Tag: cats

This article was written with the assistance of Grammerly’s AI tool. It improved several things, and anything that is hard to read is my fault, not the AI’s. -JMH

Two weeks ago, I was feeling overwhelmed with everything that life was throwing at me. In an effort to simplify my life, I decided not to adopt any of Babe’s babies. Things have cleared up quite a bit, and I’m ready to welcome Lulubelle back into my life as Dave and Vivi get ready to go to live with Max. So the kitten coverage is back on My Two Lives.

I need to write articles for the kittens’ third week of pictures, not to mention their life beyond their third week, and I hope to do that this week. I don’t have many pictures from the past three weeks, so I also need to take pictures of them now.

Gizmo (née Chuck) will be staying with Babe’s primary human, although he seems to be spending more time with me than with Bobby. I don’t mind, except when he wakes me up three hours before I had planned on getting up and head-butts my face in such a way that he blocks off my airflow.

My new laptop arrived a week ago, but there was an issue with the initial power-up. I have a replacement laptop on the way. I will share the whole experience once I receive a properly functioning laptop.

I must say that when I contacted System76, the company making my laptop, about the problem, they didn’t hesitate at all once I showed them the issue. I chose to buy a laptop from them based on the great things I had heard, and so far they are handling the problem beautifully.

Babe’s kittens spent their second week of life living in my closet, and that worked out pretty well. Mom could lie on my bed to watch over them, and I didn’t have to go far to see them myself. I could also turn on the closet light and get better light for pictures. Bobby and I spent a lot of time sitting in front of the closet watching the pets, a routine that would continue until Mom moved them again.

Momma could lay on my bed and watch over them, and I didn’t have to go very far to see them myself.

These are the pictures from 31 May to 6 June. Want to see the earlier pictures? Here are the pictures from the kittens’ first week.

7 Days Old: Happy Week-Old Kitten Day!

The kittens closed out the month of May by turning one week old, and they spent most of the day asleep. It’s hard to believe they’re a week old, but time has been flying by for me for a long time. As is the case with most babies, they’re wickyd adorable when they sleep.

8 Days Old: Go ‘way picture lady, it’s time to sleep

I almost forgot to take a picture for 1 June, and by the time I had the camera ready, they were going to sleep (again). I missed several cute shots because I couldn’t get a good angle for a picture. It’s hard to see five kittens in the picture, and the one on the top right just wants to sleep. I believe this is the kitten that would be named Lulubelle, but I can’t be entirely certain from the picture.

9 Days Old: Getting so big!

I usually try to get pictures of the kittens without Babe, but today’s picture of them sleeping on Mom shows how much they’ve grown in just a week. I love how one of them is a pillow for Mom and two others drape themselves across Babe.

10 Days Old: Did I interrupt someone’s nap?

I forgot to post a picture to Flickr on 3 June, and the kitten that would be called Dave looks like they’re upset with me. I took it a little after 22:00 (10 PM), and I can’t tell if they’re complaining about my taking so many pictures or if I’m interrupting their sleep.

11 Days Old: The kittens are getting vocal

Today’s picture is a screenshot from a video I shot of the kittens. They were moving around so much that I knew a still picture wouldn’t capture their cuteness. As I reached my hand in to pet them the kittens started mewing up a storm. Their cute little mews are so adorable! It was hard to keep from laughing at them, as you can hear in the video.

12 Days Old: They’re so cute when they’re sleeping

I had to run some errands and didn’t get much time with the kittens, but when Bobby came down to say hi, several kittens came out to see him. Unfortunately, Mom returned from whatever she was doing, gave the kids a good licking, and moved them back into the closet.

13 Days Old: Sisters make great pillows

The kittens will be two weeks old tomorrow, and it’s adorable how they snuggle up together for naps. I hoped to spend more time with them but they’re asleep most of the day and I hate waking them up. Sometimes I’ll just lay out on the floor and watch them sleep, and mom’s been known to climb up on my back, put her paw on my shoulder, and make sure I’m not waking them up.

Coming up in the next week

The kittens finally start exploring outside the closet, plus more cute sleepers and the first individual pictures of the kittens.

Last week I said I was moving my kitten pictures here from Flickr. It’s taken me longer than expected to decide how to present the pictures here. I’m also resizing the images to load better on this site, and I’m re-processing the pictures so they look the best they can here.

The kitten pictures are coming, and I hope to have the first week’s pictures up before the Dodgers take on the D-backs at 22:20 (10:10 PM ET). Please forgive my delay. I hope they are worth the wait. Now that I’ve settled on how they’re presented the process should go faster. I’ll post the photos in one-week groups for the kittens’ first five weeks. That will bring me up to last Thursday’s pictures, I’ll switch to doing one post per day beginning with the pictures from Friday 28 June.

I have some new pictures to share, including some video of the adorable kittens playing in yesterday’s late afternoon sun. I haven’t transferred them from my phone to my computer yet, but I’m looking forward to letting you see the playful kittens.

My kitten pictures are moving. I’ve had issues with where I was posting them, and I decided to move them to my website. Here I can post not only the photos, but I can also embed videos without the site I use complaining about links or external content.

Babe, my upstairs neighbor Bobby’s cat, went into heat in the Spring.  A neighborhood cat was more than happy to make some babies with her. Babe’s had the run of the house since autumn, and I was hoping Babe would have her kittens upstairs. Babe had other plans, and on 24 May, I woke to the news that Babe’s water had broken and she wanted to have her kids in my bedroom.

Late last August, I made a DIY cat bed for her in the living room, and after she got pregnant, I moved it into my bedroom beside my bed. When Babe was looking for a place to have her kittens, I turned it to the wall to try to dissuade her from having them in the box, but that’s where she wanted to have them.

I think Babe wanted to have her kids down by me because Bobby was often out much of the day, while I’m always at home unless I have to run an errand. Babe’s made great use of the fact that I’m always home, and knows that if anything happens she’ll either hear her babies cry or I’ll call for her.

She ended up bringing five adorable fur babies into the world, and I’ve often wished I could spend hours watching and playing with them, but real life has demands on my time of its own. I started a Flickr account to post daily photos of the babies, and I also posted some videos of the kittens to my YouTube channel when I could get one. Last week my Flickr account was killed because I posted links to the videos on the picture page, something that is verboten. The photostream was unblocked, but I haven’t been able to log in to remove the links or post new pictures, so I’m moving the kitten pictures here.

I’m still working on the best way to post the pictures, but they’ll be here under the category Babe’s Babies. I may not be able to get a new picture to post every day, but you’ll be able to see the kittens get ready to go to their new fur-ever homes. I know Megan, a friend of Bobby’s, wants two kittens for her son, and I’m keeping a kitten myself. Bobby may want to keep one or two, but he’s not sure yet. He’s trying hard not to get too attached to the little darlings, but every time he spends time with them I know it’s going to be harder for him not to keep at least one of the little loves.

The Kittens

I’ve finally gotten pictures of each kitten by themselves so I can introduce them to the world individually. I’ve given them temporary names to refer to them other than Kitten 1, Kitten 2, etc. Of course, they may get new names when they go to their fur-ever homes.

Vera/Vito

Vera’s one of the shyest of the litter. Like her siblings, once she gets used to you she can be a cuddle bug. When I was first greeting the kittens after they moved into the closet, Vera would hiss at me, although their “Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!” came out more like a heavy breather making an obscene phone call. It was kind of cute, but I backed off until she was ready to get to know me.

Over the last weekend, we discovered Vera’s actually a boy, and Bobby has named him Vito.

Charlotte/Chuck

Chuck, who I originally called Charlotte when I mistakenly thought he was a girl, is one of the most outgoing of the bunch. (He may be a she after all. We’ll confirm their gender when they get their new kitten checkup.) He’s among the most outgoing, and I don’t see him having any problems joining a new family. He’s a very friendly little guy, and more often than not, when the kittens come up onto the sofa with me, Chuck’s right there with his brothers and sister. Surprisingly enough, it’s Dave that I usually have to look for when I’m missing a kitten on the sofa.

You can’t see it in this photo, but Chuck has a light brown diamond shape on his back just below his neck. It became my way of telling him apart from Dave and Lulubelle when I see them from above. If I see his face, Chuck has a white patch above his mouth, Dave has some tiger-like stripes, and Lulubelle has some light brown markings similar to her mom’s.

Dave

Dave (née Davina when I originally misgendered him) is the smallest kitten, but he’s the first to run out and greet me when I get up in the morning. The friendliest of the bunch, he’s been known to snooze against my neck and even lick my neck. Chuck and Dave are partners in crime, and I’m sorry to see they’re probably getting split up.

Why those three names? I recently turned 64, and a certain Beatles song was in heavy rotation in my head for over a month leading up to my birthday. I joked with my neighbor that it would be funny if the kittens were born on my birthday and had a girl and two boys that could be, as the song puts it, “[Grandkittens] on your knee, Vera, Chick, and Dave.”

Lulubelle

Lulubele is the kitten that will stay with me when her brothers and sisters go to their fur-ever homes. She got that name because on Catmas 2023, a very smart young woman sang, “But goblins, you can go to hell, cos you’re not eating Lulubelle.”

There are conflicting reactions to Lulubelle’s name in “The Church on Ruby Road.”

RUTH: She’s called Lulubelle.
RUBY: Oh…
CARLA: What a terrible name.
RUBY: Oh, an absolutely terrible name.
RUTH: Isn’t it awful?

DOCTOR: That is such a brilliant name. I wish I was called Lulubelle. [chuckles]

You can hear the entire “The Goblin Song” on YouTube. In the UK, get the comments about the name Lulubelle in context on the BBC iPlayer. Outside of the UK, you can find it on Disney+ where available.

Lulubelle’s the other shy kitteh, but she was the first to greet me many mornings before Dave decided he wanted to be the first to say “good morning” most days.

Kenny

As I said above, Vera greeted me one day by hissing at me. They reminded me of my ex-wife, but I mistakenly called the wrong white kitten Kathleen after my ex-wife. Of course, Kathleen turned out to be a boy kitten, and I first called him Kelly, but a day later I went with a South Park reference and said no bastards better try to hurt him.

He’s also the chattiest of the five kittens. His early meows used a voice that sounded like it was seasoned with a lifetime of cigarettes and whiskey. Those scratchy meows come back from time to time, but now he sounds more like the great of his family. He loves to wrestle, and I’ve had to scold him for being too aggressive with his sisters, and if I end up having to keep the spray bottle close by it will be for Kenny. But when he wants a nap, he has no trouble coming up and snugging against me.  He’s just especially vocal when he’s tired and can’t get the human to figure out what he’s asking for.

Eventually, the band will break up

We always knew we wouldn’t be keeping all of Babe’s kittens. Even before she got pregnant, my neighbor said he wanted her to have one litter, and I’d get my pick of the litter. While Dave and Kenny enjoy spending time with me, little Lulubelle won my heart pretty quickly.

When Bobby’s friend Megan heard Babe was pregnant, she quickly said she wanted to get two kittens for her son, Max. Last weekend Megan and Max came over to visit the kittens, and Dave went right over to Max. Later this summer, Dave will be moving south to live with him. He wants a boy and a girl, and Vera/Veto is so comfortable with him that it looks like she will be joining Dave on the drive south. Of course, there’s only one girl in the litter, Lulbelle, so when Megan and Max come back later this week to see the kittens once more before his move, so we’ll see how he feels about there only being one girl. I think the three of them make a nice looking family.

I’m almost back to daily pictures

I stopped trying to get daily pictures of the kittens when I got locked out of my Flickr account. I’ve gotten back to trying to take daily kitten pictures, and I should be posting pictures almost daily here on My Two Lives. Videos will go to YouTube when I get them, and often the only thing stopping me from getting video more often is that by the time I can get my phone to get video the scene has changed too much to be worth capturing.

I have a few days of photos to add, and I’m still trying to decide on the best way to post each day’s photos. There may not be a new picture posted every day, so the best way to make sure you don’t miss out on a new cat picture is to visit the site daily. I’ll also be posting here about my music, and I’m getting close to finally being able to get back to work on the demo I posted about in February. I’ll also be posting about my virtual life in Second Life, so I’m trying to find a way for my readers to get notifications only when new kitten photos get posted. In the meantime, you can visit the site daily to see if there’s new content. If you have a WordPress account, you can also follow me in their reader apps.