Buns!

These buns were rescued from UVic by my friend Courtnay, who (with her work partner) found them with their dead mother while she was working for the Grounds / Maintenance folks. She brought them to me, and we're taking care of them now. We got them when they were ~7 days old, and we've had them for about 3 weeks. When we got them they didn't have their eyes open, but they do now (rabbits eyes usually open at ~10 days).

They are soooooo cute! We think there are 5 boys and one girl (not sure yet though, they are hard for the vet to sex when they are young).

There are 4 brown ones, a black one with white toes and a gray-and-tan one. They don't have names yet, primarily because we can't tell them apart yet!

They have been eating a formula of 1 part Feline Mammalac (similar to Kitten Milk Replacer/KMR), 1 part water, and 0.5 part heavy (whipping) cream. At first they had to be fed every 3 hours (even at night), but we are now down to about every 6-8 hours. We are starting to introduce solid food, which requires the addition of bacteria (baby buns have sterile stomachs and have no bacteria to aid in the digestion of solid food). Right now they are eating Oxbow Critical Care for Herbivores, which has the necessary bacteria in it to allow them to successfully move to solid food. We still have our fingers crossed, though, because this is a really critical part of their development.

Lulu and Ansie!

Lulu and Ansel are staying with us for a while (Lu is grey and Ansie is black and white). They were abandoned in a Victoria hotel, and so they are with us now! They are very fun, although Lu doesn't like Juju; Ansie is a peach - our saying for him is "He gets up to lie down" - or at least just to change position! He is a really, really nice placid cat.

Here is a picture of them playing with Christophe.

Everyone is growing up

Well, here we are already in march and no new posts... it's got to be about 1 every 5 months! So I guess it's time for another one!

Celeste and Meganne are pretty well full grown and are doing so well - except for when they have to stay home and get bored and get into things and eat things and then get sick, of course. Celeste also in really getting a fear of big dogs, too - it seems like every time we're out on the field some rude mastiff or great Dane chases her or squashes her - there's one that if she sees she will run for the exit and sit just outside waiting for us. This is not great, since she already isn't really very interested in other dogs, other than Meganne, of course. As Ute says, "Who needs other dogs when I've got a seestar?!"

Here is Celestie-kin at Mom's












Meganne is learning to have lots of fun with other dogs, although generally only if they are smaller than her. She has nice time chasing Toby the pomeranian and Sally the pug, too. However, she will NOT reliably chase and retrieve anything... so much for flyball!

Here she is playing with the frisbee, rather than retrieving it!

Goodbye Johnny Lee......

Well, the sad time has come to announce our loss of our lovely little man, Johnny Lee, last month. He had developed leukemia, and the vets felt that he was too acutely ill to undergo any treatment. So it was a very hard time for us, since we only had him for two years, and he was just the gentlest soul around. We will miss him terribly.

The other unfortunate part to his death was that it left Mina in a bit of a funk. She was wanting someone to play with, but she recognised that he was too sick to do that. So, after he died we decided that we needed to get another cat to be a friend for her. We set out looking for an adult male cat (which we thought was most appropriate); but a small someone threw a wrench in this plan when we saw her at the pet adoption fair held recently at Galey's Farm by a bunch of the local animal rescues. The small someone is now named Juliette Lovebug, and she caught our eye as she is the very picture of Johnny Lee; she even has the same funny-textured fur he had. The new little J.L. is a recent capture from one of the feral cat colonies near Swan Lake. It's pretty amazing to see that she is so tame having been in "captivity" for less than two months. She really loves people, and is very curious about the other cats (Kiwi has told her to bug off in no uncertain terms, but Mina is definitely interested in her - yay!). Here's a short clip of the lovely little Juliette recently.

The Chevy-cat

Cat number 4 is officially part of the household (for as long as she chooses, anyhow). Chevy belonged to the people we bought our house from. She came back to the house 6 times (crossing both Mackenzie and the highway - unless she took the Galloping Goose, of course!!), and eventually we thought it would be best for her life expectancy (!) to let her stay (and we really liked her, too). She is a lovely cat who enjoys following me around the garden without getting too much in the way. She likes to have me in sight! In any case, we are every, very happy to have her and we hope she stays with us for a long time to come!

The canine additions to the household

Well, we finally took the plunge back in September and adopted two puppies! These pups are 'pure mutts'; they are very different looking even though they are sisters (probably due to different dads?). I brought them back with me from are from Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories, when they were 8 weeks old. Soooo cute! we had only intended to keep one, but... what's the difference between one and two, right? Well, not much except that they are more likely to listen to each other than to us! They are truly lovely girls, though... see below for a picture of Celeste right after we got home; a picture of Meganne is forthcoming and new pics of them as they get older will follow soon...

My cats... the real reason for the cattitude!

Well.... I have finally gotten around to posting the 3 reasons behind this blog - Kiwi, Johnny Lee and Mina, our cats.









Here is Kiwi observing us through the chair...


















And Johnny Lee looking as cute as can be!
























And of course the little Mina-bean!

*all photos taken by Christophe Laguigné of Chr.L Photography
www.chrlphotography.com

Kiwi is a calico with the usual attitude to match! She is a little territorial (which we didn't realise until after Johnny and Mina had moved in - hahaha - nothing like cat pee every where...). We did know about the peeing problem, because that's why she had been surrendered to the SPCA (it's not really that big of a deal, I just stock up on enzyme-based odor remover). She came to us two years ago this coming August from the Victoria SPCA, after being fostered by her fabulous foster mom Ramona, and she has made great progress from being a real scaredy-cat who hid in the closet all day to now being the boss of the place and hardly afraid of anyone.

Johnny is a DSH lilac-pointed something-or-other (tabby??) with white. He is a very shy and quiet soul (my Mom calls him Casper Milk-toast)who was the cat of the month at the SPCA just over a year ago - we saw him every week that we went dog-walking at the SPCA. Apparently he had been living in a feral cat colony and was the only cat a lady was able to catch (not hard to believe, especially now - all he does is eat and lay around all day!). He was so cute, and eventually we were hooked. He is very food-oriented, and will sit just out of water-bottle-spraying-reach at about 7:30 AM saying "Mang-mang-mang-mang-mang!" which I guess translates to "Get yourself out here and feed me, I'm starving!!". But he is very cute, for all that.

Mina is a DSH tabby with white. We got her about six months ago from a house on the Indian Reserve near my parents' house - the sign said 'Free cats' so we brought back Basil and Mina. We had them neutered/spayed and vetted, then we found a home for Basil, but Mina stayed... and stayed... and stayed a little longer until we really didn't want to part with her. She's a naughty little cat, and thisnks it's great fun to pounce on Johnny (or even jump clear over him!) and chase him around, but they also like to sleep together - if he sees her sleeping in her basket, he'll go over and lie on her and she'll just squeeze over and make him room. Mina only has half a tail which she wags like a dog! She also chew things like a dog - a favourite activity is "chew the cardboard box/carpet underlay/anything I want to bits". Amazingly, she is the best trained of all the cats. I used treat conditioning to train the following commands: "Come", "Sit", "Up", and we are currently working on "Speak". She is very,very clever!! Her current favourite activity is tearing apart the ventian blinds in our (rented) apartment!

What lovely kids!