Adoption Event Photos and News!

A lot of great people showed up at the event and gave a lot of love to the kittens.  And the On Angel's Wings volunteers were especially wonderful, helpful, and attentive.  A few people even told me they had been watching the kittens on our live stream!  

As you probably know, Toffee was adopted yesterday, and today at the event, Cobbler and Poppy were also adopted!  I completely failed in my duties - I was supposed to get an adoption photo for Toffee and I just plain forgot.  But if you want to keep up with how he's fitting in at his new home, you can follow his adopter @ccc_ccc8 on twitter.  Suffice it to say, he's getting plenty of love.

But we do have adoption photos for Cobbler and Poppy!

There were several other On Angel's Wings kittens adopted, too, and a lot of interest in the other Kitten Academy kittens.  Fennel was especially a favorite.  

Before we get to the rest of the photos, some quick news!  Ivy is in the main room now, and we've temporarily placed the cameras around her box.  But we're waiting to see where she decides to settle in, tonight, before we make any serious effort to position the cameras.

Also, Custard came home with us.  We couldn't resist making him a professor!  Pictures to come later!

All the other kittens are at On Angel's Wings in Crystal Lake, just waiting for some loving family to adopt them.  Drop by the store and see them anytime!

Also, we had some bonus photos from the photoshoot on Saturday!  

So. Much. Fan. Art!

We were going over our e-mails and realized we have a GIANT backlog of WONDERFUL fan art of the kittens!  Strap yourselves in; this is going to be a long post.  We'll go in mostly chronological order here.  If you submitted art and it's not in this post, please send us an email to remind us!  We didn't leave you out on purpose, I promise!

First up, one you may have seen already from "Ari Cotton Candy," on our twitter.  Inspired by Shortcake's obvious dental aspirations.  This reminds me of Doctor Cat, and I love it!

Next we have a drawing of Toffee from Blu-Pond, who has a DeviantArt profile, too!  I love the fuzzy silliness in this drawing; it really is Toffee's essence.

Next up, two variations on a Toffee-flavored theme, from "whitefluffy444", a self-declared Toffee lover and fantastic artist from L.A.  This looks to me like a Toffee who could lead a boy band!  Those eyes are dreamy!

Now, a contribution from Emerald Universe, who says "I'm just learning to paint on a computer with software, and decided to start with the best cat in the world, Toffee."  You could not have picked a better subject to begin with, Emerald Universe!  And of course we agree about Toffee!

Next we have a set of submissions from long time regular, KaramelKraft, out of Israel.  KaramelKraft is always trying different styles, and we love them ALL.

Long time, prolific contributor "Bindi Luckycat" gets an entire gallery.  Bindi, I dunno how you do it, but I love all your work.  They're all wonderful, but I think Toffee and Shortcake breakdancing is my favorite, thematically.

Next, a submission from the mysterious "McDraggy," who says: "It's Ivy and her kits; I had a lot of fun drawing Harvey!"  No kidding!  Harvey's face is ADORABLE.  The whole thing is fantastic!!!  

Hazel Allison, who started the fad of calling Harvey a "scream bean" -- as McDraggy's illustration nicely captures -- has contributed more magical art that shows you a message if you click it, but not in the thumbnail.  These were all donated as graduation send-offs for nutmeg and the spice girls, but the first one is a bonus done in a more abstract style.  These are all wonderful, Hazel, with fantastic detail!  I hope their adopters appreciate it as much as we do.

Next up!  A donation from Jadefeathers -- Ivy's league.  All snuggled up!  I absolutely love the satisfied expressions, and the detail of Yale's little starburst, and Ivy's green eyes.  Heartwarming!

SqueakyCat sneaks in with an adorable sketch of Cornell, Harvard, and Yale, before their eyes are opened!  Brilliant details, and I love the "pompadour" hairstyles!  

Here's a sketch of Toffee from someone you may remember from the YouTube live chat.  Scandaloom, we love you!  And did you know Scandaloom has a Twitter?  Because we didn't!  

Here we have two wonderful submissions from a new contributor - Kawin from Switzerland!  I am absolutely blown away by the details in both of these drawings.  They are meticulously detailed in the way I might expect from a Swiss watchmaker.  Perhaps it's in their blood!  Every single detail from the print on the cat toys to the clock, hanging in the kitchen, outside the kitten room, is perfectly reproduced!  And I also love the expressions of the kittens, and the playfulness!  Kawin says this is their very first fan art ever.  I, for one, hope they do more in the future!

To all of you, wonderful, fantastic, amazing artists - thank you.  We apologize that it's been so long since we've posted about your art.  We hope each and every one of you will continue to contribute.  It's special to us, and it's amazing to the adopters.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Big Kitten Adoption Event!

This Sunday, the 28th, all the kittens from the big room at the Kitten Academy will be making an appearance at the PetSmart in Crystal Lake, along with a bunch of other kittens from On Angel's Wings other fosters.  Toffee will not be appearing, as he'll be picked up by his new family on Saturday.

If you'd like to even consider adopting one of the kittens at the event, please contact On Angel's Wings now and fill out an application, so you can be pre-approved and take your kitten home with you on Sunday!

Though Tamarind got left out of the flyer, below, she will also be there.

You can find additional photos of the adoptable cats all over our site, but especially on the Graduation Photos Mewspaper Post.

Graduation Photos!

Graduation day is always a bittersweet experience.  We're glad to see our little friends off to their forever homes, but sad to have them leave us.  All of these kittens are eligible for adoption this weekend; apply right now at On Angel's Wings in Crystal Lake, IL.

As usual, we have a few "leftover" photos from the shoot, below:

 

 

Updates All Over!

We wanted to take the time to get some nice graduation photos of each kitten for this post, but those photos will have to wait.  There's a lot of news, and it's not really fair for us to hold it back for some photos that may or may not materialize!  I'll sprinkle this post with some older, random photos.

Clove hiding out.

Most importantly, graduation!  All the older kittens -- that's Toffee, Cobbler, Shortcake, Custard, Nutmeg, Poppy, Clove, Tamarind, and Fennel -- will go to the vet tomorrow, Friday, 2016-08-19.  They will be neutered or spayed, vaccinated, and microchipped.  They will return, typically around 5-6pm Friday evening.  

Fennel's excited about getting spayed.

After that, the boys will spend Saturday here, and the girls, Saturday and Sunday.  Then they will go to the shelter at On Angel's Wings in Crystal Lake for adoption!  If you're interested in adopting any of them, it's not too soon to put in your application now.  That way, if you go to visit them at On Angel's Wings, your application can be pre-approved and you can take one home with you that day.

Synchronized Napping!

Synchronized Napping!

What happens next is still a little up-in-the-air.  It seems like we have two options:  1) Just keep Ivy and her three kittens, and watch them grow up, until they near adoption, then get more kittens!  or, 2) Keep Nutmeg and the Spice Girls on a little longer for more socialization and to keep the stream a little more active, for maybe another week or so.  We're not sure yet which option we'll take.

Ivy and her kids are doing pretty well.  She's been moved to a temporary location outside the annex, since we'll have a visitor this weekend staying in the annex.  With a dog.  We're pretty sure Ivy would not like to share that room!  On Monday, she'll either be moved back to the annex, or into the big kitten room, depending on how we handle the Spice Girls decision.

UPDATE: Many of you wrote in about Ivy's breathing.  I suspect it's just a little stress from the move, but she'll be going to a vet this evening anyhow, just to be safe.  She'll leave around 4:30pm.

Brothers and Sister.

Finally, most of you probably know, but the Northwest Herald is going to run an article on the Kitten Academy, which is supposed to be in print this Sunday.  We'll be sure to let everyone know if and when.  Hopefully it will also be online!

 

Today's Photoshoot!

We took a lot of video today, but it'll mostly require some serious editing before it can be published.  There was one clip, though, of Nutmeg, which was pretty much good-to-go, and it has already been published to anyone who pledged us $1/month or more on Patreon.  It will be available to the rest of the world in the next day or two.

In the meantime, we have some photos to share with all of you now.  We think some of these are really fantastic.  As always, click the photos to open the full-screen version.

Health Update and Leftover Photos!

Yesterday, we did a bit of a photoshoot and took some video in the kitten room, to put together a quick "Thank You" video for our supporters on Patreon.  We also got some photos in the course of doing that, which are at the end of this post.

But before we get to that, we'd like to update you all on the health of the kittens.   The charts below are all part of the kitten weights spreadsheet which you are welcome to look at for more details.  All weights are in ounces, because why not use an archaic measurement system for something important?

The Spice Girls + Nutmeg are all on a course of Amoxicillin now.  And also, Neomycin ointment for their eyes.  They all seem healthy, but you have to carry on antibiotics for a while to be sure you're not leaving any nasties behind.  And as you can see, Fennel had a rough time, but she's rapidly recovering!  We're going to continue to give her special food until we run out, probably.

As you can see, Toffee, Custard, Cobbler and Shortcake are all at the same weight that Biscuit, Pudding, and Crumpet were when they were fixed and adopted.  However, we're still holding them back until we can solve at least the diarrhea that Toffee is still having.  They also all have oddly swollen bellies that no amount of deworming, or vet work has managed to definitively solve -- but the vet's last theory was they just like to overeat, and if the diarrhea is solved, we're willing to go with that.  Generally, though, they are healthy, happy, and gaining weight.  Currently, we are waiting on the results of a fecal culture that should be done by the end of the week.  They're also all presently on Metronidazole and the same Neomycin.

Just for comparison, here's the chart of Hazel's litter from the start of the year.  This is what it looks like when you have a present, attentive momcat and super healthy babies:

All right, on to the photos!  

 

 

 

 

All the Mews That's Fit to Print

We've got a lot to cover in this post, so I'll keep it as concise as possible.  And also, pictures of the kittens to help break it up a bit!

Not even started and Cobbler is bored.

We have a whole bunch of business to cover first, before we get to talk about the kittens.

First off, we have a Twitter now.  We tweet things at you, and you tweet back, and it's pretty wonderful.  Please follow us on Twitter, because that's the first place we announce things now, and also post bonus spontaneous photos.  And also just interact.  Our twitter handle is @kitten_academy.

Fennel is annoyed by advertising.

Advertising:  We tried it.  I don't think it is really worthwhile.  Ads are annoying, and if our reports from Google are to be believed, then what we're seeing is about $3.50 for about 40,000 views -- that's one day's worth of activity.  The way I see it, if Google showed up at my front door and said "Hey, there's 40,000 people outside, and I'll pay you to go out there and annoy them for 30 seconds.  I'll pay you $3.50,"  I would definitely not take that deal.  So why should I take it here?

Perhaps we'll revisit that decision someday.  For now, it doesn't make sense.  We will be turning off the ads.  We already turned them off for the live stream.

Donations:  We set up a donation page here to see how it would go.  And it went surprisingly well!  Not everyone wants to or can use the methods on our donation page as it stands, so we're planning on adding a PayPal option soon, and also Patreon.  Frankly, I'm pretty excited about Patreon.  It's a place where you can sign up to pledge a certain amount of money every month -- and what's cooler is that we can offer some rewards to you if you do; things like early access to certain videos, or a private live stream up close with the kittens -- of course if we do that, we'd publish it for everyone... afterwards.  I think it's a great option, and it's coming very soon!

Custard looking for a handout.

Already, so many of you have been spectacularly generous.  I honestly do not know how to thank you for your help.  I talked a little about how much taking care of these kittens costs us in my previous post here.  Even with your amazing contributions, we're not breaking even -- but we never expected to, either.  We're in this and will support these kittens no matter what.  But your help makes it easier.  I'd like to take a minute to shout out to our donators so far by name.  I don't want to "dox" anyone, so I'll just go by first name and country:

  • Marius, from Germany
  • Christophe, from France
  • Tatiana, from Russia
  • Sara, from Germany
  • Sandra, from the United States
  • Adele, from the United Kingdom
  • Joanne, from the United States
  • Kayla, from the United States

I'm not sure whether I should be calling out individual contribution amounts.  Every bit helps!  You've all been generous beyond what we could expect.  You are heroes to us and you are heroes to kittens.  You are heroes to Toffee.  And you're wonderful people, who must sleep very well at night, knowing you have made the world a better place.

Chat on our Live Stream:  A lot of you really liked this, and I did too.  But it was getting more and more impossible to police, and keep relevant and family-friendly.  We're going to try bringing it back, but with a very extensive list of banned words.  We'll see whether we can make it work.  When we're ready to turn it on again for this experiment, we'll announce it via Twitter first.  

Toffee wants to know if we'll ever talk about the kittens.

Now, on to the kittens!

Toffee, Cobbler, Custard, and Shortcake are all more than big enough to graduate and be adopted.  However, they've had diarrhea since day one that so far, we've not been able to stop, despite numerous efforts.  We've tried various foods, including Hill's ID -- prescription food for cats with digestion issues.  We've tried antibiotics.  We've tried probiotics.  (Do antibiotics and probiotics cancel out?!)  We've had numerous dewormings - with three different dewormers.  We've had a bunch of vet visits, and a more than a few fecal exams.  We even had an X-ray.  So, their graduation has been delayed until we can see them having good poops.  Next up is a fecal culture, a more extensive sort of fecal test that takes lots of poop, and several days of lab work.  It's not cheap like a regular fecal exam.  We dropped off the lots of poop for that today, and we expect the results early next week.  

Despite the diarrhea, they all seem to be in great spirits, active, and gaining weight.  So overall, we're not too concerned about their health.  

What're you lookin' at?

The newer crew, Nutmeg, Clove, Poppy, Tamarind, and Fennel are mostly well and active.  We think they might all have a minor eye infection, we're treating for that.  Fennel, however, has shown a steep decline the last couple days, in weight and in activity.  We're not sure why, yet, but we're feeding her on a special mix of pumpkin, chicken baby food, and KMR powder until she can go to the vet -- which is scheduled for today at 15:30.  She loves the special food so much... she might not want to get well!

I'd like to share our kitten weight data with you.  You don't need to be interested in this, but for people who are, it gets updated nearly every day.  All the weights we keep right now are in ounces.  You can find the entire spreadsheet by clicking here.  Please note that each 'class' is on a separate tab, with graphs on the last tabs.  

Shortcake is confused by spreadsheets.

Finally, if you've read this far, you should know that we've had an awful lot of people tell us on the chat, on Twitter, and via emails that we should make Toffee a permanent member of the Kitten Academy faculty.  If you think so too, Tweet us with the hashtag #professortoffee

Bonus Photos!

Fabulous Fan Art!

Here at the Kitten Academy, we love it when fans of the kittens send us their artistic interpretations of the Academy cats!  

This week, we have some art from a new fan, Liekki from Finland.  Liekki has sent us an amazing work, with all the current Academy Kittens in outer space!  I love this so much - and it even comes in two versions; one is made to tile so you can have infinite cat wallpaper!  Astounding!  As a bonus, Liekki has made prints available in her online shop!  I already ordered the T-shirt.  Can't wait!

We also have new contributions from frequent contributor Bindi Luckycat, who certainly has a recognizable style.  A cheat-sheet of all the kittens, Nutmeg and Toffee together, and a special bonus drawing of her own cats.  Thanks, Bindi!  Adorable!

And finally, we have three new contributions from prolific contributor KaramelCraft in Israel.  Real watercolors and mixed media!  So very fabulous!  I especially love the little meowing kitten.  I can practically hear him!  ... or maybe that's Toffee I can hear.

If you've sent in fan art and we haven't published it, we probably lost track of it.  Send us an e-mail to remind us.  Or, if you have new art, send it to us in an email!  Each and every one of you are absolutely amazing!  The kittens are certainly blessed to have such talented fans.

As always, e-mails can be addressed to headmaster@kitten.academy