Caramel and the Caramelites

This past March I got back into the kitten saving business after a few years off. I started out with Caramel.

Caramel was living in the feral colony at my condo complex. She was always around, she was lovely and she was very, very pregnant. She looked like she had swallowed a whole cantaloupe. Luckily, Caramel was also pretty friendly. In my visits to the feral colony she would twine between my feet and once even brought me a dead squirrel. At that point I was pretty sure she was people friendly enough to be re-homed after her kittens were born.

Step one was to trap Caramel. This took one trap, twenty minutes and a can of wet food. In short, it wasn't very hard. Next, I installed her in the Kittenasium, which is also known as my screen porch. I made her comfortable, tricked out an old dog crate to be a nice spot for giving birth, and then we waited. Impossibly, she just kept getting bigger. By the time she finally had her kittens she was comically big. 

After almost 2 weeks of Kitten Watch 2015, I came home to find my pretty lady with four tiny floof balls. 

They four babies started out as Snickers, Rolo, Left Twix and Right Twix. (left to right below)

The names showed that each had a little bit of Caramel in them. Now, 10 months later all four have forever homes. Here's a few baby pictures:

Rolo was a grey marble tabby. I fell in love with her and had a total foster fail. Foster fail means that she never left my house. Her name is now Scully and she is my boon companion. She sleeps next to me, sits next to me and when I paint she sits on the back of my chair and watches over my shoulder.

Next was Snickers. Snickers was a grey tiger tabby girl. Her name is now Isolde and she is now the companion of a young man named Tristan. 

And then we had a pair of ginger tabby boys. We had a pretty hard time telling them apart because they looked so similar. So, we called them Left Twix and Right Twix. 

This pair is now named Cheeto and Dorito. They live with Mira and her son Zyan. Apparently they have a pretty great life.

Mama kitty Caramel now lives with Sue and her other rescue kitty, Sable. From feral colony to beloved pets, things works out pretty well for Caramel and the Caramelites.

Patient Zero

He goes with the furniture!

For me, the 2015 Kitten Season was kicked off by Patient Zero. In a bid to not get attached, I figured I would just number the kittens as they arrived. The first catch of the season was seized from under some shrubbery near one of the pools in the condo complex with the help of my accomplices Jennie and Brian. The other litter mate slipped away and I was never able to spot it again, but Patient Zero stuck out like a sore thumb.

It isn't every day that you find what looks like a Tonkinese kitten hanging out in the shrubs. Tonkinese is a crossbreed of a Siamese cat with a Burmese cat. With the addition of the white paws which are not a Tonkinese trait, and the slight swirl of marble tabby that was faintly visible in the cream fur, I took a guess that this kitten was likely a Natural Point Tonkinese crossed with tabby. Mom was a white and black spotted cat, so I'm guessing she had a pretty sexy hookup with an exotic pal one night. They other kitten was a grey tabby, so I'm guessing mom got around a bit. Cat genetics are utterly fascinating.

A fine art companion.

This kitten was hissy as hell and would growl and take swipes at me. However, he was only about 5 weeks old, so it was mostly just cute. He settled down in a few days and found that life on the inside did not suck even a little bit. After the bathing and de-fleaing and then the forcible lovings and squishy food, Patient Zero got with the program pretty quickly. After one particular bath session, the little fellow totally passed out on my friend Lisa B's lap. I can her the hissy cat whisperer.

That is a happy kitten.

One thing that I knew for certain: a kitten this gorgeous was going to find a home very, very quickly. One sad truth of fostering strays and feral cats is that exotic looking kittens or ones with striking markings often get snapped up quickly, while tiger tabby cats and black cats languish in foster and sanctuary care.

This worked in favor for Patient Zero and he found an adoptive mom rather quickly. I am told that he is king of his domain and is regularly spoiled by his new mom. With his ice blue eyes, Patient Zero was renamed Sub Zero in his new home. Sub Zero was our first placement success of the 2015 season.

Here's a recent picture from his mom, Angel:

Being so handsome is exhausting!