It's amazing we can even keep Kitten alive...

If this is your first time reading my Kitten blog or if you have a bad memory, you might want to read this and this before moving on to today's post.

Oh and I got Twitter. I added a handy button (top right) to make following me that much easier.
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After overcoming his initial misgivings, Kitten seemed to take quite a liking to the cat grass that Boyfriend and I had bought for him. He spent a lot of time lounging on the window by the grass, nibbling and gazing out at traffic pigeons people nothing. Unfortunately, Kitten's time with this fibre-y fare was cut short.

Shortly after the grass was full grown, I started to notice that it was turning yellow at the tips and becoming floppy. I googled these maladies and determined that the grass was being over-watered. I talked to Boyfriend about this since he was the one who had been watering the grass every day, to the point that there was always excess water in the bottom of the holder. Boyfriend essentially told me that if I didn't like his plant tending methods, then I could look after watering the grass myself.

I let the water-logged soil dry and started to water the grass as it appeared to need watering -- for about a day. Whereas Boyfriend over-water, I plain forgot to water. Soon after my semi-hostile takeover of the watering duty, the grass morphed from limp and yellow tipped, to a crackly, straw-coloured disaster. I would like to think that this happened during our weeklong trip to Bonnaroo (where we had my wonderful friend Andrea come and check on Kitten every few days), but in reality, I know that the grass had passed the point-of-no-return long before our Tennessee adventure.

I forgot to take a picture of the grass before throwing it out, but I found this picture which is pretty much exactly what a picture of the dead grass would have looked like.

Source

Poor Kitten had his new found love ripped violently away from him, all because Boyfriend and I are failures at keeping things alive. Sometimes I really do think it is a miracle that Kitten is alive, but then I remember that Kitten is an agressive, un-coordinated, matted-monster beast... and it seems pretty accurate.

Return of the Kitten Blog

Hello Kitten-Lovers and everyone else who happens upon this blog after Googling: “kitten sandwich,” “how to tell a kittens gender” or “enema training.” 

Before I begin: to those of you reaching this site after typing in the above queries, I will let you know right now if you have reached this site in vain and need to return to Google or if you might want to consider poking around my site a bit. 

Kitten Sandwich:

While I don’t offer any advice on the art of making a Kitten Sandwich* (and in fact might need some advice myself), you will find a few pictures that might be of assistance. I myself have found that kittens tend to make the best sandwiches; cats are a little less cooperative.

* Please, don’t actually eat cats, just take a picture and let the poor thing go.

How to Tell a Kittens Gender:

While I haven’t written a blog on this, I think I can help* you: 


(1) Take your kitten in your lap and turn it so that its belly is facing you
(2) Now, pull the kitten’s back legs in opposite directions
(3) Do you see anything other than fur and the kitten’s bum?
(a) Yes – your kitten is a boy
(b) No – your kitten is not a boy

* I assume no responsibility for misdiagnosed genders.

Enema Training:

Sorry, I can’t help* you. Maybe talk to your family physician or nurse practitioner. Training yourself on Google might not be the best idea.

* I assume no responsibility for botched enemas.


Back to today’s blog…

Good news! I have emerged from my two month long Kitten blog hibernation. Unlike many of my globetrotter, adventure-seeking classmates (whom I am massively jealous of), I have not been travelling or doing anything remotely interesting enough to warrant such a hiatus. Instead, I have been hanging out at home, catching-up on some chick flicks and planning adventures with boyfriend that never make it past: “We should really go camping/learn to kayak/visit your family/go rock climbing/etc…” 

I suppose I am not being entirely truthful. Boyfriend and I did go to Bonnaroo in June (a kitten sitter was needed - thank you Andrea!), I joined an Ultimate Frisbee team and Boyfriend and I went to an absolutely fabulous four-day-long cottage party with friends we never get to see. )

But, I know no one comes to this blog to hear about my life, so on to the Kitten stories…

Since I have not written in quite a while, I have amassed a not insubstantial amount of stories about Kitten. Today I am going to do a brief re-cap of Kitten’s summer and will go into details about each story in the upcoming weeks. 

Here is what’s been going on...

Kitten loved his cat grass… for a while:

The pigeon returned, and he brought friends:

Kitten got a fountain. Turns out he may have been dehydrated:

We are taking another shot at potty training, but this time, we got help:

Keep checking back - I promise not to be such a laze-oid about Kitten blogging!

Contacting Kitten and Cat Grass

Okay, so quickly: I have some potentially exciting news. I am sure some of you have questions about Kitten that you are just dying to ask, or maybe you have a great post idea that you would like me to know about. Well now you can ask those questions and send those post ideas to me... through email! Amazing, I know, I know. But wait. It's not just any email... it's Kitten email! 

If you feel so inclined, please feel free to email me or Boyfriend at catherine@kittenthecat.org or boyfriend@kittenthecat.org (obviously respectively). You can also find these email addresses on the "Contact Kitten" page.

While I did toy with the idea, I did not create an email account for Kitten. I feel ashamed admitting this, but Kitten is in fact 100% illiterate. He would have no use for an email account. But I promise, that if you send me or Boyfriend an email, we will eventually read it. We probably won't respond, but we might. Though you seriously can email me (or Boyfriend) with ANY question (preferably about Kitten) that you have and when I have enough questions, I will do a post on it. Also, feel free to email me with post ideas and if I don't think you are are complete creative failure, I might do the post.

Now for today's post:

You might remember from The Quest for Regularity that Boyfriend and I bought some cat grass for Kitten to help him with his problem. If I hadn't thought it would make the situation worse, I would have made Kitten try Shatner's "Two Week Challenge," but we decided that cat grass was the safer bet. 

When I planted the cat grass seeds (which by the way is just a combination of barley and oats and other wonderful things) they looked like this:

In less than a week, it looked like this:

Crazy eh? 

Aside from Kitten's "problem," Boyfriend and I had wanted to get some cat grass for Kitten for some time. We hoped that if Kitten had a plant he was allowed to eat, he wouldn't try to eat plants he is NOT allowed to eat. I am going to go off on a bit of a tangent here, but bear with me. 

As I mentioned in my post Kitten: Destroyer of Life, Kitten has a thing with destroying plants and between Kitten and Boyfriend and I, pretty much every plant in our apartment has met an untimely demise.

Except for one.

We have this one vine that is impossible to kill with neglect AND we keep it behind our television so Kitten cannot not pillage it, as per his MO.

As you can see from the picture on the right, we stacked up a whole bunch of old textbooks so it can still get sunlight, yet Kitten cannot get to it (unfortunately, our studies have, as of yet, been insufficient to fully elevate the poor vine).

We thought we were pretty smart, outsmarting our disabled cat. But somehow, Kitten won.

He discovered that he is in fact able to jump up on that little ledge beside the TV and reach the plant. In the past few days, he has greatly taken advantage of this newfound knowledge...

I know there is some adage to capture perfectly what I am about to say, but I can't remember it: Sadly for Kitten, it is the plants that he loves the most, that hurt him the most. While undoubtedly delicious, Mr. Vine Plant is slightly toxic. This means that the bits that Kitten is able to sneak before we catch him, don't stay "sneaked" for very long. They have a strange way of "unsneaking" themselves onto our bathmat. (Don't fret; we found a way to use out kitchen door to block Kitten from jumping on the ledge, preveningt him from constantly ingesting toxic flora.)

All of this, is why we had very high hopes for the the cat grass. We were finally giving Kitten a plant he is allowed to eat. This, was his first reaction:

I can't say I have ever seen Kitten less impressed about anything in his entire life. 

After a while, he did decide to see what all the fuss was about and began to investigate the annoying thing that Boyfriend and I kept placing directing in front of him. 

Below is a quick video clip of Kitten making his first investigation. Please be warned, it is going to sound like there is no audio and then half way through I yell at Kitten to stop grinding his teeth (one of his many horrible habits). I thought I should let you know, since when I watched the clip before posting it I jumped a bit when this happened. It is very unexpected and I don't want to scare my Kitten blog readers.

This was the extent of Kitten's interest in the cat grass upon the first introduction. A day later I moved it to a spot he might find more intriguing. At first he was equally unimpressed: 

But he soon gained interest. 

Below is Kitten's second foray into the wonderful world of cat grass. He is clearly trying a bit harder this time. Personally, I think the problem is that he is embarrassed since his face is flat and he can't get a good bite out of it.

     

(I would like to apologize to one of my Kitten blog readers - who shall remain unnamed - for the music in the background)

As of yet, I am still unsure whether Kitten actually likes the cat grass or not. He seems to investigate it at least once a day and I usually find semi-chewed pieces of it lying on the ground, but nothing conclusive.

The Quest for Regularity

WARNING: For anyone who may be squeamish and/or eating while reading this post, please do not proceed. The following is the heart-wrenching tale of how Kitten recently battled a severe bout of constipation. I will start from the beginning… 

As you may remember from A Paw Problem Kitten is always in and out of his litter box and tracking litter everywhere. I mentioned how he seemed obsessed with his litter and how sometimes he would just sit in there and do nothing for long periods of time. Well on Monday, the day before my last exam, Kitten went into his litter box first thing in the morning and just sat there with his head sticking out. Alone, that would have been weird for Kitten since he never leaves his head out of the litter box, but on top of that, he stayed in there for over 20 minutes. I went and shower and he was still in there. I thought this was weird, even for Kitten, but with an exam the next day, I just ignored it. 

Later in the morning, Kitten was in and out of the litter at least 5 times. It was starting to drive me insane because every time he came out, I would need to sweep; if I didn’t, he would track litter everywhere. At one point, I accidentally hit him with the broom when I was trying to get the litter off him. He got quite mad and ignored me most of the day. I thought this was the reason why he wasn't being a good study buddy while I studied. 

That evening Boyfriend got home and immediately asked me what was wrong with Kitten. I asked him why he thought there was something wrong and he said that Kitten ALWAYS comes to meet him at the door and because he didn’t, something HAD to be wrong. I told Boyfriend he was being crazy and I went back to studying. A while later though, Boyfriend said that there REALLY was something wrong with Kitten. I asked him what he meant and he said that Kitten had been sitting in one spot without moving for at least 10 minutes. I told Boyfriend that the same thing happened in his litter box this morning. 

At first, we thought that Kitten was having a seizure. We tried pushing him and he just slid across the floor, frozen like a statue. When we realized he wasn't have a seizure, we got out the cheese to try to lure him away from where he was sitting. The moment Kitten looked at that cheese with distain, we knew something was very wrong. Slowly Boyfriend and I put it all together and realized that Kitten was severely constipated. He hadn't pooped in a day or two, yet he was in and out of his litter ALL the time. He wasn't eating. He was licking his “behind” constantly. He wasn't walking and when he did walk, he walked like there was a pickle in him.

Boyfriend immediately searched online to see what we could do. Since cats are lactose intolerant, we gave him some milk to see if that would help. Boyfriend was also convinced that he could manually push it out. He tried pretty hard and said he "could feel it," but unfortunately wasn't able to squeeze it out. 

I was very worried since it was so bad that Kitten could barley walk, but Boyfriend assured me that he would keep an eye on Kitten when I went to bed (though he also told me that animals can die of constipation). Boyfriend then said that if Kitten didn't go by tomorrow, he was going to give him an enema. I am dead serious. Boyfriend was going to give Kitten an enema. Thankfully, Kitten did go over night. Though he still seemed a bit off the next day.

Boyfriend and I looked into things we could do to help Kitten stay regular. Boyfriend promised he would stop giving him cheese, and we decided we would switch his dry food and start giving him wet food again. 

Yesterday, I went to the pet store to pick up these supplies. I told the pet store girl that my cat was constipated and she was very sympathetic and told me that cats don't naturally drink a lot of water, so they should have wet food daily to get their fluids. She also told me that if it got bad again, to mix some pure pumpkin puree into his food. I held off on the pumpkin, but I will say that I was a bit frustrated to be buying a brand new bag of cat food since the one we had was only half done and we buy pretty expense food for Kitten. 

This is what Kitten had…

And this is the new one I got for him. He also got a few cans of fancy wet cat food.

On top of all of this, we also bought Kitten cat grass to get some fiber into him. The store only had the kind that you grow yourself. I just planted the seeds last night, so hopefully they will actually grow.

Honestly though, Kitten eats better than boyfriend and I. The products in Kitten’s food are all grown in Canada, the meat is free range and there are no preservatives. And Boyfriend and I eat things like this:

Luckily, Kitten seems to be getting back on track (no pumpkin or enema needed). He has been running around and breaking things like normal all day, which makes me very happy.  

Oh, and don’t forget to vote for Kitten’s Look-A-Like!