LostWoods Blog

I suppose I need to catch you all up with the news and happenings here at LostWoods. Because I have quite a few groups of pictures to post, I’ve decided to do three different posts just to keep things straight. I’m starting with the latest news first, because I suspect it’s what you will find the most exciting.

Kali had her babies!

They were born on August 21st, early in the morning. There are five fat babies in the litter and will be known as the Forest Kittens. All their names are trees or mean a kind of tree.

Linden – red (or red-silver) mackerel tabby with white boy
Oliver – cream mackerel tabby with white boy
Aspen – blue-cream mackerel torbie and white girl
Willow – brown (or silver) mackerel torbie and white girl
Rowan – blue mackerel tabby and white boy

They ranged between 3.6 and 4.2 oz at birth. Yes, Kali looked like her usual Kali Cantaloupe self and I thought maybe there would be more than five babies. But I’m very happy with five and she and they are all doing great.

The first couple days Kali kept moving them from spot to spot. Their bed in the corner, under my desk, into the closet…. The closet seemed to make her the happiest, so I moved the bed into the closet. So she moved them out of the bed to the other side of the closet where the bunkbed ladder is. Doesn’t she know it’s unlucky to walk under a ladder? Let alone put her kittens under it! But for the past day and a half she has allowed them to remain in their bed in the closet, so the kitten cam is turned on and you can watch them eat and sleep. Exciting, I know! www.lostwoodswegies.com/kittencam.htm. There are pictures of these cuties on the website, too.

In other kitten news – or more accurately FUTURE kitten news – I have Ariane (Ohanna Ariane from the Winter Gifts litter) back. She stayed with Brenda in Colorado and was bred to McCoy. When Brenda gets Reagan from me (yes, she decided for sure on Reagan) she will bring Ariane and the babies will be born and raised here. Since Kefira didn’t get pregnant, I’m thrilled to have Ariane back and bred with McCoy to keep that line and those incredible eyes.

And before you ask, Danica didn’t get pregnant either. I think I will be spaying and placing both Dani and Kefira this fall/winter. Both are super sweet and loving girls, but they need good homes where they aren’t just one of many. Both of them are rather shy and a bit intimidated around the LostWoods characters – especially Kali, Basia, and Shira, who have quite dominant personalities. It’s going to kill me to give up Kefira because I love her looks and her personality so much. She loves to sleep under the covers next to me, snuggling all night long. When she’s awake, she’ll sit on top of the cabinet or bookcase or other tall piece of furniture and reach out to me as I walk by, so I’ll stop to pet her. And if I don’t pet her long enough, she will wrap her paws around my hand or arm so I can’t leave until she’s ready. I love that. But, for her sake, she needs someone to give her more one on one attention than she gets here.

So now you’re up to date on the new and future kittens. More in another post.

The weekend is almost here, so I’ll be taking new pictures of all the kittens. Still, I told you that I had bonus shots of the Royals and the Beloveds to post, so I’ll do that today.

The Beloveds have been in the stage where they are way too busy to come upstairs and sleep on the bed with us. Much better to fall asleep downstairs where they can be immediately available if anything fun starts happening or if food appears. But last night all four of them were back in bed with us — which meant that middle of the night and early morning games included pouncing on toes that moved under the covers. But they were all happily purring and begging for pets in between chomping my feet. It’s so hard for me to believe that they are already 13 weeks old and will be heading off to new homes very soon. I’m going to Colorado for the TICA SW Regional Show in Denver next weekend and taking Kendi along. His new owners live in Colorado and will pick him up from me Friday night. I think Kaela is going along as well and will get to hang out at the show with Dawnie. Some people who are interested in her may get the opportunity to come meet her in person.

I’m also going to take Basia and all the Royals with me. They aren’t going to the show — even to hang out. They are much too young for that. Instead, they’ll be staying at Auntie Brenda’s house so she, Jeff, and Grant can get to know them. (They are McCoy’s kids, after all.) On Monday morning I’ll be driving out to visit my parents for a couple days and the kittens are going to stay with Brenda until I head home on Wednesday.

The Royals have run of the house — what you’d expect from 8 week old kittens. Tati is my trouble maker. Reagan is sweet and playful, with only a hint of torbietude. Alaric is a cuddler. Riordan is usually Tati’s partner in crime. And Brendan is sweet and loving. They like the Orphans. Al and Riordan seem especially taken with the big brother role and can often be seen sleeping with them.

I had mentioned that I thought Kefira was pregnant. I was wrong. She still is not pregnant and neither is Danica. Sad, because McCoy will be going home next weekend. I don’t know why neither girl got pregnant. Certainly they had plenty of opportunity. On the other hand… much to my dismay (and carelessness, I admit) Kali and Fin managed to have an unauthorized tryst and Kali is pregnant again. Fin and Peanut have been in the laundry room for several weeks instead of McCoy and Kali loves to dash in there to see her favorite “men” and I make her leave when I catch her in there. I didn’t ever see that she was in heat, so it must have been a short, quiet cycle. But at some point she must have been and spent a little too much time visiting. She’s in great physical shape after raising the Beloveds but… this is absolutely not what I had planned for her! There needs to be more time between litters for girl cats. At any rate, I don’t know her due date — another thing that is distressing me. We’ll muddle through, but I’m not very happy about it.

Why is it the girls I want to get pregnant don’t and the one who shouldn’t does??? Cats! They definitely have plans of their own.

While you’re waiting for new pictures of the kittens — which I plan to take tonight — here are some photos of the new cat run we made over the weekend.

The back door to our house opens from the cat room out to a cemented patio area. Just off the patio is a five foot wide dirt area covered with bark, surrounded by a six foot high fence. This area is where Colter’s dog house and food and water dishes were. I’ve long thought that it would make a great place for the cats and now that Colter is living in the Seattle area with Jeremy, I finally mentioned it to Ken.

We had all the materials we needed to make the area “cat proof” so last weekend, Ken suggested we get it done. It didn’t really take that long and the cats are absolutely delighted with their new playground. We don’t allow them to go outside when we’re not home, but as soon as we get home from work in the afternoon, we open the door and off they go. We’ve taken the lower part of the screen out of the screen door, so they can just hop through the screen door to go play.

Dawnflower is probably the happiest with it. She goes out the second the door is open and she doesn’t come back in until I go make her come in before I go to bed. Everyone else comes and goes, but she takes advantage of every minute of outdoor time she can get.

Here are some pictures of Shira and the kittens outside in the run.

I took pictures of the Beloveds last night, but I didn’t get them edited and uploaded to the website. Bad lisa! But I put them on a usb drive and did them during some down time at work. Because I’ve been neglecting the blog so much lately, it seemed like a nice thing to do — posting the pictures here before I even get them on the website. Aren’t you glad you read the blog?

They are so much fun to watch these days. Last night Kendi was an absolute wild man! He must have jumped off the dresser four or five times going for the teaser. I didn’t think I was ever going to get any decent pictures of him because he was all over the place. Later on, he was playing on the floor, attacking everything he saw. The other three kittens were in another room, so he was there by himself. Kendi would puff up his fur, arch his back and go hopping sideways after the rabbits’ feet and toys on the floor. Bug came in the room and he went hopping after her, trying to scare her. She ignored him… Shira was watching from the dresser and you could almost hear her thinking “I’m not going down there with that little brat!”

Kali, in the meantime, has been very busy “killing” rabbits’ feet for the ktitens. Once again I keep waking up with rabbits’ feet inteh bed because she brings them to the kittens at night. She no longer feels the need to kill spoons, and that is a good thing.

As for the Royals, I did try. But my patience supply was low and I gave up wrangling them. I will do it after work today, never fear. They are too cute not to photograph. They are starting to play with each other now, which is always so cute to watch! And now that Buzzy has quit moving them under the bed, it’s looking promising for the return of the kitten cam — because you will actually have something to watch rather than an empty kennel!

I was going to do two different posts with the bonus shots of the Beloveds and the Royals, but given that I’ve been so bad about posting at all, I’d better just put all of them in one post.

The kittens are all growing up so fast! The Beloveds have conquered the baby gate and are up and down the stairs many times a day. They usually sleep with us at night. As is usual, a little girl kitten has decided Ken is just about the best thing ever in her life and most nights I find Kaela snuggled up to him, happy as can be. Ken, of course, denies that she likes him. But I can’t argue with the evidence right in front of my eyes. Kaela is still the quietest of the litter, but she is always around us — watching to make sure everything is okay before she jumps in.

Shiara continues to be an adventurer and the first to come running when she hears my voice. She going to give me more gray hairs because she is the worst about crawling under the stair railing so she can walk along the ledge above the front entry hall. She and Keefe are almost always together.

Keefe is just plain naughty! He loves to wrestle with his siblings and hasn’t quite figured out that he’s supposed to stop when they cry. He’ll learn one of these days, but in the meantime he seems to always want to wrestle and play about the time the other three — and I, too — are falling asleep at night. All that noise is hard to sleep through. He also likes to climb my legs.

Kendi is still my needy little boy. He LOVES attention from people and will cry until he gets it. He’s not picky about who provides the loves, he’ll take whatever he gets. Our friend Charlie was over the other day to get his kitten fix and Kendi was whining. Charlie picked him up (the first time Kendi had ever seen Charlie) and Kendi immediately stopped crying and was content.

I’d hoped to take their seven week photos outside last week, but it was raining on Thursday night. Yes, that’s a day late, but it’s so much easier to do everyone’s pictures (both litters) on the same night, then update the website with everything at one sitting.

The Royals eyes are all wide open and they are starting to explore a little bit. I moved them into Ken’s and my bedroom yesterday evening. I still need to move my computer and get the kitten cam running again. That’s on tonight’s agenda. The last few days when I was in the room with them and using the computer, I’d leave the door open so Buzzy could come and go. That also meant that the other cats and kittens could come in. Kendi acted fascinated with the Royals and I got a cute picture of him with them. I haven’t downloaded it from my camera yet. Hopefully I’ll remember to post it here soon.

Basia was mostly okay with me moving the kittens to our bedroom. She’s very happy that she can jump up on the bed at night and get some loves from me. Last night instead of her usual early morning visit to me, she came and laid on top me four different times — catching up on all the visits she missed, perhaps? She did put Riordan under our bed twice. And she took Alaric back to the other room and put him under the desk once. But after that she settled down. We’ll see if that is still true when I get home this evening.

Here are the bonus shots of the kittens from last week.

A few goodbye photos of Carwyn for you all. He was so incredibly sweet at the airport this morning. I’d let him out of the carrier (it was going to be a long enough day for him without having to stay in while I did paperwork) and was letting him walk around on the counter right in front of me. To keep him from going too far, I was petting and scratching his back. He purred and purred and purred. He leaned into me and flopped over on the counter and purred some more. I picked him up for some last snuggles and he draped himself over my arm and purred some more. As usual, everyone who saw him there thought he was the cutest kitten ever. And me, all I could think of was this was the last time I’d see him (probably) and how much I love this sweetheart of a kitten. Sad lisa-mom. But he has an excited Katie-mom who should be picking him up in New York in about half an hour. He’ll have a good life.

When I examined the kittens yesterday, they were still fairly wet. I should have known better than to absolutely decide on things based on colors of wet kittens… Sigh… So, on closer examination of a dry kitten #5 led me to conclude that he’s a boy, not a girl. The color I mistaked for red was really just warm brown in his tabby markings. These markings are very splotchy, which I think contributed to my thoughts of red. And like an idiot, I didn’t bother to check his sex because the red and brown together would almost certainly be a girl. (Yes, it can happen that boys are tri-colored, but it’s rare.) He’s been renamed Brendan ’cause Alexandra is a silly name for a boy. LOL!

All of the babies gained weight in the first 24 hours so it appears that Basia is not having any problems with milk production this time around. That seems to confirm my thoughts that the c-section was the reason her milk didn’t come in right away with the Joyful Litter. Since this is a common problem, if any of the girls have to have a c-section in the future, I’ll be sure to ask what we can do to help stimulate milk production. But with these babies it doesn’t appear to be a problem fortunately.

The kitten cam is running so you can meet the babies: www.lostwoodswegies.com/kittencam. Also, the individual pictures of the kittens are on the website.

Now, on to other promised goodies. As hoped, the Beloveds were much easier to photograph this week and I got some cute pictures of them to share — besides their website photo. But you can also see in the photos that the boys were feeling quite mischievous and their antics meant no decent litter shots. I’ll share a photo of how they were behaving. Badly.

Yesterday morning as I was going back and forth getting stuff moved to the room where Basia and the kittens were, I noticed that all four Beloveds and the three Valentines were all running and playing on the bed, while Ken tried to sleep just a little bit longer. I suspect he wasn’t very sucessful at that. It was cute seeing them all up on the bed playing, though.

That about covers it for now. Carwyn is leaving tomorrow, weather permitting. Tanith’s mom is coming to get her and should be here tomorrow afternoon. I’m happy for their owners, sad for me. I’ll try to get some last photos of them both tonight.

I had planned to post the bonus shots of the Beloveds here today. I have them and maybe tomorrow I’ll post them. They are cute — even though the boys were being naughty. But today’s scheduled blog post has been pre-empted for this breaking news:

The Royals have arrived!!!

Basia spent a good part of the night in bed between Ken and me. She was perfectly content. I thought. About 2:00 I got up to go to the bathroom. When I came back to bed, she was still there, half under the blankets like she’d been tucked in for a good night’s sleep. About 10 minutes later she got up and left. I felt a cat settle down by my legs and I thought it was her changing sleeping spots. I went back to sleep.

About 5, I was awakened by kittens crying. I thought it was Kali’s babies playing — Kendi is especially vocal and I’ve gotten used to tuning him out. Then I realized 1) it’s more than one or two kittens. 2) it isn’t stopping. I got up and followed the noise to my closet. The other cats were circling around outside my closet and every time someone poked his or her head in there, I heard growls. I opened up the doors — causing more growls — and started pulling out all the shirts that were hanging on the lower rod. More growls. But as I removed shirts, I found Buzzy and three kittens.

The kittens and Buzzy were not cuddled up together — I think that’s why the babies were crying. So I got the birthing basket from the other room and moved the little family down the hall. I turned up the heat and petted Buzzy for a few minutes. Shortly after, with a half grunt, half growl, kitten #4 arrived. And #5 arrived shortly after that.

I was a little concerned at first because two of the kittens that were born in the closet were on the cold side, although active and mouthy. But once the furry family was moved into the other room and into the basket with Buzzy, they warmed right up. All five of them are nursing, moving around, sleeping, and acting healthy and normal. Basia is also happier and more settled in the other room. They are in Jeremy’s former bedroom for now because it’s mostly empty and Buzz has fewer places to move the kittens — fewer places that I might object to! I will have the kitten cam up later this evening. That is, providing my internet service is up. We were having problems with it last night and this morning.

So… this litter is the Royals with names meaning royalty (king, etc) or names of kings or queens. Partly it’s because of a name that Brenda likes and since she might be taking one of the girls I wanted to use it for her. Partly it’s because Buzzy and her maternal ancestresses are Queens of Everything. Just seems to fit her kittens.

I suppose you’d like a few more details about the kittens, huh? And maybe some pictures or something? Glad to oblige!

Tatiana – female – brown torbie and white
Riordan – male – brown tabby & white
Reagan – female – brown torbie & white
Alaric – male – brown tabby & white
Alexandra – female – brown torbie & white

They weighed between 3.8 oz / 106 gr (Alexandra) and 4.7 oz / 132 gr (Alaric). Since my list is at home, and I can’t remember who weighed what between the other three (3.9, 3.9, and 4.2 oz) that will just have to do for birth weight info.

As for pictures, here are some of Buzzy a couple days ago when she was still fat and pregnant, along with a picture of her with the babies this morning and a picture of the Royal kitten mosh pit just a minute after I’d changed their blankets and put them back in their bed. Basia was sitting beside the bed cleaning herself and allowed me about 30 second to take a picture before she jumped back in with them.

I do have individual pics of each of them that I’ll put on the website tonight, so look for those later.