"Introducing": River and the Tiny Townies

April 29, 2022 by Mr. Academy in Introduction, Photos

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

[Edit: The date on this post is February 8, but it wasn’t published until April 29.]

We’re further behind than ever before! Here we are introducing River and her kittens and they’ve already all graduated (except Yurt) — but we’ll get to that after a bit of more timely news.

KA-Con 2022

KA-Con is being held in-person this year June 17-19th. The event is entirely arranged by the volunteer KA-Con Planning Committee and we’re expecting it to be a casual good time where we get a chance to meet and interact with some of you in-person (and some virtually)! As in previous years, attendance is limited to Patreons and Discorders so that the Planning Committee is able to accurately gauge the scope and not work themselves to an early retirement!

Miss Mellie’s Kitten Academy Poems

Miss Mellie and Umbra Love have published Volume Two of the amazing Kitten Academy Poems, an illustrated two-part series of imaginative stories told in verse by the cats and kittens that have attended the Academy (part three coming In Due Time™). The link here goes to the Kindle versions, but if you dig in, you’ll find they are also available in paperback or even hardcover! The on-demand printing isn’t cheap but the quality is superb, and the poetry and artwork is well worth the price. The profits from sales go to Kitten Academy and various other animal rescues[*]. If you are interested in further supporting Miss Mellie and Umbra Love, you can commission poetry and art in the same style for your own pets at their new project, petpoetraits.com!

Scottie’s Tiny Puppies

Scottie’s class has failed their final exams and will be held back for a week or two of summer Spring School. More on that in our next blogpost (In Due Time™).

River and the Tiny Townies

With that out of the way, let’s introduce River and her Townies! They came to the Academy January 8th and the kittens were already a few weeks old. Although they started out extremely shy, it wasn’t long before they took over the Academy (and our hearts).

They’ve all graduated now, except Yurt, who is being adopted with Beagle of Scottie’s class. In order to get caught up, we’re publishing whatever photos we had ready-to-go, and perhaps we’ll be able to publish some or all of the rest In Due Time™.

Here’s the rest of the photos we have ready-to-go!

[* In the past, proceeds have been split among Kitten Academy and DAWS, the shelter that provides us cats to foster. Currently, Miss Mellie and Umbra Love are dedicating a portion to orginizations involved in rehoming of pets that have been rescued from Ukraine.]

Rueral Living For a City Kitten!

October 09, 2021 by Mr. Academy in Introduction, Photos

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

We’ve got all kinds of things to share with you but we’re also at least three blog posts behind right now so we’re just going to briefly introduce our newest arrival, and post some outdated photos of Rue and Mural’s kids. We’ll have something a little more recent and verbose coming up soon in due time!

The new kid, Tomfoolery, is a couple-few weeks older than Rue’s kids. He was discovered panhandling for pastrami outside a deli in New York City by a long-time friend of Kitten Academy, and we offered to take him in for extra socialization and education. It’s our hope that he can eventually join Rue and Mural’s combined kids but we’re taking it slow, as he’s got a lot to learn about how to politely interact with other cats — and humans for that matter! He’s got more energy than most classes combined and while he’s learning his lessons very well indeed, he still can be a little too enthusiastic when he gets all riled up.

Tommy has been a good reminder for us, and a good lesson for potential adopters of kittens — a kitten has a ton of energy and needs to work it off. If they don’t have parents and siblings around to play, all that interaction and play becomes your responsibility, and it can be a big one! This is one of the reasons we greatly prefer to see kittens (and momcats) adopted in pairs.

As the kittens all get older they will become closer in weight and skill and a better match for Tommy whether he’s overly excited or not. We expect him to graduate at the same time as Rue and Mural’s kittens — just before Christmas.

Just a couple quick reminders:

We’ll announce when we’re ready to open the application for these kittens - should be in the next few weeks. Until then, DAWS has asked that everyone wait for it, and to not try to apply using their website — to keep things simple for them. Thanks for being patient!

Mr. A may be taking it easy for the next week or two while he recovers from some back pain - the worst is already over but it’ll take some extra R&R to make sure that he’s fully restored. Please excuse any extra delays in publishing photos, social media, and close-ups while this is ongoing! You all have plenty of practice in patience already given our usual delays!

And speaking of the usual delays, here’s a whole bunch of photos from various photoshoots, mainly from September 17-19 when Mural’s kittens were two weeks old and Rue’s were four weeks old including some last-minute photos with Paisley and Basketweave. Also included are a few slightly more recent of Tommy.

Two Households, both Alike in Dignity!

September 09, 2021 by Mr. Academy in Cheatsheet, Introduction, Photos, Merch

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

Mural has finally had her six precious kittens after the second-longest pregnancy ever* at Kitten Academy! But before that — literally the day before — we brought in Rue and her sixlets. So today’s mewspaper post is going to introduce two families!

(* Mural gets second place with 34 days spent pregnant at the Academy. The record continues to be held by Tempest who lasted 37 days!)

Rue’s Ruse

Rue was discovered in the Bronx where she was rescued and brought to Hoboken, NJ and given the name “Rutabaga.” Reportedly very sweet and playful, she was a joy but soon concern mounted over her growing belly and a trip to the vet was in order. The vet quickly determined that she was pregnant with six little kittens, so her rescuers called the one person they knew could help — Mom! (Their mom, not ours or Rue’s.) Mom brought Rutabaga to Dr. Katz in Fairfield, CT where the kittens were delivered, and spent their first two weeks. Now that they’ve reached an age appropriate to more mobility, we’ve brought them in to the Kitten Academy to give them a little space to stretch out and zoom around! They are currently living in the “Second Annex” next door to Mural, with hopes that eventually the two families can come together.

“Mom” will be adopting Rue (so actually Rue’s mom after all) after she’s done raising her last litter of kittens (Rue, not Mom), and the kittens will go through the usual adoption process here at Kitten Academy when they are about three months old.

A Note on Applications

Speaking of which, DAWS — the shelter we work with and who process applications for Kitten Academy kittens — have asked that anyone who wants to apply for any of Rue or Mural’s kids use the Kitten Academy application here on this website. They ask that you don’t use the regular DAWS application. The Kitten Academy application will open after the kittens are a few weeks older and we’ve had a chance to get to know them a little better. We’ll be sure to put the word out here and on our Twitter when that day arrives.

Here’s the Rue crew, and see below for Mural!

Caper - Male “Classic” Grey Tabby

Hijinks - Male “Mackerel” Grey Tabby

Hustle - Male “Mackerel” Grey Tabby

Gimmick - Male Black with Ventral White Spots

Sham - Female Black

Gambit - Male Black with Grey-Flecked Prosterior

Rue - Momcat

Mural’s Tinypaints

Mural is another momcat who was brought to Dr. Katz, this time from a sort-of cat colony near her practice in southwestern Connecticut. Mural was brought in with the intent of performing a spay and returning her to her usual place (TNR), but Dr. K discovered she was pregnant (Mural, not Dr. K) and very friendly so offered to have her attend the Academy. We initially suspected she’d deliver kittens within a week of her arrival but it turned out to take over a month! During that time she’s shown that she’s very comfortable around other cats, and spent most of her days just hanging around the Academy with the faculty.

Etch was born with a special talent for reviewing movies and Facebook posts.

Mural is a polydactyl cat, which in her case means she has one extra toe in-between her fourth toe and her dewclaw on her front paws. Four of her kittens are the same, each with one extra toe on each of the front paws, as noted below. This is an unusual, but not rare genetic mutation that is unlikely to have any impact on health or longevity. However, it does allow for an impressive thumbs-up!

Splotch - Female Brown Tabby- Polydactyl

Trace - Female Tortie with Orange Head Stripe - Polydactyl

Etch - Male Orange Tabby - Polydactyl

Doodle - Male Black - Polydactyl

Squiggle - Female Tortie with Half-Pink Nose

Scrawl - Female Grey Tabby

Mural - Mom

One more thing before we go — well, two actually. Two new fantastic merchandise designs on our Teespring shop! See here for previous designs.

A lovely painting of Mural by @alienswearsunglasses titled “Toof”

Technically Etch, but the cryptid version by @tanize!

…and here’s some bonus photos, mostly of Custard’s silly expressions:

This Post Stuck In A Holding Cattern

June 22, 2021 by Mr. Academy in Introduction, Photos

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

The headline might be a bit of a stretch, but we’re almost a month late in introducing Loom and her Catterns here on the website! Loom came to DAWS on a transport from West Virginia and at first, we were skeptical that she was even pregnant. But Dr. Katz confirmed it with an X-ray and a few days later, on Thursday May 27th, she delivered five healthy little kittens.

It seems as though — for one reason or another — nursing with Loom hasn’t been able to provide them with all the nutrition they require, so we’ve been supplementing them with frequent tube-feedings. As a result, they’re all fat and happy three-and-a-half weeks later, and just now in the process of transitioning to solid food!

Paisley - Female

Basketweave - Male

Chevron - Male

Herringbone - Male

Argyle - Male

Loom - Mom

And here’s everything else!*

(* there’s some good photos in these shoots that we haven’t yet had the opportunity to edit and publish here but perhaps we will, “in due time.”)

Introducing Port Oranges!

March 24, 2021 by Mr. Academy in Cheatsheet, Introduction, Photos

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

DJ’s Cheat Sheet - Names by Marking Location

Port’s eight little kittens arrived without much fanfare a week and a half ago, on March 14th. The delivery was swift and professional; she’s surely done this before! Defying the odds, all eight are male orange tabbies with varying amounts of white, which makes them extremely difficult to tell apart at a glance.

We have used food coloring pens in the past, but they get cleaned off far too easily and quickly, so we tried shaving a spot on each kitten so we could tell them apart, and while it worked, it looked very odd. Now we’re marking each one with a dot of food coloring gel, which seems to work well enough. Each kitten has their dot in a different place, so you can tell them apart that way. This will continue until they are big enough to get collars - usually around 4-5 weeks.

Because they are so difficult to tell apart, we’ll post each one’s photos individually for future reference. The white backgrounds are from the 16th and the purple backgrounds are from the 24th.

Halifax - Mark on head

Dover - Mark on back

Bombay - Mark near tail

Puget - Mark on right shoulder

Rotterdam - Mark on left shoulder

Antwerp - Mark on right haunch

Sydney - Mark on left haunch

Rio - Mark on chest/belly

Port - Mom

Here’s some miscellaneous extra photos!

Welcome to The Bready Bunch!

January 20, 2021 by Mr. Academy in Cheatsheet, Introduction, Photos

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

Cheatsheet by MadamAmyLotta on our Discord!

Flour arrived on a transport at DAWS on Saturday the 16th, and didn’t waste any time delivering four healthy kittens on Sunday the 17th. Since then she’s been a wonderfully attentive momcat and has hardly left her kittens alone for a minute.

Because all four kittens are male tabbies — three mackerel tabbies and one classic tabby — we know it can be difficult to tell who is who on the live stream. For now, we can tell them apart in person and that’s good enough to make sure we know who is healthy. When they get old enough for collars in a few weeks, they’ll be easier for you to tell apart on the stream.

As you know, we have two (presumably) not-pregnant “mom” cats currently at the Academy as well, named “Myth” and “Rumor” - we’ll talk more about them soon in our next Mews blog posts!

Here’s some photos, separated out by kitten:

Potato:

Corn:

Millet:

Rye:

And of course, Momcat Flour (Who didn’t want to leave her kittens for proper photos):

Here’s a selection of group photos and in-situ shots - most of the ones with all three mackerel tabbies are in order, Potato, Corn, Millet. See if you can figure out the rest!

Welcome to the Fancy Feasters!

November 06, 2020 by Mr. Academy in Introduction, Cheatsheet, Merch

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

New momcat Truffle was discovered hanging around a garage in rural Georgia and DAWS arranged to have her brought to the Academy [* see below] on Halloween day. We could tell it wouldn’t be long before she delivered her kittens! She was an instant lap snuggler and spent all the time she could curled up on our lap in the beanbag chair.

Sure enough, four healthy kittens were born on the morning of November 4th! Truffle appears to be an experienced mom and is handling all of her kittens’ needs just fine - with an occasional time-out for more lap snuggles!

Here’s the photos from the initial photoshoots after and before the birth, and afterwards we’ll share some info about the new merch on Teespring!

Saffron

Macadamia Nut

Champagne

Caviar

We know that our Teespring storefront can be difficult to navigate if you’re looking for something in particular buried under all the different products on which you can have the KA logo printed! So we wanted to take a moment here to post links to the newest items.

Our friend (and the voice of Smokey) Pauline contacted the amazing artist Kat Giannini to commission artwork of the Kitten Academy Faculty to be raffled at the 2020 KA-Con raffle. But events led to the cancellation of the raffle this year, and instead, Kat has allowed us to sell her fantastic portraits of the faculty on our Teespring store as shirts and coffee mugs! It’s super generous of her to allow, considering she has her own Etsy store where she sells some of her best prints. Also thanks to Jay for refactoring the original art to suit the shirts and mugs! Everyone involved really went out of their way to make this possible and we love the art so much that we’ve already ordered the whole set for the Academy.

The good people at Teespring have mentioned that they may be able to provide a discount code for us this weekend or soon thereafter, so if they do, I’ll update this post with the code here. Meanwhile, here’s a bonus design from Jay based on a T-shirt we sometimes wear around the Academy!

[* From Above:
DAWS generously covered the costs for Planned Pethood GA to rescue Truffle and a Georgia Transport Allies transport to bring Truffle to the Academy. Links here, but be warned that these sites do not follow the Kitten Academy No-Sads policy.]

Welcome to Tilbury's Stable!

September 30, 2020 by Mr. Academy in Introduction, Photos

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

The original cheatsheet by Maharet_S on the Discord for Patreons!

We’re a bit late in posting about it, but Tilbury arrived via DAWS on September 6th, from Morgantown, West Virginia. We don’t know exactly how old she might be, but we suspect she’s at least four years old. We think she’s probably had a number of litters of kittens before coming to the Academy.

Early in the morning of September 12th, she delivered 5 beautiful, healthy, monochromatic kittens. The photos in the big gallery below are from the 13th, the 22nd, and the 29th. We feel like you can probably guess which are which!

So far, she’s been a model momcat, taking care of her kittens’ every need with practically no assistance from us - we didn’t even need to help in the delivery (but we did anyhow)! That’s rare. She also has been visiting the faculty and exploring the house every morning, which is unprecedented among momcats with newborn kittens.

Here’s our “introduction” photos!

Quarter Pony - Female - AKA “Qupe” “Quartz”

Welcome Hipster Weebops!

June 18, 2020 by Mr. Academy in Introduction, Cheatsheet

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

It’s been quite a week or two here with Bebop finally delivering seven healthy kittens on Wednesday, June 10th! It was an extended delivery, roughly 12 hours - with a few hairy moments and seven adorable furry ones.

We’ve been hoping to make a post with more, better photos and lots of info but we realize these kittens are just getting cuter every day and growing so quickly the photos are outdated the minute we take them. So here’s what we’ve got!

Because it’s so difficult to tell the kittens apart - especially when we took the first set of photos - we’re breaking this down into a little gallery for each and then a big gallery of everything else.

Bespoke - Female - Bessie

Artisanal - Male - Artie

Indie - Female

Ironic - Female - Ira

Vinyl - Female

Vintage - Male - Vinny

Retro - Female

Bebop - Momcat

And here’s a big bunch of all the photos we’ve taken so far - !

Welcome Bebop!

May 27, 2020 by Mr. Academy in Introduction, Photos

Greetings, Kitten Academicians!

Aw, kibble again? I asked for filet mignon!

Bebop is the Academy’s latest attendee, and she arrived from the Huntington Cabell Wayne Animal Control Shelter in West Virginia! They sent her to the Danbury Animal Welfare Society, who we are partnered with, on May 16th. DAWS checked her out and determined (via ultrasound) that she is pregnant, they estimated 6 kittens to be delivered in roughly two weeks.

Since she arrived she’s been a very fussy eater, so we brought her in to AristoKatz for an evaluation and Dr. Katz confirmed (via X-ray) that she has seven kittens and thinks they may arrive sooner than DAWS suspected! We also did all the tests and her results were normal for a pregnant momcat, so we suspect the fussy eating is just because she’s uncomfortable and seven kittens take up a lot of space!

She’s a very lean mom who weighs in under eight pounds even with a belly full of kittens. We’re working on helping her bulk up for the delivery. So far her favorite activities seem to be observing the neighborhood through the window, and finding the coolest spot to lie on the floor.

The gene for orange (sometimes called red or yellow) cats is dominant and exists on the X chromosome. Pure orange female cats like Bebop can only happen when they inherit two of the orange genes. This makes them a little rarer than orange boys. It also means the only kittens they can have will be orange, calico, or torties. If dad was orange too, then all the kittens will be orange. The Spruce Pets has an excellent article about orange cats that goes into some detail about this.

Here’s some initial photos of this beauty. We promised some photos of the Faculty but we’ll provide those in a future post - Bebop deserves her own!