Jun 15 2021

We’re pooped

  • June 15, 2021

Pixel’s kittens are progressing like normal kittens, except for one thing.

Pooping.

Okay, hear us out. We know there’s a fair amount of poop talk around here, but it’s part of the territory. Kittens poop. Everywhere. But these little rascals never pooped outside of the litter box once. Not once. They took right to it,  Kittens often take a while figure it out, and we’ve had to keep adding litter boxes in all of the corners and places they leave deposit. Not these kids. They’re little geniuses!

However, we already had a litter named after smart people (they were also poop geniuses), so Pixel’s kids will have to settle for the Grocery theme we chose (because Chris was grocery shopping when Pixel started to deliver).

Here they are!

All of these kittens are reserved.

Hannaford (boy)

Kroger (boy)

Piggly Wiggly (girl)

Wayno (boy) (Wayno was a local grocery store)

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/were-pooped/

May 16 2021

Some time in the sun

  • May 16, 2021

Now that Nikki’s kittens have gotten their first vaccinations they left their private room and are mingling with our adult lady cats. They are just full of energy and seem to be in perpetual play mode. They do stop and rest on occasion, though! Here are four of them we caught in a rare moment sleeping on the windowsill.

Sleepytime

This morning it was cloudy outside but Big Chill found a warm place, anyway.  Unfortunately, she was was more in “jeans are fun to claw” mode than in sleep mode, so I had to move her elsewhere!

Crotch Kitten

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/some-time-in-the-sun/

May 09 2021

Supermarket Sweep

  • May 9, 2021

Getting chubby!

Pixel started to give birth on Wednesday, April 28th while I (Chris) was grocery shopping. We were expecting eight kittens and by the time I got home four had already come out. The remaining four came out about one every 25 minutes.  All seemed well. Pixel was very protective and seemed a little stressed, but that’s not unusual, especially with a big litter.

The next day, one of them seemed to be having trouble and Pixel was not attending to her – never a good sign. We started the baby on antibiotics but to no avail. Late Thursday afternoon we found another one dead and we started all of them on meds.

By Friday morning we’d lost three in total and one was fading.  That one had passed by the time we got into the vet. Half of the litter gone. The remaining kittens seemed perfectly fine, at least. Our vet could find nothing wrong. She supposed it could have been a bacterial or viral infection, but didn’t think it was worth sending a body to the State lab.

Pixel has had big litters before without a problem, and with the same dad (Max) so we’re at a loss to explain it. We’re trying to think of what was different about the four that passed from the four that survived, because at at birth they all seemed similarly robust. Maybe a difference between the ones where we tied off the umbilical versus Pixel biting it off, but we didn’t think to keep records of that so we don’t know if there is a correlation. We were thrilled to see such a big litter so it is hard to accept losing half of it.

Anyway, the four kittens that remain are growing like crazy and are very good eaters! Pixel immediately moved them from the birthing nest to the corner, so we set up a fleece and a heating pad there and let her be.  A bit more than a week later the kittens are getting a little mobile so we moved them to a big nest and she seems pretty content with the situation.

Happy mama on the kitten cam!

We think there are three boys and a girl (but don’t hold us to that). Since they arrived while I was getting groceries we think we will name them Hannaford, Wayno, Kroger, and Piggly Wiggly.

All of these kittens are reserved.

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/supermarket-sweep/

Apr 18 2021

Just Chillin’

  • April 18, 2021

Nikki’s kids are growing fast, eating solid food, playing, and using the litter box! They are already very social. When we come in the room they rush to our feet like we are their gods. Not that we’re ones to disabuse them of that notion.

A few years ago we had kittens that took to the litter box so quickly that we named them after scientists. Not this litter! They have finally figured it out, but we had a couple weeks of cleaning up little gifts they would leave in front of the door, and washing poopy butts. We’re glad they’re past that phase!

A few days before they were born our refrigerator died due to a power surge after a wind storm induced power outage. They were born on the day the new refrigerator arrived. So, of course, we gave them refrigerator names!

All of these kittens are reserved.

Amana (girl)

Kelvinator (boy)

Frigidaire (girl)

Hotpoint (boy)

Big Chill (girl)

Norhtstar (girl)

Crosley (boy)

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/just-chillin/

Mar 27 2021

Cold Comfort

  • March 27, 2021

Nikki gave birth to seven kittens on the evening of March 8th. All them are growing and nursing wonderfully. No definite news on their pronouns yet, but we’ll know in good time.

The delivery was undramatic and didn’t take long. Nikki takes after grandmother, Nutmeg, who would shoot out kittens in record time (hence the nickname, “Machine-gun Megs”).

All of these kittens are not yet reserved, but we are contacting people with approved applications. We still aren’t accepting new applications because we have more than enough to review right now (Sorry!)

Chubby little things

The kittens were born on the same day we got our new refrigerator installed (the old one didn’t survive a power outage caused by a wind storm).  So we have a naming theme, even if we haven’t decided which one is Frigidaire, Kelvinator, etc. yet!

A content mama a few days after giving birth.

Buster, the father, is smart enough to deny parentage after he got hit with child support payments the last time he knocked Nikki up, but we know better.

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/cold-comfort/

Feb 07 2021

Celebrate!

  • February 7, 2021

Since Lola’s kittens were born on Christmas Day, you would think we’d use a holiday theme to name the kittens. Well, we did, but leave it to us to be weird about it. We named them after everything except Christmas!

The kittens are running, climbing, and playing and have at last mastered the litter box. That is to say, litter boxes. They kept finding new places to leave little brown mounds. We’ve found that a good way to litter train is to put a small litter box where they leave a deposit  until they eventually get the idea. It’s challenging when they decide that “in front of the door” is a great place, but they figured it out eventually.

All of these kittens are reserved.

Festivus (boy)

Groundhog Day (boy)

Halloween (girl)

Mardi Gras (boy)

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/celebrate/

Jan 09 2021

What a turkey!

  • January 9, 2021

Some kittens, you know? Butterball was so good at posing for pictures that we couldn’t pick just one.

Sara’s boy is getting chunky and (after a few misses) has mastered the litter box. He had a habit of leaving his deposits right in front of the door, which made entering his room an adventure. Kind of like Indiana Jones, but with poop.

Butterball is climbing and loves sitting in the top perch of the cat tree. He also purred throughout his entire photo shoot. All in all, he’s just a pretty cool kitten.

This kitten is reserved.

I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here today.

This is my “Ready to pounce on my prey” look.

I am the most interesting kitten in the world.  Stay thirsty, my friends.

One last look back. Shall I pass this way again?

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/what-a-turkey/

Dec 25 2020

Looks what Santa left under the tree!

  • December 25, 2020

Cuties!

Lola gave birth to her kittens starting at about 11:00PM on Christmas eve and finishing around 3:00AM on Christmas morning. She had five kittens, but the last was stillborn. The remaining four are doing great, eating well, and gaining weight nicely.

Although the first kitten was born a bit before midnight, technically the litter birth date is the day when most of the kittens were born, so these are our first ever Christmas kittens. (Don’t expect a Christmas naming theme, though, because that’s just way too obvious for us).

We had just gone to bed and I was watching the Kitten Cam in night-vision mode when I could see that Lola’s water had broken on the blanket. The interesting thing is that we couldn’t have seen that in normal light. Before we turned off the lights she wasn’t showing any signs of going into labor so we had set alarms every few hours to check on her. We probably would have missed the first couple of kittens. (Well, maybe not. They are very loud kittens).

That said, knowing that Lola was close to delivering allowed us to run interference and keep her from going under the bed. She kept waffling between the nest and the bed. Before the first kitten came out she did get by us once, but we managed to coax her out. She has been content to stay in the nest since then.

Lola is growling as mothers do if we disturb the kittens, so we’ll get more pictures after we can move her and them to the kitten room. We don’t want her to change her mind about the nest being a safe place for her kids.

(Side story: This summer we actually ordered a new bedroom set where the bed goes flush to the floor so “mama under the bed” would no longer be a concern. Unfortunately, the delivery date kept getting pushed out and by November we decided to cancel the order. Maybe we’ll have better luck post-pandemic.)

All of these kittens are reserved. 

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/looks-what-santa-left-under-the-tree/

Dec 13 2020

Starry’s kittens come out swinging…

  • December 13, 2020

The Swing State litter is doing great! They learned how to use the litter box with minimal fuss (yay!) and are eating solid food. Getting them interested in wet food was a bit of a struggle at first. Usually after a few days of putting their faces up to the food they get the idea, but only a couple of them were really going for it. (Nevada and Georgia. They weren’t shy about eating. Something about torbies, maybe?)

Eventually (based on their weight and the amount of poop they were producing) we figured out that they were also eating the dry food and coming back to the wet after their mom, Starry Night, had her share. They just didn’t want to eat when we were ready to watch them eat. Maybe they weren’t confident about their table manners.

They’re hitting all of the usual milestones: Climbing to the top of the scratching post, sleeping as a group in the cat tree, and playing with their toys, They are a curious and playful bunch, and if they aren’t sleeping they run to the door to greet us when we enter the room.

All of these kittens are reserved.

Nevada (girl)

Michigan (girl)

Wisconsin (girl)

Georgia (girl)

Pennsylvania (girl)

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/starrys-kittens-come-out-swinging/

Dec 06 2020

Too Much Information

  • December 6, 2020

Butterball is getting plump! The magic of night vision.

Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me insane
– The Police

Butterball is growing quickly after some concerns that he wasn’t growing fast enough at first. He wasn’t interested in formula but he’s been gaining weight  steadily for more than a week, so no worries.

Part of our concern came from using the Kitten Cams in the nest and kitten room. We originally got them to keep an eye on Lily and her kittens as she moved them around the room. She would get up to greet us every time we walked in, so the camera was useful for checking that the kittens were safe and warm without interrupting their nursing. It has proven useful since then in checking in on mothers who are about to give birth.

After Butterball was born and  we watched the camera in Sara’s nest we (okay, I) became worried that she wasn’t spending enough time with her baby. It seemed that every other time I checked the cameras he would be alone and Sara would be just outside the nest or on the other side of the room. I wondered why she wasn’t with her kitten constantly except to eat and use the litter box.

In the end we realized that before the cameras we weren’t with the mothers 24/7 (we’d just check on them every hour or two or when we woke up at night), so we had nothing to which we could compare this experience. We had no idea exactly how much time other mothers were spending in or out of the nest relative to Sara. Also, with a singleton there just wasn’t as much nursing going on so she probably didn’t need to be there all the time. Other mothers with more babies were probably in the nest more because all of the kittens weren’t nursing at once, or the kittens were tag-teaming her teats.

So, all in all, we were probably worrying too much about nothing. Certainly, it’s better to be safe than sorry, but the next time we use the cameras I’ll try to be a little less obsessive.

This kitten is reserved.

Permanent link to this article: https://atlastcats.com/too-much-information/