreon supporters? Also no.

But someday soon I'm going to get a full night of sleep, and then — watch out world!

Disaster Kittens

Usually, fostering for the county shelter means that during kitten season (roughly March - November), the foster coordinator will send out an email to the group possibly multiple times during the day with a list of kittens that need foster homes. If you have space and energy, you respond to the email and that's how you end up with kittens.

In addition to those messages, I also get emails sent just to me when:

1. They have a kitten that is very sick and they want to give it a chance but there's a high likelihood it will not make it, or
2. They have a kitten with injuries/illness that people viscerally react to.

It's usually the former, but every once in a while it's the latter.

Saying my current fosters have eye issues is an understatement of epic proportions. The girls are about four weeks old and they have one good eye between the two of them. The other three eyes are kind of horrifying. Obviously they need surgery to remove them, but that will have to wait until they are big enough to withstand it.

They will be transferred to the SPCA (which is set up to handle such cases) on Thursday, but in the meantime I have given them temporary names. The little one is Titanic (it's aspirational!) and her big sister is Hindenburg.

(This is probably the only picture I'll ever have of them, and even this required some editing with the clone tool to hide Hindenburg's right eye which really shouldn't be visible from this angle but absolutely was.) 

It's Two Traps!

As mentioned before, I borrowed a drop trap to catch the pregnant feral in order to get her spayed and stop the kitten factory in the alley. (The cat my neighbors had trapped Thursday night — born late last year — was spayed on Wednesday, and she had an early pregnancy with five fetuses, so one disaster averted!)

So for a week, I sat out in the alley a few hours around dawn and dusk, waiting for her to show up. Her Wednesday appointment came and went without me seeing her at all. The shelter said I could bring her in Friday if I could catch her.

And I sat and waited. And sat and waited.

(I did get an inexpensive Adirondack-style chair which has a cup/phone/glasses holders and is pretty comfortable, so at least there's that. I've been getting a lot of writing done while sitting there.)

Thursday morning, I was on the phone with a friend, not even paying attention to the trap when I happened to glance over and there was something inside. (I wasn't wearing my glasses. Everything was fuzzy.)

Lo and behold...

Except... she wasn't pregnant. I thought I'd caught a different cat, but then I realized she was lactating. So right cat, wrong time to catch her. Since I had no idea where her kittens were, I had to let her go again.

Sigh.

Later that morning, I was kicking myself for not knocking on a few doors to see if I could find her kittens while I had her in the trap. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Anyhow, I'll wait a month and then work on trapping the entire family. The kittens will get socialized and adopted out and mom will get spayed.

Foster Updates

No changes in the house. Gnocchi is regrowing hair, Lulu is doing great, and Nimbus still can't decide whether to hiss or purr. 

It's a Trap!

 Foster Updates

Gnocchi is still here, but I haven't noticed any new bald spots in a week and she's regrowing hair on the old ones. We've started the long process of running weekly cultures until she's had two negative results in a row, at which point she will be declared cured.

Lulu is doing great! She is just here to finish the full 84 days of FIP medication. Look how high she can jump now:

I also have a second FIP cat, Nimbus, in my bedroom. He is both afraid of people and loves to be brushed and stroked, so there is often a 30-second transition from hissing to purring. We'll be working on socialization while waiting for his meds to work.

Those are the cats currently in the house.

But outside...

It's a Trap!

On Wednesday, I noticed a suspiciously rotund cat squeeze through the fence into my neighbor's yard, so I texted her the "fat or pregnant?" question and she responded "pregnant".

(All the cats that hang out in my yard are fixed. I don't feed any outside cats. The neighbor behind me feeds, but she's been working on getting everyone fixed for the last four years. I thought we had gotten everyone spayed last fall, but apparently there are still two — the one I saw and her daughter.)

I asked the foster coordinator if I could get the soon-to-arrive kittens into the foster program, and she offered me a spot on the spay schedule Friday (if I could catch her by then) or Wednesday (if I had better luck over the weekend).

So last night I was sitting in my car, avoiding the mosquitos, while I watched the baited trap in the alley. No luck, though I started documenting the other cats so I know who is around. But my neighbors trapped the younger female cat, who is almost certainly pregnant even if she's not as big yet.

I had to bring the trapped cat to the shelter at 8am this morning, so I decided to try one more time to catch the super-pregnant cat. The trap was baited, the sun was rising, and I was sitting in my car watching.

Super-pregnant mom walked over the the trap, sat down next to it, and proceeded to stare at me for 30 minutes. Then she stood up and waddled away.

I am borrowing a drop trap.

That's a Wrap

We have survived Thingadailies 2026!

This episode brought to you by Hot Zotz

On my way home from the writing/reading/knitting group at the local coffee shop, I stopped by Ye Old Time Pharmacy to see if they had hypertonic saline. They did not, but they did have some fascinating candy that I'd never had before.

Hot Zotz Fiery Cinnamon Fizz. They aren't all that hot (maybe they are for Italians?), but they do fizz. They're pretty tasty and interesting.

Foster kitten update

Gnocchi just made her bald spot bigger. Ugh!

Lulu seems to be weaker in the hind end this evening. She's playing and running around, but she looks like a low rider with her back legs bent. I stopped the B-vitamins two days ago because I can think of no reason she would still be deficient, but I swear I'm going to restart them tomorrow if she's not better. At this point, it may just be magic.

The Maggot Muffins (Lucy & Nova) are doing great. They got to be the star of the show tonight. I fear there is not much going on in Nova's head, but she's very sweet.

AITA for my response after my parents destroyed my handmade Christmas presents to my siblings?

What did I learn during Thingadailies?

Mostly I learned how to use iMovie, which is useful. I also learned a bit about the vector side of Affinity. And I learned my foster cats are trying to make me tear my hair out.

My goals for February March (ha, good catch, Maria!) are to increase my writing output to 700+ words per day and maybe join a gym. We shall see...