They're Gone, Daddy, Gone!

Well, the kittenheads are gone. And can I tell you what a relief it is? Don't get me wrong - they were cuter than heck. I loved snuggling them and playing with them. But cleaning up their poop and pee was exhausting. And my house was starting to smell like a pet store. It was driving me nuts.


A couple of days before I took them to the Nazi Humane Society Lady's house, Ben snapped this picture of Cheese, who liked to hang out with our napkins in our white hutch. So cute:

Micah was there, tormenting Cheese, as he liked to do with all the kittens:

Dylan's teacher wanted us to bring the kittens over for show-and-tell a couple of weeks ago, so I kind of arranged to do it right before we took the kittens to Nazi's house. I borrowed Nat's cat carrier - I suppose we should invest in one, but we haven't yet. And I stuffed all six kittens in that little carrier. I felt kind of bad. Xena was concerned:

That's kind of a sad picture. She's, like, waving goodbye, almost... The kittens were surprisingly cooperative through the whole process. We went to Dylan's classroom at the end of the school day and let them out. I was surprised that Cheese and the one we ended up naming Smudge didn't claw the crap out of the children. And I was also surprised that Piper didn't hide. They were sweet for the kids, which was great.


And can I tell you that I'm a big fan of Dylan's teacher? She was so nice to me! We've never really met - she was surrounded by high-maintenance parents at back-to-school night, so I just grabbed Dylan's folder of stuff and took off that evening. She asked if I work, and I told her that I don't, but that I used to teach school. She was like, "Oh, I can tell you would have been the best teacher ever. You just have such an educated air about you..." "I'll bet you were so good with those kids." And on and on. I was like, I need to hang out with this lady more! She makes me feel so good! She complimented me on "what a good job" I'm doing raising Dylan, which also made me blush pleasurably. And all the kids in the classroom were going nuts over the kittens and bouncing off the walls, and Sadie was yelling at the kids and trying to shove some of them, and Micah was screaming at me to hold him, and she was like, "Wow, you are so patient. You are amazing..." Which is so not true. I am the least patient person I know. But for some reason I was feeling very zen at that moment in time. But anyways, it's so nice to get compliments, you know? As moms, we don't often get many compliments, so spending just ten minutes with this gal made me feel so great!!!


Then I loaded the kittens back in their carrier and carried them and Micah and ushered the other two to our car, and we took the kittens to Nazi's house. She wrote down the names we gave them (she was very insistent on us naming them, and in writing those names down for the kittens' future owners), put fingernail polish on some of their ears to help tell them apart, and put them in their nice, big cage.


We actually ended up taking the kittens over a week later than we had hoped, because Nazi had some kind of sickness going through her kittens that she fosters (she fosters them until a week after their spaying surgery, then she takes them to PetSmart so that they can be adopted through there). Apparently, the Bonneville Animal Shelter brought some kittens over for Nazi to foster, and they had some kind of nasty illness that then swept through all the others. Four kittens ended up dying. It was pretty scary. So she wanted me to keep my kittens away until she could get everyone well. She quarantined the kittens who had been exposed, and my kittens were put into a very roomy cage in her thoroughly bleached garage. I hope they're doing alright. I'm sure they are.


The kids were sad for maybe an hour, but they perked up when I told them that we would get to watch Cheese for a few days at the end of this month. Lex's friend is still adopting Cheese, and it will be a few days between when we're free to pick Cheese up and when Lex's boyfriend goes over to Boise and takes Cheese with him. So that made the kids happy. Sadie sometimes says, "I miss the baby kittens, but we get to see Cheese again soon, huh?"


And Xena actually seems relieved to have them gone. She has gone back to her former cuddly self. She kind of avoided everyone when the kittens were around.


Something interesting Nazi said - the kittens will have recovered from their surgery by the 27th of October (when we're picking up Cheese), but she can't adopt out any of my black kittens until after Halloween. Apparently, people kill black cats and kittens at Halloween. I guess it's a big problem. Can you believe that?? They pay the $70 for a black cat and then kill it. Sick. And sad.


When we returned home, I got to work scouring my house. The couch and chair cushions were smelling suspicious, so I washed the covers. Thank goodness for washable cushion covers:

Ben did that baking soda thing on the carpet, until we can afford to get it cleaned, and I think that improved the smell.


Then I threw out the cardboard kitten box bed, swept out their area (which I did every single day anyways) and bleached and mopped the floor of their area. And I tossed out their makeshift litter box. The smell in that area of the basement started to really improve, but there was a six-by-six foot piece of carpet in the room that adjoined the kitten's closet, and it smelled suspicious. And it seemed to smell worse and worse as the days went by. Ben rolled up the carpet to throw it out yesterday, and he discovered that Xena has been peeing on the carpet in the kittens' absence. She is satan. So Ben had to bleach that area, as well:

Don't let her cuddliness fool you:

She is satan.


She started misbehaving when the kittens were about one month old. I don't know if she was trying to mark her territory or what, but she started peeing in my bed, pooping on my pillows, and pooping in our laundry basket. Once, Ben brought the laundry basket upstairs (full of freshly-laundered towels), went to the kitchen to get some water, and when he came back, Xena had pooped in the towels. It's been AWFUL. I was hoping that she would stop these behaviors when we took the kittens away, and for about a week and a half, we didn't have any more problems. But then she peed on Dylan's bed in the middle of the night (I know it wasn't him, because it was by his feet), and then we discovered that she had been peeing on this piece of carpet. I'm wondering if she could still smell kitten on Dylan's bedding, or something, and wanted to reassert her territory? And also with the piece of carpet?


One more naughty move, and I'm throwing her outside. And if she gets lost, oh well. I have put up with her for longer than I ordinarily would have, because I still feel guilty for getting rid of Titan. And she was perfectly litterbox trained when we got her, clear up until the kittens were one month old. So I have had about enough of her.


She got spayed last week, finally. For reals this time. You can see her shaved belly in this pic:

Oh, if I had known we would go through all this crap (literally), when we bought our "spayed" cat back in April, I wouldn't have done it. Blah.