Song and Dance Graduation!

July 02, 2017 by Mr. Academy

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

Although the kittens in the current class will be graduating at different times, we've decided to include them all in yesterday's graduation photo shoot.

As you know, Banjo, Mandolin, and Cello will all be adopted and leaving the Academy today! Lute is still waiting for an officially approved adopter - but once one is approved, he's also ready to go!

Kazoo, Waltz, Foxtrot, and Cha-Cha are waiting another week or so before they will have their Graduation ceremony (i.e. spay/neuter and such).

If you're interested in any of the kittens, be sure to get your applications in to On Angels' Wings in Crystal Lake, IL. You can find the application here.

We expect to get regular updates from Banjo, Mandy, and Cello - so today's not a "goodbye" as much as it's a "see you later!"

As usual, here's all the rest of the photos from the shoot. There were a lot of good ones this time - they're a photogenic bunch!

Welcome New Momcat, Roux!

June 30, 2017 by Mr. Academy

Hello, Kitten Academicians!

As you doubtless know, today we welcomed a new pregnant momcat to the Academy. Her name is "Roux" and she will be staying in the Annex until after all the Song and Dance kittens have graduated. She came to us all the way from Ohio! She is super, super friendly and has surely set a record for fastest-to-lap-time.

Some of you might have been expecting a Calico cat that was also coming from Ohio. However, when they both arrived at On Angels' Wings, they found out the calico wasn't pregnant! So it's fortunate Roux had come along as well! The calico, named "Pumpkin" because of her stunning orange eyes, will be available for adoption at OAW after her spay.

Before we get to all the photos, some news on other topics:

* Arial and Eva have finally been adopted, together! They will be going to their new home tomorrow, Saturday, July 1st!

* Banjo is being picked up from the Academy by his adopter on Sunday, July 2nd! His new family includes other black cats for him to play with!

* Cello and Mandolin are also being picked up by their adopter on Sunday, July 2nd, at the Academy! They will be living together!

Here's our photos of new momcat, Roux:

And here's some bonus photos we caught today of the Song and Dance kittens!

Fiddle and Song Graduation!

June 21, 2017 by Mr. Academy

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

As you no doubt are aware, Fiddle and Song are being adopted together - today! Their adopter has made the long drive from New York state, and will be dropping by at some indeterminate time this evening to pick them up, and drive them back to their new home!

We'll try to give some warning on Twitter when the moment is near, but don't worry if you miss seeing it live - we'll be sure to archive it!

Even though they're going earlier than the rest of the class, we didn't want to leave them out of graduation photos, so we've done a very tiny photo shoot to capture the moment.

Just a quick note of unrelated news; DJ has been working on redesigning parts of the website, and we expect those changes to go live this weekend - so look forward to that!

Song and Dance!

June 14, 2017 by Mr. Academy in Cheatsheet

Hello, Kitten Academicians!

As you no doubt are aware, we've had four new arrivals since DJ and Mr. A returned from vacation! First, let's introduce the new characters:

We have plans to integrate the new kittens with Song's "Squints" - Kazoo already is getting along pretty well with them and spends most of his time in the main room with them. On Thursday the 15th, Song and Fiddle will be going for their spay/neuter. At that time, we'll bring the dance kittens into the main room with the rest of the Squints. When Song and Fiddle return, they'll be placed in the Annex while they recover. After that, we'll "play it by ear."

Although applications are already coming in to On Angels' Wings in Crystal Lake for these kittens, if you find yourself falling in love with one, don't hesitate to put in your own application. It often happens that an approved applicant falls through and a kitten goes to a second or third applicant instead. At the very least, by having an application on file, you can be first in line to adopt a future cat or kitten.

Before we leave you with the rest of the photos from the photoshoot, let us say that JimmyD and JennyD did a superlative job of running the Kitten Academy while we were on vacation! We enjoyed watching them while we were out of the country and JimmyD did a brilliant job with the nightly streams! We hope we can continue to provide the same level of quality that he did. And hopefully, he'll return from time to time as a guest host!

Angel's Fish Graduation!

May 18, 2017 by Mr. Academy in Graduation

Hello, Kitten Academicians!

First, an apology. We realize the close-up live stream the last two nights has had technical problems. Technically, the YouTube software we use to do it is still in Beta, so we guess some problems might be expected. Nonetheless, we suspect the real problem may be our phone, so tomorrow, we'll try rebooting it before we start rolling.

Until then, the important news in tonight's close-up stream was that Haddie has an adopter! On Angels' Wings contacted one of the backup applicants, and they are wonderful people who are super excited that Haddie will be theirs. They're also in the Patreon/Discord chat and have promised to keep us up to date with lots of news and photos of Haddie in her new life!

Haddie and the other Fish are all recovering from today's surgeries, but we expect them to be back to normal by tomorrow morning.

Our regular mailbag segment will be held on Saturday at 10am - just as usual. Then sometime early Saturday afternoon, Hal, Pom, and Trout's adopters will be turning up at Kitten Academy to pick up their kittens. Because of the late notice, Haddie's adopters won't be arriving to pick her up until the following Saturday, the 27th. We'll let you know more about whether you'll be able to tune in for that as we get the details worked out.

But - as you know, we won't be here that weekend; Jimmy and Jenni will be running Kitten Academy in our absence.

OK, with all the updates out of the way, here's our graduation photoshoot for Angel's Fish!

Halibut

Trout

Haddock

Pomfret

As usual, here's all the rest of the photos!

Updates and Song's Quintet Photos!

April 30, 2017 by Mr. Academy in Cheatsheet, Graduation, Adoption

Two Mewspaper posts in one day is unprecedented, but it's been a special day!

Yesterday, the adopter of Star and Mocha also adopted Latte, and when he was reintroduced to his mom and brother, they filmed it! What a wonderful outcome after all the potential adoptions for Latte that fell through!

We've brought this up on the stream a number of times, but it bears repeating - DJ's big exams for medical school are coming up fast now, with less than a month left to study. She's therefore had understandably little time to help out with Kitten Academy duties the way she normally does. In turn, Mr. A. has been struggling to keep up with the usual activity. Naturally, we see to the kittens' needs first, so if something has to fall by the wayside, it's likely to be videos and communication on social media and the Discord chat.

If you're one of our Patreon supporters, -- thank you! -- the month ends tonight, and we haven't had our monthly Patreon stream, for the first time since we started. We'll also be sending out the paw print cards a little late -- not the first time that's happened.

After the exams are completed, DJ and Mr. A. will be leaving for two weeks of vacation. During that time, Kitten Academy will be managed by JimmyD and JenniD, whom you may remember as the adopters of Winnie and Gary of the Fonts. The live stream will carry on as usual, under their care. We're super excited to have "guest hosts" and we couldn't ask for better substitutes -- you may not want Mr. A. and DJ to return! The plan is to help them have an easier time of it by only having Song and her kittens at that time - so our next momcat or kittens will not be arriving until after our return in mid-June.

After that, we hope things at the Academy will return to normal! Thanks for bearing with us during this tumultuous time!

Now on to the real point of this Mewspaper entry... photos!

Fish Cheatsheet Number Two!

April 30, 2017 by Mr. Academy in Cheatsheet

Hello Kitten Watchers!

We realized today that the cheatsheet with kitten names and photos that's on the live stream for the Fish is their baby photos! It was a little out of date, so this post is just to provide a new one.

On Angels' Wings informs us that all of the the Fish are already adopted! They'll go for their Graduation on the 18th of May, and be collected by their adopters the following weekend.

As always, there were a lot of other photos we gathered during the shoot, and they're all here for you to enjoy!

Introducing Song's Quintet!

April 27, 2017 by Mr. Academy in Cheatsheet

Hello, Kitten Academicians!

Before we dive into the details of the newest Kitten Academy class, a few things we'd like to get out of the way:

As of right now, Latte and Arial are still looking for adopters! Contact On Angels' Wings in Crystal Lake, IL to apply.
The contest to help with suggestions for Sarah Donner's (PG-13 Link!) upcoming music video for Kitten Academy is closed now, but we expect it will take some time for us to parse through all the wonderful suggestions, and for Sarah to decide what she'd like to do!
We're still getting some questions about Angel - we apologize for not properly explaining the situation. We briefly addressed it in last night's close-up stream, just a few minutes in. The short version is, she's gone home to be with her owner, and we think it's good!

So, as most of you doubtless know by now, on Tuesday the 25th, our latest Kitten Academy class arrived! Song was picked up by the Logan County Animal Control about a week prior. They send out notices to shelters all over Illinois, and once a week, transport animals that the shelters are willing to take. Song was pregnant when Logan County Animal Control picked her up, but delivered her kittens on Tuesday the 18th, while she was still there.

That's everything we know about her history!

Here's your cheat-sheet:

As usual, here's the remainder of the photos from the shoot:

Kitten Academy's One Year Anniversary!

April 20, 2017 by Mr. Academy in Thank You, Anniversary

Hello, Kitten Academicians!

Today is the one-year anniversary of the Kitten Academy Live Stream on YouTube! We started the live stream when our first momcat, Hazel, gave birth to seven beautiful baby kittens. At the time, we could never have anticipated all the wonderful support and encouragement we've received from all of you! We'd be fostering kittens no matter what - but it's all of you who make Kitten Academy special.

We didn't plan a party or anything, but once again, all of you have come to the rescue by sending an amazing number of letters! So our anniversary celebration will be a special mailbag segment, where we read your letters on the live stream. That will be live at 18:00 KATZ. I know that's kind of late for our European fans, but it's a regular working day for us during the day, so that's about the earliest we could find enough spare time in the day. If you can't join us live, we'll be sure to archive the event so you can view it later!

In addition, Sarah Donner (warning: link contains PG-13 language!) -- friend of the Academy, kitten foster, and woman of many artistic talents -- has generously offered to produce a music video for all of us! We thought it might be fun to have a little contest - we've got a whole bunch of Sarah Donner CDs and Kitten Academy swag to give away. So here's what we'll do! If you have an idea for the music video - any ideas at all for lyrics, themes, video to incorporate, big or small, tweet it at us using the hashtag #donneracademy and if it gets used, we'll send you something! Exactly what will depend on how many ideas Sarah ends up using. If we end up with just a few winners, we'll send them a bunch of stuff - if we have a bunch of winners, then we'll spread the stuff out a little. And if we have stuff left over, we'll send it to the ideas we liked the most that didn't end up getting used!

Here's a couple of rules I think we need to mention to help keep it fair. Firstly, if more than one person tweets the same idea, then the credit will go to the first! Secondly, if you don't include the hashtag #donneracademy, it doesn't count. Next, it would be great if we can private message you on Twitter if you win, so we can ask you for a shipping address. If you are a winner, we'll tweet you and you can private message us, but if you take too long to respond, we'll probably have to move on. So enable private messages!

We'll allow entries for the next week - from April 20th through April 27th. After that, Sarah will work her creative magic with no rush - so it'll be done when it's done! It could take a while to get it right.

So, get creative, and tweet at us! Thank you all so much for helping to make our first year a fantastic experience. We hope for many more great years, together with all of you!

Coffee Cats Graduation!

April 07, 2017 by Mr. Academy in Graduation, Adoption

Java was pretty excited to go to his adopter early.

This is our post to share the graduation photos of the Coffee Cats, but there's an abnormal amount of mews we'd like to relate ahead of that. Please feel free to scroll through if you're only here for the photos!

We all knew the Coffee Cats were latecomers who wouldn't be here long - but we certainly didn't expect to fall in love as quickly as we have! As you know, they came here from some other On Angels' Wings fosters, who couldn't keep them until they were fully ready to adopt. They sure did a great job of getting them off to a wonderful start, though - they're fantastic kittens! And there's no doubt in our minds that their mom, Star, is the finest momcat we've had to date.

Secret Agent Momcat Star is always prepared for the next mission!

Even better news; all the Coffee Cats have at least potential adopters! Star and Mocha will be adopted together, on Saturday, and at the moment, we're told that Caramel will be picked up this weekend as well. Latte, Bean, and Frappe will probably return to the Academy for the week, and meet their adopters next weekend.

The plan here at the Academy is to move Angel and her Fish to the main room on Saturday, then whichever Coffee Cats remain will have the Annex as their homebase - but be generally allowed access to the entire Academy grounds. They'll likely only be confined to the Annex at night.

Please note that due to timing issues, this weekend's mailbag segment has been moved to Sunday, at the usual time: 10:00 KATZ. As always, if you can't join us live for the segment, it will be on YouTube for later viewing.

We're told that Arial has an approved adopter, but that Velvet is still at On Angels' Wings, waiting for the right applicant. Momcats at OAW get to roam the thrift store and we're told Velvet is having a good time with her new friends. Nonetheless, if you have any intention of adopting any Kitten Academy momcat or kitten now or ever, put in your application today!

Velvet judges your apparel selection at the OAW store!

We would like to take an extra moment, and thank all of you for making Kitten Academy a huge success!

We're very near our one-year anniversary (depending on how you measure, it's roughly March 20th [Hazel's arrival], April 20th [Start of the Livestream], or May 20th [Creation of kitten.academy]).

Our primary goal has been to help get Academy graduates adopted, and we think we can say that goal is achieved -- and how! Some of the Fish had adopters within days of being born! You are wonderful - but we frankly cannot tell you how wonderful. There are no words - this is unprecedented. We think, not only for us -- but also worldwide. If anyone knows of a more successful adoption of fostered kittens rescued from local shelters, we'd love to know about it (and what they did right!)

Of course, that's not our only goal anymore. We aim to help get ALL kittens everywhere adopted, and also to help with care and feeding of cats and kittens that might not otherwise get the best of everything. With your help we've made amazing progress on those goals as well. We talked about this a little in our most recent Patreon live stream, but we'll be sure to cover it in more depth in a mewspaper article, soon!

As usual, here's all the other photos from our recent shoots. Unusually, not all of these are Coffee Cats!