Welcome to TnT and The Solemates!

February 19, 2019 by Mr. Academy in Introduction

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

We’ve got a ton of news to cover, so we’ll try to go quickly!

Firstly, we brought in two cats from central Illinois. They were living together before they came to Kitten Academy and it shows - we’ve never seen two adult cats who are so friendly with each other! One is a torbie named Tempest, who is confirmed pregnant by Dr. Quinn at Cary Grove Animal Hospital. Dr. Quinn guesses that she’s about 30 days along - so we’ve got another month to go before delivery. The other is a calico named Teacup. Dr. Quinn doesn’t think Teacup is pregnant. Teacup also needs some dental work, so we’re bringing her in on Tuesday the 26th (it was rescheduled) to double-check whether she is pregnant, and if not, we’ll have her dental work done and also her spay. Our plan is to allow both of them to live together through the delivery of Tempest’s kittens - if they continue to get along so well.

Next important note - Cooper has an adopter! We haven’t scheduled an exact time, but we expect him to be picked up in early March.

There’s some absolutely fantastic new designs on our Teespring store - check them out!

Finally, today we brought in another momcat and her week-old kittens. They were rescued by McHenry County Animal Control and On Angels’ Wings brought them to us so that we’d have some actual kittens at this Academy while we wait on Tempest’s litter. Here’s their photos and names:

And finally, here’s the rest of the photos from recent photoshoots!

Belated Welcome to Cooper!

February 06, 2019 by Mr. Academy

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

We intended to put up a welcome post for Cooper some time ago! Unfortunately, he wasn’t feeling well so we put it off until he got better. And we’re glad to say - he is!

As you probably know, Cooper joined the Working Class kittens late. We’re told he was found frequenting a Subway sandwich shop in Bridgeport.

He’s currently the only kitten at the Academy without an official adopter, though we’re told there’s a couple potentials that On Angels’ Wings is just checking out now. Apothecary and Troubadour went to their adopter a week ago, and we expect Draper and Squire, who are adopted together, as well as Haberdasher and Wainwright, also adopted together, to be picked up by their adopters towards the end of this month!

We just heard from On Angels’ Wings that they may have not one, but two new momcats for us next week - a tag team! More on that as it develops!

Finally, we wanted to mention that we have a new store - we’re moving from Zazzle to Teespring, thanks to the efforts of Jay, our new “Art Coordinator” and Syl, who’s been assisting with that and various other tasks around the Academy. Teespring has a nice way of working with YouTube and also gives us a much larger percentage of the sales than Zazzle did. Jay has a bunch of the Kitten Academy logo merch up on our Teespring store already — and we suggest you fill up your piggy bank because you’re totally going to want the designs that are coming to the store in the near future from some of our favorite artists! More on that later, too!

Meanwhile - here’s our photoshoot of Cooper and the Gang!

Welcome Working Class!

January 17, 2019 by Mr. Academy in Introduction

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

As you probably know from watching the live stream, our Twitter, Facebook, or the Discord chat for Patreons, we got a new class of kittens in on Wednesday the 9th! They were brought in to On Angels’ Wings from animal control in central Illinois. Based on their weights on the weight chart, they are approximately 3-4 months old and already eligible for graduation, so get your applications in soon! This class is super sweet and hyper active!

You probably also know that we’ve had a late addition, Cooper, from animal control near the south side of Chicago. They had told us Cooper was a girl but the vet has verified Cooper is a boy! We’ll add photos of Cooper here as soon as we’re able to set up a photoshoot. Meanwhile, Cooper is staying in the Master Bedroom while we work on slowly introducing him to the rest of the class!

We’ve got some other news to share with you but we’ll make a separate post about it sometime in the next few days!

As usual, we’ve got a whole bunch of extra photos from the photoshoot!

Well-Versed Graduation and News!

December 04, 2018 by Mr. Academy

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

We’ve got some news before we get into the graduation photos for Verse’s younger class. Let’s start with the schedule of known adoptions:

Dec 8th - Ace will be joining former graduate Faucet
Dec 8th - Astute
Dec 13th - Erudite and Poise together
Dec 16th - Flair will be joining former graduate Tahini
Early Jan - Wise and Prodigy together will be joining former graduate Tweed

The planned adopter for Verse and Bookworm, who were going together, fell through, so On Angels’ Wings is currently working on contacting the next folks in line. It’s not unusual for this to happen, and so far, always seems to work out for the best! We sure aren’t going to complain about having these sweeties around a little longer!

On Wednesday the 5th, On Angels’ Wings will be bringing a new kitten, Parable, to join Verse’s kids at the Academy. She’s about the same age and size — and a cutie! We expect her to fit right in.

So, while Mr. A and DJ are gone this Christmas, from Dec 17th to January 3rd, JimmyD and JenniD will be taking care of the Kitten Academy. They were both wonderful the last time they took over and if you weren’t around for that, you are in for a treat!

We expect to have at least Parable (the new kitten), Wise, and Prodigy here for that time we are gone. And possibly Verse and Book as well. Either way, it should be plenty of entertainment for your own Christmas break! And huge thanks for JimmyD and JenniD for choosing to spend their own Christmas this year helping kittens and providing a little bit of entertainment for all of us.

Finally, don’t forget about our KA/OAW coffee fundraiser, which you can read all about here.

We’ll share some photos of Parable later this week - meanwhile, here’s the graduation photoshoot for the rest of the class!

And here’s all the rest!

Get KA-ffeinated!

December 04, 2018 by Mr. Academy

Greetings, Kitten Academicians and Coffee Lovers!

There’s not going to be very many kittens in this post, so if you’re not interested in coffee, click here for the Verse graduation and news announcement!

If you’re just trying to find the page where we’re selling the coffee, that’s here.

The coffee experts at our local coffee roaster, Conscious Cup, have volunteered to help raise some funds for On Angels’ Wings by creating a couple of limited run coffee blends for us. Over the last three weeks, we’ve visited them several times to learn more about coffee, sample their beans, and try to create two perfect coffee blends.

It’s been an eye-opening experience for us - and not just because of all the caffeine. We’ve learned a lot about all the subtle flavors that can be present in a coffee, and some about where they come from and what they mean.

Enjoying coffee is like enjoying art, or chocolate - or anything else. It’s not really important what the experts think — as long as you enjoy it. Still, we find we don’t enjoy our old favorite coffee the way we used to — after bringing it in to compare against the Conscious Cup options. Our beans just taste burned. And DJ’s favorite commercial Pumpkin Spiced Latte doesn’t taste as sweet anymore now that she’s had the homemade “Salted Caramel Pumpkin Spiced Latte” from CC.

So we’re pretty excited to be able to offer you coffee, and a few other things, from Conscious Cup. We’ve created the “Just Bean Adopted” Kitten Academy blend for cat lovers, and a “Stay Pawsitive” On Angels’ Wings blend for the dog people. Of course, they’re both great for anyone who needs a strong cup in the morning, whatever your preference in animal companion. We’ve also got a decaf blend, hot cocoa, teas, and some chocolate. You can find all that here, and for a while, in the website menu under “Other.” (Some of the images on the sales page may be placeholders for the moment!)

This is our first time trying to do something like this and we’re still working out the process, so I hope you can understand that for the moment, we can only ship to the USA, using USPS Priority Mail. We’ll look at expanding that option - let us hear about it if you want that!

[ EDIT! Conscious Cup wants to make sure they ship absolutely fresh-roasted coffee. So we’ll take orders before Saturday, they’ll roast the coffee Sun, Mon, Tues, and ship it out on Wednesday. Then we’ll repeat it next week! So don’t expect your coffee next-day, at worst, it’ll take about 10 days to ship! ]

As with any fundraisers we participate in, a percentage of the proceeds will be going to On Angels’ Wings. They’re the shelter that manages finding the cats that come to Kitten Academy, as well as adoptions of the kittens who graduate. They also shelter many cats and dogs, and manage many other foster homes. Kitten Academy will not be taking any percentage of the proceeds - we are helping to support OAW, who’ve supported us for so long.

Here’s a few extra photos we took while we were there:

Happy Meowloween!

October 31, 2018 by Mr. Academy

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

Mister A. is going to be out of town for most of the next week - so it’ll be just DJ managing the Academy. That means no mailbag this weekend!

We’ve scheduled graduation for Fable’s kids - Ink on the 6th, and Quill and Parchment on the 13th. We’re not sure yet when their adopters will pick them up, but we’re sure it won’t be long!

Now on to the real purpose of this post: Halloween photos of the faculty and students!

Updated Well-Versed Photos!

October 11, 2018 by Mr. Academy

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

Just a couple quick points of news and then a whole lot of photos!

JimmyD of “Wednesdays with Winnie and Gary” and Mr. A will be calling the Bingo numbers at On Angels’ Wings Halloween Bingo Night, tomorrow, Oct 12th at the Park Place Banquets hall in Crystal Lake, IL!

We expect Fable to be picked up by her adopter this Sunday, the 14th!

Here’s some photos!

Because the little oranges are so difficult to distinguish, I’ll post each kitten’s “Glamour Shots” in their own tiny album:

Bookworm (Female)

Prodigy (Male)

Wise (Male)

Astute (Male)

Ace (Male)

Poise (Female)

Erudite (Female)

Flair (Female)

Verse (Mom)

Bonus Photos!!!

Introducing the Well-Versed Kittens!

September 24, 2018 by Mr. Academy

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

[UPDATE 09-26: We now believe Bookworm is female. It can be very difficult to tell at this young age!]
As you are surely aware, on Sunday, September 16th, Verse delivered a giant litter of kittens! She’s an amazing momcat and we’re all very much looking forward to seeing the whole bunch running around the main room, climbing Mr. A and filling laps! (By the way, if you like those GIFs, there’s literally thousands more accessible though our Discord chat for Patreons!)

Ace and Bookworm already each have one eye open - pretty good for being eight days old! You won’t see that in the photos below, though, since they were taken so very long ago (one whole day!)…

One quick unrelated note - I think all the previous cats and kittens are adooted, or at least have good applicants, except for Fable! She gets along so well with everyone! Humans, cats, dogs. She is the ultimate easygoing cat — the female Acro! Please consider applying for her!

As usual, here’s all the rest from the photoshoot…. and a couple bonus faculty photos!

Number Nine and the No-Sads Policy

September 24, 2018 by Mr. Academy

Here at the Kitten Academy, there's some guidelines we follow, but we really only have one truly official policy. That policy is our "no sads" policy. What it means is that we can't stomach hearing about cats and kittens in distress, even if we know the story ends well. And therefore, we never want to tell those sorts of stories. Even if our kittens come from a rough beginning, the story we want to focus on is the wonderful time they have at the Kitten Academy and thereafter. Our mission is to share happiness in this time when it seems people need it more than ever.

Due to the nature of what we do, though, sometimes, sad things may happen. In those cases, we've decided that we will just tell you the facts, in the least exploitative way possible. We're not here to play on your heartstrings with tragedy, just to inform you of the news, even when it's unfortunate.

Click the big button below for the whole story, if you feel up for an absolute measure of sad. We've disabled comments on this post, only because we don't want extra sad for people who don't want it. If you want to share something with us, our e-mail is headmaster@kitten.academy

Number Nine

Mom Verse's Kittens!

August 30, 2018 by Mr. Academy

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

You probably know all about Verse and her kittens already, but we haven't talked about it here on the blog yet. One of our fellow fosters who works with On Angels' Wings and other groups in the area captured a pregnant momcat -- and in a first for us -- also managed to find and rescue her previous litter of three kittens, who are roughly 3-4 months old now.

We tried to find another foster who could take the older kittens, but there was no one available, so we ended up with the entire family! But we aren't able to keep the older kittens with their mom, due to extra caution about their recent vaccinations around the developing kittens, and also because we're told that momcat Verse was pretty much done with them anyhow. So Verse gets to live in the annex, while her three older kittens have been enjoying life in our master bedroom suite.

Verse seems like she probably lived with people for at least part of her life, as she was immediately snuggly. Her older kittens probably have not, because they are quite shy. They are certainly not feral - just extra cautious and shy.

We've taken them all to the vet already and they're quite healthy. Last week, the vet performed an ultrasound on Verse and thinks there may be as many as ten kittens! Verse has her follow-up vet appointment tomorrow morning, and we're hoping that the X-ray will give us a definitive count. At the same time, we'll be discussing options for the rest of her pregnancy and the delivery; we want to make sure they get the best opportunities here at the Academy!

Meanwhile, the three kittens from her previous litter are finally starting to come around. They are sweet and playful - they snuggle and purr and wrestle. We think their adopters should expect kittens that are somewhat more shy to begin, but we feel certain they will have a lot of love to give to the right person -- they remind us quite a bit of the Trees class who came in very shy of people, in very similar circunstances, and all ended up super loving.

The three kittens will be going for their graduation surgeries on Tuesday the 4th - so now is a wonderful time to apply to adopt!

Here's the rest of today's photos!