The Kittens’ Third Week

Please forgive how long it’s taken me to get this group of pictures online. Sometimes life comes at you nonstop. -JMH

The kittens started their third week of life still living in my bedroom closet, but they finally began exploring the world outside the closet on their own. I started taking pictures of the individual kittens, and I used some in the article where I introduced the kittens.

14 Days Old: The kittens are two weeks old!

As the kids get another momma meal, you can see how big they’re getting. Of course, if the kittens aren’t eating, it would be a very safe bet that they’re sleeping. But at two weeks old, we’re finally able to spend more time with the kids, letting them get used to the big creatures and finding out that, as Ford Prefect said about our planet, we’re mostly harmless.

Five two week old kittens enjoying some of mamma's milk

15 Days Old: Hi Grandpa

Kenny (née Kathleen) Kathleen chilling on Bobby's lapBobby, Babe’s primary human/daddy, was sitting in front of the closet with Kathleen (who would later be named Kenny) on his lap. She was so comfortable, that Bobby feigned sleep so I could get a picture of the two of them. Kenny would end up being the first of the kittens to find a new home after slipping outside when either Bobby or I were coming inside without us catching him. It drove us crazy for a few days that we couldn’t find him anywhere, but we’re hoping that someone found him outside and adopted him. The alternative could be so bad that we can’t even consider it very long.

Vera (also called Vito and Vivi once we realized she’s a he) got into the floorboards via a gap under the kitchen cabinet. It took a day or so before we were able to rescue him from under the porch when we heard him meowing for us. I always hated the gap under that cabinet, and we ended up shoving an empty jar into the gap to keep anyone else from getting through the gap.

We tried for days to find Kenny, who could be pretty vocal when he wanted to be, but we never could. One thing’s for certain, whoever has him now has a pretty cool cat. 😿

The kittens snuggling in their sleep

16 Days Old: Sleep snuggling

The kittens still need a lot of warmth, and it’s so cute when they snuggle together while they sleep. As I write this, the kittens are 11 weeks old and it’s amazing how much bigger they are now. Of course, they still like to sleep together and they still sleep in a mound at times. In some ways, the kitty mound has gotten bigger, yet a little smaller. As much as I wanted to keep Lulubelle, she and I never bonded properly, while Chuck made me his human pretty quickly.

This past week, Lulubelle went to live with a doctor that Bobby knows, making our feline family even smaller. I got to tell Lu goodbye, but the other three kittens stayed away from me for a day or so. We decided that they connected spending time with me like I did with Lu and their leaving, but we’re back to all being buds.

Next weekend, Dave and Vito will go to live with Max, and I’m hoping Chuck won’t hold it against me even for a couple of days. After all, once they go live with Max it will just be the four of us, Bobby and Babe and me and Chuck.

17 Days Old: Let the explorations begin!

Chuck, Kenny, and Dave set out from the closet to see what the rest of their world is like. They’re still pretty wobbly, but it’s good to see them out and about on their own. You can see Vito and Lulbelle hanging back in the closet, wondering just how safe it is out in that big room.

Three kittens finally exploring outside of the closet in my bedroom by themselves

18 Days Old: There’s nothing like Momma’s milk

Five kittens getting their nourishment from momSometimes you’ll hear about momma cats that won’t nurse their kittens, but Babe has no problem feeding her babies. Her two humans just had to make sure she got lots of noms and water so she had enough nourishment to pass along to her children.

It’s getting to the point where you can tell she’s getting a little tired of being a milk machine several times a day. Don’t get her wrong though, because she loves her kittens and will fight anyone who tries to keep one from nursing.

Day 19: Wat? Iz comfy like dis.

There’s always one that likes to sleep in an odd position, and today it’s Kathleen’s turn. You can tell it’s Kathleen by the white around her mouth and the line of black on the outside of their right eye. Vito has a black line outside of his left eye, and I called them our New Wave kittens with the “mascara” by their eyes.

Sometimes we’ll see the kittens sleeping either in a pile of fur, one on top of another, or in weird positions. We have to wonder how comfortable they are like that. Other times we get jealous that they can sleep in any position they find themselves in and not get up with a crick in their neck or their backs sore as hell.

A kitten mound with Kathleen sleeping with her head upside down

Day 20: Hi there, Chuck!

I started trying to get the kittens on my bed one at a time so I could get pictures of each kitten, but Dave wasn’t too keen on getting his picture taken yet. On the other hand, Chuck was willing to let me snap a couple of shots.

My man Chuck sitting on my bedChuck's not sure if he wants to be up there by himself or not.

He’s so adorable, and now he’s a cuddle monster with a very loud purr when he approaches me. The other day I told Bobby that I need to record his purring and work it into a song now that I finally have my new laptop.

It’s almost hard to believe, but the kittens will be four weeks old with the start of the new week of their lives. My, how time has flown by. I almost wish we could have kept them this size a while longer, but I love how they’ve grown into being their own felines.

The kitten coverage is back

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.

The Kittens’ Second Week

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

7 Days Old: Happy Week-Old Kitten Day!

Five kittens asleep in the closet

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

A mound of sleeping kittens

9 Days Old: Getting so big!

A mound of sleeping kittens

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

The kittens sprawled out for a nap, with one kitten lifting its sleep head as if to fuss at me

11 Days Old: The kittens are getting vocal

My hand reaching into the closet to pet the kittens, with one of them being rather fussy about it

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

Sleeping kittens, with several kittens laying atop others

13 Days Old: Sisters make great pillows

Another mound of young felines, with two kittens serving as a base for three levels of kittens

Coming up in the next week

Babe’s Babies: The Kittens’ First Week

The Kittens’ First Day

Babe standing in the opening of the ca bed with an expression that says, "Do you mind???"
Babe laying on her side to let her babies nurse, and the look on her face suggests she's trying to decide who to be more angry with, me for wanting to take so many pictures of her primary human for not spaying her and letting her get pregnant.

1 Day Old

Babe's five kittens, just one day old
A grey tiger-striped cat, babe's kitty daddy, on my neighbor's landing. He usually runs when he sees us, but this was in mid August, not long after he made some babies with Babe.

2 Days Old

Babe, laying on a bed with lavender sheets
Two day old babies in their birthing box

3 Days Old

The 3 day old kittens already getting big. They can finally span my entire palm from wrist to the base of my fingers.

4 Days Old

The Babe family enjoying a little dinner

5 Days Old

The kittens in a box approximatly 3 times larger than their birthing box. The box has a light green blanket in the bottom with a grey towel on top of it that the kittens can lay on

6 Days Old

The empty box as I found it upon waking up the day the kittens turned 6 days old
The kittens  on a dark teal green towel with a tab bamboo pattern tote with lavender straps just behind them.

I don’t think I have a better picture of the furry family to close out their first week with.

Closing out the kittens' first week with the whole family together in the closet

 

The kitten pictures are coming

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 to My Two Lives

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 taking a break from her 2-day old kittens on my bed

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 at 29 days oldVera/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.

20-day old ChuckCharlotte/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, a 21-day-old kitten on my bedDave

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 at 29 days old, paying with a catnip mouseLulubelle

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 at 29 days oldKenny

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.

Max with Dave and Vera/Vito

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.

There seems to be a problem with my Flickr account

I’ve been posting a new kitten picture every day since the kittens were born. When I tried to post a new picture today I got an error as if my account was non-existent. I’ve reached out to Flickr to see what’s going on, but since I can’t post today’s picture to Flickr, I’ll post it here.

Three of Babe's babies checking out a cat bed that some friends got for Babe

Some friends from Dodgers Twitter bought Babe a cat bed as a Catmas gift but it was a little small for her. I set it up last night to see if the kittens might like it. These three seem to think it’s pretty comfy. The kitten on the right went in it today and was happy to chill out in the bed by herself.

Babe’s babies are coming along nicely

Babe’s babies are three days old today, and they’re so sweet to look at, I’m glad I don’t check my blood sugar more often than I do.

Babe's Babies - Day 3: A mound of adorable baby kittensI try to get at least one picture a day, and I’ve created Babe’s new babies, a Flickr album with the best pictures I get of Babe and her babies from every day. I’ve also created Babe’s Babies, a playlist of the videos I get of the furry family. There’s only one video right now, but I’ll be adding at least one or two videos every week.

You’ll want to check those two links often to see the latest photos. There will be a lot of furry content coming over the next 6-8 weeks as the kitties get ready to go on to their new homes.