Of Halloween, Scary Real Storms, and Kittens White as Snow

Hello all! Izzy here with a guest blog post.

Poor Robin is without power after an October snow storm dumped lots of snow on their home and brought down a whole bunch of trees. She's been without electricity since Saturday, and she doesn't know when the power will be restored.

She, Sam, and the kitties are okay for now, though they are hoping things will be back up and running soon since they have no power to run their water pump.

She asked me to post a guest blog here and I'm happy to update you on our trials and tribulations here in Central PA. We also got snow, but luckily, no power outages and all the snow was melted by this morning.

I do have some snow that's stayed, however. It's been here since July. It came in the form of 6 snow white kittens, and it's been here ever since.

Some of you may remember Robin's blog post about the kittens whose mother was shot. http://www.coveredincathair.com/content/angel-babies

These are the Angel Babies. They are five orphans plus a 6th kitten from an older litter. Justin, Jazz, Shiro, Princess, Vash, and Screamer. They're still here with me, still wreaking wonderful kitten havoc on my house. With all that's been happening in Robin's life with Bob and Nicky, and saving cats, and DOOD, and Bob's Pumpkin patch, and hurricanes and now an early snow storm, we've been here doing our thing, and doing what we can to help.

But it's high time for an update on my Agents of Entropy, so here it is. :) I'm not very good at taking pictures, so I prefer video, which I have lots of for these little ones.

Here they are on the day I rescued them. They'd been without Momma for 2 days, laying in a box full of hay that the barn owner had put them in. She'd brought them from the tractor shed down to the stable, in hopes that another of the mother cats would adopt them. None did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJMyuv8RH7I

Here they are after I've had them for a day or two. I got Jasmine and Shiro's sexes wrong. Jasmine turned out to be a Jazz and Shiro is a girl. ;) Hey, I got 2/3 of them right. ;P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNKPvUZTcSg

Nyah (from the first video) never did warm to them, but another of my rescue cats, a neutered male named Rikki, did. He became NannyCat! and he helped me a great deal with the babies. Here he is with Justin. To this day, they have a special bond, and he looks for them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIh4RTnw_v0

The babies were joined by two more kittens from the barn. Both had been trapped for TNR. One was too little to be spayed that month (Pebbles), so I was keeping her until she was old enough, and the other was just too friendly to be a barn cat (Mack). I am currently fostering him for the 100 Cat Foundation here in hopes they'll find him a home.

Needless to say, feeding 8 kittens at once can be a challenge. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrH-dZQWgHw

The babies were supposed to go to Connecticut for Kitty Palooza, but they broke out in RINGWORM the night before we were supposed to drive them East. I called Robin and told her the bad news. It was decided that they would stay with me until the ringworm was resolved. It turned out to be the right decision because they came back from the S/N clinic with FLEAS too. O.O

The babies, now out on my sunporch in quarantine until the fleas and the ringworm are gone. Doesn't seem to slow them down any.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUG3MAd9em0

They are getting better and we are making progress. Shiro has a home in Pittsburgh with a friend of mine and her dad, but the others (Pebbles and Mack included) still need homes. Screamer, Jazz and Justin are snuggle baby love bugs. Pebbles is coming along, but she's still shy. Princess and Vash are less demonstrative, but they'll snuggle and purr when held. Princess likes attention on her terms - a true princess.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VY9pZThfY8

Some pictures I took last week.
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/shiro-Oct29.jpg
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/kittens-Oct29.jpg
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/sleepyprincess.jpg
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/pebbles.jpg

I am hoping to have them well enough and flea-free for Robin's adoption event on November 12, 2011. I am crossing fingers for that.

In the meantime, I am trying not to convince myself that's ok to keep them. I have way too many cats of my own, and frankly, these babies deserve homes where they won't have to compete so much for attention. But the longer I have them, the more I think about keeping one or two or six... I can't help it. They're my babies. I raised them and they would have died if not for me. Letting them go into the unknown is scary. The only way I can do it, is because I know Robin will find them good homes.

But that's not for another week, at least, and Robin has so much on her plate right now with her own fosters and lack of electricity. And it's Halloween.

I carve a pumpkin every year and try to make it special. This year I found a stencil for Puss in Boots, so I carved Puss in Pumpkin. http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/puss-sm.jpg

Last year I did the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland.
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/cheshire-finished.jpg

I hope Robin will be back up and running soon, and I am sure she does too.

That's all for now. Be safe and stay sane. :)