Your Favorite Site for Kitten Pictures

Bud says: I am not a cat person. I am however married to a cat person. When we married in my youth, I wasn’t astute enough to read the marriage contract close enough. It turns out that when married to a cat person, the non-cat person finds him or herself at the very bottom of a fairly long pecking order. All pets rate higher!

For the last several years, my wife has moved me even further down the pecking order by fostering cats from the Fairbanks North Star Borough animal shelter and a local cat rescue organization called Pet Pride. Both shelters frequently find themselves with pregnant cats but need to isolate the kittens from their general population to keep the kittens from the various diseases carried by the many adult cats. The solution is to find someone like my wife who will foster the kittens in their own home until they are large enough to be adopted, which in our area requires that they are two pounds so they can be fixed before they create new kittens. First the shelter will send someone out to inspect your house to ensure you have sufficient space for the kittens. In our case that means a separate room to keep the mother cat and the kittens away from our other pets which include three cats and two Siberian huskies. Then you are granted the pregnant cat to feed and care for.

While I’ve not noted any nesting behavior on the any of the cats we fostered’s part, my wife immediately works out a birthing box. Carefully prepared and considered, it contains several cat toys, is lined with old blankets, and is carefully selected to be the right size and located conveniently near the litter box and feeding station. Of course when the big day arrives, the mom cat ignores the carefully prepared birthing box and has the kittens behind the dryer. So I wake up to go to work and my morning preparations are interrupted by screams from my wife that kittens are coming and I need to immediately move the dryer. So there I am, in my BVD’s, wrestling the dryer out of the way so my wife can join in the miracle of new life while I go back to preparing for my work day.

Now we have kittens! At this point I note a change in our neighborhood status. I know parents have online lists of child predators to keep their children protected. However, after we managed to populate our neighborhood with the first batch of kittens (it seems an eight-week-old kitten and an eight-year-old child will bond in a time span of between four and five milliseconds!) we are now on the “has kittens” watch list. Children seem to be instructed to stay at least 300 yards from our house and when we are walking the dogs, concerned mothers come racing out to cover their child’s ears, in case we tell the child that we have kittens and they are welcome to come play with the kittens.

At roughly eight weeks the kittens hit the magic two pounds. Now my real danger point arrives. My wife doesn’t seem to have problems parting with the kittens as the shelter and the pound have no problem giving away the kittens. However, the mom cat is a whole new story, as they do have problem adopting out adult cats. While I’ve never given permission to get new cats, my wife found a loophole in the instruction. Last year I got a cat for Christmas and the year before I got a cat for my birthday! So we are now reaching that eight-week limit and I fear I’ll get a late Christmas present.

Maybe when they come out from the shelter, they need to check for the most important component of a household considered for fostering… an understanding spouse.

Dmitry says: My wife and I found Baffle in early 2006, alone and crying in an alley behind our apartment building in Cairo, where we were studying Arabic for a year. He looked to be about three weeks old. We took him in and nursed him back to health. He liked to nurse, he liked to eat, and pretty soon he had almost limitless energy. When it came time to leave Egypt and return to the States, we couldn't even consider leaving him behind. Since we can't have cats in our apartment, he now lives with my parents in Buffalo, New York, with another cat and two Siberian huskies.

Megan says: Hydrox (or as I like to call her "Cookie Face" or "Cookie") is a beautiful charcoal Bengal kitten. She is the softest cat I have ever touched. We got Hydrox in September to keep Wyatt company, because we felt bad leaving him alone. We got Hydrox from Pocket Leopard Bengals in Sacramento. She was the only kitten left from her litter. No one had adopted her because when anyone would come to see her she would hide. I thought she was sweet and the prettiest kitten I had ever seen, so we took her home. At first, Hydrox wouldn't let us come near her and she would only play with Wyatt. But soon, as she came to know us, she became the sweetest cat. She loves being petted and will follow me around the house until I bend down to pet her. Her favorite thing is having her tummy rubbed. Being a Bengal, she is also very playful. She is a fantastic runner, jumper, and climber. She she can jump four feet into the air and catch a toy in her mouth. She is also constantly trying to climb my walls!

Wyatt and Hydrox get along great. Hydrox loves Wyatt and is constantly in his business. If he is sleeping in a box, then she climbs on top of him to sleep with him; if he is sitting on the refridgerator, she wants to be sitting on the fridge; if he is sitting with us, then she wants to be sitting with us. If he isn't in the room with her then, she chirps until he comes to see her. Wyatt loves having someone to play with. He will stalk and then attack her, then they chase each other around the house until they get tired and take a nap.

Megan says: Wyatt Earp is a Russian Blue kitten. My boyfriend and I got Wyatt at the Lange Foundation in Los Angeles. (The Lange is a great organization that takes abandoned pets and homeless animals from city shelters and pounds and finds homes for them.) When we met Wyatt he was a tiny little guy, still nursing, along with his two brothers and sisters. Wyatt was the crazy kitten. He was constantly wanting to wrestle with his siblings and attacking toys twice his size, and if you put your arm in their cage to pet the kittens it would come out with Wyatt hanging from it. Of course, we picked the Wyatt the crazy cat! He is almost a year now and he is still a crazy kitten. He loves to play and he still attacks anything that moves. He is constantly getting into places that he is not supposed to (such as the trash can or hanging upside down off a chair), and his favorite hobby is chewing cardboard boxes. He is also very sweet when he wants to be. Wyatt comes running to the door when we come home and sits there waiting to be picked up. He is the only cat that I know that likes being carried around like a baby. He also loves to snuggle right under my chin when we are laying down, resting his head right next to my face. Wyatt is naughty, but he is also my baby!

guremike says: When we found and adopted our Scottish Fold kitten Ani, we adopted his sister Imoto too. The name Imoto means "little sister." It was a really simple decision what to name her. ;-) Unlike her brother, Imoto is very brave. She goes her own way, does what she wants, and is always starving! Her likes include carbohydrates (especially rice and bread), cabbage, and her brother. Her dislikes include loud noises and having her fur brushed.