Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
No news today - just photos! Hard to believe the last photos we published of the Whistles here were from their second week. Now they’re in their second month! It’s time for an updated photoshoot!
Don’t forget we’re looking for a “local” adooter for Brook!
“Ma” Bell
Foghorn - female
Klaxon - female
Beep - female
Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
At approximately 2:30am on Saturday the 4th, Gab delivered her kittens on the beanbag chair in the annex, without any warning to us. As it was so unexpected, we completely missed the birth, and the consequent destruction of our bean bag chair. It’s the first delivery that we’ve missed in four years - we also missed the delivery of Hazel’s kittens, our very first momcat. We’ll be taking steps to help prevent that from happening again!
When we got up and discovered the kittens, we moved them all to the box, where they’ve been since. And we threw out the bean bag chair.
On their fifth day, we had a little photoshoot so we can share their photos with you! We’re not labeling these photos with genders like we normally do because we’re still not completely certain!
Gab
Banter
Scuttlebutt
Blarney
If you were expecting additional kittens, there’s an explanation here, but it may be sad.
By the way - don’t forget about the amazing art posted so far this month on the #KAArtsyApril2020 hashtag… it’s all fantastic!
Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
Our very own mysterious Banksyl has arranged a new “art challenge” for April with a different prompt for each day. If you’ve never tried this before, all you do is draw (or paint, or digitize, or knit, or sculpt, or whatever strikes your fancy) anything that comes to mind based on the day’s prompt. Here’s the list:
In order to fully participate, you’ll want to post your results on Twitter with the hashtag #KAArtsyApril2020 — That way it’s easy for Syl to hunt down all the participants and pick out some of her favorites for a future post here.
On that note, she also made an art challenge in January and quite a lot of you articipated! Here’s a few of Syl’s picks from the JanuArty challenge. Thanks for playing along and we’ll be back with more photos of kittens soon!
The Januarty Challenge
Week 1: PeckishPoaceae
Week 1: ScooterSpeaks
Week 2: Mom2Felix
Week 2: Sylhouettes
Week 3: MichelleForNow
Week 3: Zesul
Week 4: HannahH
Week 4: DragonMakr
Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
Here’s the adoption schedule as far as we know it - all dates subject to change (except Monkey’s… we’re pretty sure about that one!).
Monkey, March 20
Tinker & Dabble, March 28th
Trifle & Putter, April 1st
Brook, April 14th
We’ve got some really exciting announcements to make, but none of them are ready as of this writing so we’ll have to take more photos and post again soon… Meanwhile, the graduation photoshoot:
Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
Yes, Bell’s kids have had their eyes open for a while now, but we’re just getting around to publishing the photos of the day. To make things a little more relevant, we’re including the more recent photos from the photoshoot this week — the ones we mentioned we didn’t love, but we’re sharing them anyhow!
It’s worth mentioning that Brook now has an approved adopter, and we’re expecting her to go home towards the end of the month. We’ll miss her!
Hopefully we’ll get a chance to publish some photos of Tinkerers before long -!
Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
If any of you were waiting for official word on Brook’s health before putting in an adoption application, now’s the time! She’s got a clean bill of health, and is strong as an ox! (A very small ox.)
That’s one photogenic cat!
This beautiful momcat was first noticed by us in October while we were at AristoKatz vet in Fairfield. We immediately fell in love with her and her little Pebble kitten, and after some discussion between DAWS, TAILS, and Dr. Katz, we got permission to take Brook and Pebble on at the Academy!
It wasn’t long after Pebble was weaned that Brook encouraged her to join the rowdy boys Fern, Thistle, and Moss, leaving Brook free to pursue her own interests. Brook moved herself into the Academy’s guest bedroom and she continues to claim it as her personal space.
Repeated super high blood sugar tests at the vet led us to believe that she may be diabetic, but on further testing, we discovered that her blood sugar was only high at the vet - or after a car ride. A final fructosamine test at the vet proved that her blood sugar is typically quite normal, and the high tests were only due to stress.
Although Brook is somewhat stressed out by change and slow to accept new cats and new places, she does come around after a time. After three months of slowly acclimatizing her to the faculty here at the Academy, she now gets along with them all acceptably well. There’s still the occasional scuffle, but nothing more frequent or serious than what we see between Custard and Loganberry, or Loganberry and Eddie — normal cat behavior.
More Treats, Please!
She likes infrequent wild play with her toys, bouncing off the walls and running around like a kitten. More typically, she likes to snuggle up in a bed near her favorite humans and nap. She absolutely loves treats and will do anything you ask if there’s a food-based reward involved. She’s smart and easy to train.
She’s very tolerant of being picked up, snuggled, cuddled like a baby, or held in a lap and petted — especially if there are treats involved — but she tends to prefer to go lie down on her own if the petting stops.
She’d make an excellent choice for a single-cat household, or could be introduced to a multi-cat household over a period of time. You’d certainly want her to have her own safe space for the first months — just as you should when introducing any new cat to an existing group.
You can use this form to apply to adopt Brook via DAWS. As always, Kitten Academy cats and kittens can be adopted anywhere within the continental United States, but you do have to come pick her up in person (and visit the Academy)!
Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
DJ’s cheat sheet for Tinker’s kids!
We were planning on doing a big blog post all about Brook, when suddenly we went from no kittens at the Academy to a very full house, seemingly overnight!
First, DAWS got Bell, a very pregnant five-year-old momcat, from Georgia — from the same folks in Georgia who brought us Tailor previously. She arrived at the Academy after a short flight, thanks to a brilliant Delta airlines employee and friend of cats, on January 15th. Then, while we were waiting for her kittens to be delivered, we heard that DAWS would be receiving her mom and siblings from Georgia, too, and when they asked if we wanted them, we said “Yes!”
DJ’s cheat sheet for Bell’s latest! [Ed: They are all girls]
But we later found out, it was Bell’s daughter, Tinker, and Tinker’s kittens/Bell’s grandkittens, Dabble, Monkey, Putter, and Trifle. They arrived after a 13-hour non-stop overnight drive by a dedicated kitten transporter, on February 1st. Tinker is about 3 years old, and her kittens were born on December 12th of 2019.
And they had nearly just arrived when Bell decided to deliver three brand-new kittens, giving Tinker’s kids a set of aunts on Thursday, February 6th! Welcome to “Bell’s Whistles,” Foghorn, Klaxon, and Beep!
For now, we’re keeping the groups separate, because of the big age difference in the kittens. It’s unclear whether we’ll find an opportunity to bring them together before they graduate. But we’re bringing them together virtually in this welcome post since Bell didn’t get her own welcome post yet!
“Grandma” Bell - 4.5 or 5 years young
Foghorn - Female - one day old
Beep - Female - one day old
Klaxon - Female - one day old
Tinker - Bell’s Daughter and Momcat of Four - 3 years old
Putter - Male - 8 weeks old
Monkey - Male - 8 weeks old
Trifle - Male - 8 weeks old
Dabble - Female - 8 weeks old
As usual, here’s all the photos from the photoshoots! We got some good photos of Brook and the faculty that we’ll share in another post here soon!
Sugar Brookie
Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
Quick updates:
Brook’s blood sugar has been in a normal range two days in a row, though it’s a bit early to claim she’s in remission, it’s possible that she could be adopted and not need daily insulin after all. We’ll continue to monitor the situation and you can follow along in our daily morning videos!
Bell’s X-ray clearly shows two kittens and perhaps unclearly shows more than that. We’ve scheduled another for Tuesday the 28th, the same day that Pebble will be in for her graduation surgery/final exam.
Pebble and Culotte will be picked up by their adopter on the 31st. We’ll be sad to see them go, but we’re thrilled that they’ve found a great home!
Though things may be slow at the Academy while we wait for Bell to deliver, we’ll do our best to keep some kind of entertainment on the live stream!
Here’s the photos of the faculty that interrupted the Tinyplants graduation shoot the other day:
Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
Back in October, Sylhouette arranged for a “Inktopurr” art challenge for our Twitter followers and the response was fantastic! She’s picked out some of her favorites to highlight in what was supposed to be a series of two blog posts, but we’re just going to drop them all here in one big Art Attack!
There’s currently a “Januarty” art challenge going and it’s not too late to Articipate!
Greetings, Kitten Academicians!
Our latest class is just about to head to their homes! We apologize for the lack of a proper graduation photoshoot for the Tinypants. We’re not sure how that got missed! But hopefully the nearly 200 photos of Brook, Pebble, Moss, Fern, Thistle, and Culotte will help make up for that somewhat.
Currently, the adoption plans are for Moss, Fern, and Thistle to be picked up by their adopter - they’re all going together - on Saturday the 18th at about 2pm. There’s a big snowstorm due in the area that might require us to change the timing somewhat.
Culotte and Pebble are scheduled to go home together on Friday 31st! Until then, they will likely be given free run of the house, rather than staying in the main Academy classroom. Pebble’s graduation surgery (final exam?) is scheduled for the 28th.
Raise your hand if you’re beautiful and need an adopter!
Brook, of course, still needs an adopter!
We’ll likely have an unusual number of blog posts here in the next day or three since we have a pending art post to follow-up on the Inktober challenges that Syl set up on Twitter, a new momcat to introduce and a new Januarty challenge ongoing now, too. But we’ll save those for the next posts - for now, just enjoy the photos!
