Watch What You Wish For

All I wanted was a big litter of lovely furballs who I could spend hours with playing and petting. Instead, I get two fractious feral kittens who hate my guts.

Oscar and Chloe first arrived on Saturday. It was a last minute rescue. A very nice man and his wife found a large number of random stray kittens. Seems their neighborhood is rife with ferals. Even though he lives outside of our normal area of rescue we decided we could help out. Between a small group of fosters, we took in 13 kittens.

Three kittens were "spoken for" by some of the neighbors, who offered to help out and the rest were divided up between the foster folks. I was supposed to get five kittens, but the three that were spoken for were part of my group, so I only took two.

They're both beautiful tabbies with a strong "M" on their forehead. One of them, who I believe is a male, has a mackerel pattern in his coat. Their eyes have turned to green, so they must be over 6 weeks old. I think they're more like 8 weeks-the tipping point of where socializing becomes difficult.

We'll it's difficult. The first night I thought the kittens were going to be ok. They were nervous, but I was able to play with them as long as they stayed together inside a covered cat bed. They let me hold them and pet them, but no purring and they didn't relax much.

The next day was bad. It was like there were new kittens in the dog crate. They were hissing and ran off. It was clear they were in worse shape than I first thought. My second thought was that they were screwed because I don't have a lot of time to socialize them and if I don't get them to turn fast, they will go back outdoors-which I cannot bear. They won't make it because we don't know where they came from and they can't live on their own if we don't have a feeder for them. They just can't.

What's worse is that Oscar sits on the window sill and CRIES his heart out for his Mother. He doesn't know where she went to and he doesn't know she'll never hear his calls again. I hate this.

I feel a lot of pressure to turn them around, but I don't have the time to be patient. I pulled their food and only feed them when I'm in the room and they come to me to be fed. It's going badly. Oscar barely eats. Chloe will eat, but tonight, neither of them would take a bite. I can't do this for too long, but I have to try to get them to trust me, but the problem with time limits is I have to push them, then they revert, IF they made any progress at all.

I already know they're doomed. Either that or the Director will pull one of the kittens to force them into isolation to see if that will do the trick. I'm for it. Thing is, if it doesn't work, they will just get booted out once they are sterilized and get their shots.

Yeah, this is fun.

:-(