This is my new trouble making kitten

This is Winston the little trouble maker!

Cute! They are so fun at that age!

Yes they are.  He is about 12 weeks old now.  I am probably equally a cat or dog person, but at the moment I am a kitten person.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote: a cat or dog person  

I never saw a need to choose.

Winston is adorable.

Agreed, I pretty much love both cats and dogs as well, but at the moment I am smitten by a kitten!!

Eric

I see no reason to choose, either!  I have three dogs, one of them a new livestock guardian puppy to understudy my getting-older lgd.  And - at the moment - I have six cat, four of them kittens (‘rescued’ from a nearby farm, where they were likely to get run over by equipment, as the were busy harvesting corn and soybeans).  I like all of them (and the chickens, and the goats....lol!).

Winston is cute.  No pics of mine on this tablet, but they are pretty cute, too.  Still hoping to find other homes for some of them, as I don’t really need six cats.  Anyone nearby looking for a sweet and pretty gray tabby with white markings?  (All girls.)

Kathleen,

Right now we have about the right number of pets for our family.  We have had more, but right now we have one dog, two cats, and a lion head rabbit.

To be clear, that rabbit I don’t consider to be my rabbit as he is my daughter’s rabbit.  My daughter (12) LOVES animals and absolutely pines for them.  When we got the bunny, we set some ground rules.  Rule #1 was that the bunny was HER pet, and not mine or my wife’s.  I told my daughter that I considered the rabbit to be my grandpet.

Rule #2 is that my daughter is fully responsible for the care and feeding of the rabbit.

My daughter takes to these responsibilities very well as we knew she would and in fact is a wonderful caregiver to the little critter.  And in fact we all love the rabbit and he is quite the addition to our household.

Eric

Hi Eric;
Cool , A lion headed rabbit!  I just saw one recently and they sure are different from meat bunnys. Is she showing it in 4H ?
Winston is very cute and just looks like trouble waiting to happen !

We have 12 Persian cats in our little house... Varying amounts of bunnys in the yard. Plus we just got a new puppy!
Thing is, we really didn't get a puppy as much as we got a moose calf!  Yeah a mastiff puppy.  Eleven weeks old when we got her and probably #25.
Currently she is at 15 weeks old and over #55 closing on #60
We have decided that we must have been insane !!! Hopefully just temporary....  
I've told Liz that now,we are just going to have to get a fork lift and start ordering kibble by the pallet (you really can do that)
Also any thought of retiring at 62 just went out the window! We couldn't afford too now!

On the flip side, this is the coolest dog I've ever shared a life with.  Smart, you can watch her forehead furrow when she is thinking. Fearless , nothing daunts her, she genetically knows she is the BIG DOG!
A mellow dog of war. She spends her time (when not destroying puppy stuff)  cruising between wherever I'm at and Liz is.  Just watching.  Not a LGD but a PGD   a people guardian dog. They can be livestock dogs as well. Yet they are friendly and calm dogs. Males can reach well over #220 ! Females #150 +.  Ours is 1/4 Great Pyrenees , they are LGD and females ave. #100-120 we are hoping "Molly" favors that side of her parentage!

thomas rubino wrote:Hi Eric;
Cool , A lion headed rabbit!  I just saw one recently and they sure are different from meat bunnys. Is she showing it in 4H ?
Winston is very cute and just looks like trouble waiting to happen !

We have 12 Persian cats in our little house... Varying amounts of bunnys in the yard. Plus we just got a new puppy!
Thing is, we really didn't get a puppy as much as we got a moose calf!  Yeah a mastiff puppy.  Eleven weeks old when we got her and probably #25.
Currently she is at 15 weeks old and over #55 closing on #60
We have decided that we must have been insane !!! Hopefully just temporary....  
I've told Liz that now,we are just going to have to get a fork lift and start ordering kibble by the pallet (you really can do that)
Also any thought of retiring at 62 just went out the window! We couldn't afford too now!

On the flip side, this is the coolest dog I've ever shared a life with.  Smart, you can watch her forehead furrow when she is thinking. Fearless , nothing daunts her, she genetically knows she is the BIG DOG!
A mellow dog of war. She spends her time (when not destroying puppy stuff)  cruising between wherever I'm at and Liz is.  Just watching.  Not a LGD but a PGD   a people guardian dog. They can be livestock dogs as well. Yet they are friendly and calm dogs. Males can reach well over #220 ! Females #150 +.  Ours is 1/4 Great Pyrenees , they are LGD and females ave. #100-120 we are hoping "Molly" favors that side of her parentage!

Love the pictures of Molly!  Hazel, who is two months old (9 weeks) is going to be nearly as big.  She is also 1/4 Great Pyrenees, and 3/4 Anatolian Shepherd.  I will see if I can get a good picture after a bit and post it.

I think it’s the 12 Persian cats that qualifies you as crazy, lol!

Very adorable puppy!

My neighbor has an English Mastiff and it is now over #200!  Just huge.  He thinks he is gentle, but has no idea of its own strength!

Very friendly though and I love him.

Eric

I wish the lighting was better on the picture of Winston.  I might try to clean it up and crop it better.  I just snapped the picture last night as I was laying in bed and he stayed still long enough for me to get a decent picture.

Eric

Here he is hanging out in the cat tree.

Eric

Thomas,

I meant to say this earlier, but unfortunately, my daughter does not show her rabbit in 4H as we have no 4H!  It’s a shame to as this is a rural district with quite a few farm families.

Eric

Winston looks just like my gray tabby kittens!  My second-favorite color in cats (first is sealpoint or flame point).  Got some pictures, going to see if I can post them.  Like you said, it’s hard to catch babies holding still long enough for photos.

Well, I added one of Hazel, and it stuck three more pictures in there and I’m not sure which ones!  Will have to post this to find out!  (Got the extras removed, lol!  Going to see if I can add one kitten picture without any extras.  The kitten is Topsy; she is so friendly that she is a pest!)

Kathleen,

WOW!!  Your post popped up first as the page loaded and my first thought was “when did I post that picture” followed by “when did I take that picture” followed by “did someone hack my phone?”

They look amazingly similar.  So of course, absolutely adorable!

Thanks for sharing!

Eric

BTW,

Maybe this is cute, maybe adorable, maybe sad, but we adopted Winston from a local shelter.  We have gone there before and they are wonderful.  They take great care of their animals.

Unfortunately, when we went into the kitten room, they had just accepted a couple of huge litters (I think one was 11 kittens!) and several smaller ones.  Holy cow were they ever adorable!  BUT, with that many kittens, there was a sort of kitty version of kennel cough going around and while they were being cared for, the cold/respiratory infection did spread.

We quickly took Winston to our vet and got him some medication and he is doing quite well.  He is, however stuffy.  Right now he is sleeping but I can hear a snore/sniffle/purring sound happening all at once along with the occasional sneeze.

I am sure that he will be OK, it’s just kinda cute to listen to him sleep.

Eric

Best picture yet?

He is so pretty, and looks totally spoiled, lol!  

They look like litter mates!

Or maybe this:

thomas rubino wrote:Hi Eric;
Cool , A lion headed rabbit!  I just saw one recently and they sure are different from meat bunnys. Is she showing it in 4H ?
Winston is very cute and just looks like trouble waiting to happen !

We have 12 Persian cats in our little house... Varying amounts of bunnys in the yard. Plus we just got a new puppy!
Thing is, we really didn't get a puppy as much as we got a moose calf!  Yeah a mastiff puppy.  Eleven weeks old when we got her and probably #25.
Currently she is at 15 weeks old and over #55 closing on #60
We have decided that we must have been insane !!! Hopefully just temporary....  
I've told Liz that now,we are just going to have to get a fork lift and start ordering kibble by the pallet (you really can do that)
Also any thought of retiring at 62 just went out the window! We couldn't afford too now!

On the flip side, this is the coolest dog I've ever shared a life with.  Smart, you can watch her forehead furrow when she is thinking. Fearless , nothing daunts her, she genetically knows she is the BIG DOG!
A mellow dog of war. She spends her time (when not destroying puppy stuff)  cruising between wherever I'm at and Liz is.  Just watching.  Not a LGD but a PGD   a people guardian dog. They can be livestock dogs as well. Yet they are friendly and calm dogs. Males can reach well over #220 ! Females #150 +.  Ours is 1/4 Great Pyrenees , they are LGD and females ave. #100-120 we are hoping "Molly" favors that side of her parentage!

I was just looking at this again, and noticed the size of her feet!  I’m going to add a picture of Hazel (9 wks) and my Rat Terrier, Ladybug, side by side - notice their feet!  Ladybug is six years old.  (I had just put them back in the kennel - don’t want Hazel loose yet if I’m not outside, and she needs some company or she cries, so poor Ladybug is in durance vile with her.)

Kathleen,

Well, I don’t know about spoiled, but he does think that the world is simply one big playground.

Eric

Those are some big paws to grow into!

I think Winston wants Topsy to come visit!

Pearl,

I don’t know exactly who Topsy is, but Winston is pretty much up to play with anyone or anything—including things that are either not there or just not visible.  I forgot how adorable little kittens are.  It has been a while since we had one.  And in case you could not tell, I have a real soft spot for this one.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:Pearl,

I don’t know exactly who Topsy is, but Winston is pretty much up to play with anyone or anything—including things that are either not there or just not visible.  I forgot how adorable little kittens are.  It has been a while since we had one.  And in case you could not tell, I have a real soft spot for this one.

Eric

Topsy is the cute little lady kitten above

Pearl,

I don’t know why, but I cannot see a picture of Topsy.  Maybe it did not send?

Eric

Housework is boring, kittens is MUCH more fun... I join the kitten pics!
Sorry about picture quality, this was made on a scanner 20 years ago, the one that I'm feeding low left (Maculato) was born in 1998, the others six months after him. Clockwise from top left, I introduce you to: Krishna Easter, Ajruna Nefertiti  a male kitten of that litter that I forget his name, Varanane (the mom of some of them, the litter I was naming wrongly) Krishna's Easter's belly, Hemma on top of the bucket and Heather dancing below, and Maculato when he was less than 2 days old.
Whoa, edit, that's the wrong litter... Correcting the names. Kittens are hard to tell apart!



Mac and Hemma stayed with me, and lived to over 15 years old each. I still miss them terribly. They were the closest people I have ever had in my life to children. Hemma was my supervisor, she was positive I could do nothing without cat supervision. I never did get her to hand me tools though :D

:D

Pearl,

Found the issue.  I can’t read!! I did not see Topsy’s name at the top of the pic!  A noob I am!

Also, love the collection of pets you have there.

We have had our share of cats too.  In May we had to put down Annabelle, our 19(!) year old tortoise shell.  She was the first birthday gift my wife gave to me after we were married.  She was a great companion, but she did have thyroid cancer.  She had a gigantic lump on her neck by the end.

Being a little tortie, she had quite the voice.  Everyone always knew her opinion.  2 days before she died she absolutely howled all night.  This was annoying but hardly unusual.  The next day she was silent and she had absolutely no energy.  At a recent vet trip we found that she had dropped to 4.8 pounds.  We realize now that she was probably howling in pain, and the next day she could barely move.  We took her to the vet and held her as she was put down.

It was sad, but she had been with us for 19 years so we felt pretty fortunate.  Sadly though, my daughter’s hamster died the same day.  We buried them side by side, had a little funeral and I delivered a eulogy for each of them.  They each have their own rock as a headstone.

Eric

Winston has stopped being pure cute and is now 1/2 cute and 1/2 troublemaker!

Don’t get me wrong, he is adorable, but now he loves to attack!  Hands, feet, other pets, nothing is of limits to him!  Last night I was trying to go to sleep and he wanted to attack my nose!  As in he would actually bite my septum!  Eww!  Gross!  And hard to sleep through!

Eric

Yup Eric....Winston sure does look like a troublemaker.  Completely adorable!

If he gets to be too much send him off on vacation with me in Maine :)

Eric Hanson wrote:Winston has stopped being pure cute and is now 1/2 cute and 1/2 troublemaker!

Don’t get me wrong, he is adorable, but now he loves to attack!  Hands, feet, other pets, nothing is of limits to him!  Last night I was trying to go to sleep and he wanted to attack my nose!  As in he would actually bite my septum!  Eww!  Gross!  And hard to sleep through!

Eric

Eric: that's a fun stage, ain't it? I love rowdy kittens :)  Give him lots of things he's allowed to attack. When he attacks inappropriate things, distract him with something he IS allowed to attack. And at this stage, I would put toys in the tub for kittens, get them used to the idea that the tub is a play space. Later, when they bring things like birds into the house, they tend to take them to the tub to shred them. I'd much rather clean up exploded mourning dove from the tub than my bed. After you de-bird your bed a few times, you get sneakier :) That was my solution, cat play space that has hot water and a drain.

My solution the nose biting at night etc was twofold: play with them HARD before bed, get them worn out; and I slept in a loft 6 foot off the floor, with carpet down the sides, and the steps. Kittens who got rowdy in the night got pushed gently off the bed (they learned to grab the carpeted wall on the way down, and I did NOT do that to kittens too small to fall correctly!) Bed is mine for sleeping. You can bring a soft toy to bed, but there will be no rowdy wars in there. Rowdy wars are before bed, or without me involved. You can do whatever you want in the living room at night, but the bed is mine.

It's no different, to me, than raising anyone else: you figure out how they learn, how to work with their nature and learning style, provide lots of good distractions, and be consistent with feedback. Cats are mostly crepuscular, they are most active at dawn and dusk. If you work with that, not against it, it's MUCH easier.

And for what it's worth, with how I raise kittens, those bottle fed kittens in my pictures (and there have been a lot of them) are always easy to place in new homes when they are ready to go, people who know how they have been taught REALLY want them. In that pic, the kitten named Easter (not my name for him) went to North Carolina, from New Mexico, one of my exes wanted a kitten I had taught to be a neat smart cat, and was willing to drive the mileage.

Winston is SO CUTE! :D I wish I had energy for kittens right now, but I don't. I always want kittens.  :D

Pearl,

Please make no mistake, I LOVE WINSTON!!!  In fact I would be tempted to say that he is *my* cat, but more accurately, I am *his* human!  He likes to follow me around.  That’s why he followed me to bed last night.

And fear not, he gets plenty of playtime.  Our favorite is the feather toy on a stick.  Dangle that around and he will leap acrobatically into the air.  He also has plenty of cat toys and a few dog toys to play with.  

But his two favorite toys by far are the older cat and the dog!  Winston weighs about 3 pounds, and he chases and terrorizes the 12 pound cat and the 65 pound dog!  The dog is just a gentle soul and hard to work up, and the older cat is aloof, but Winston is the little mostly entertaining terror around the house.

Due to my insomnia and meds I have to go to bed early—8:30 is common.  Winston followed me upstairs last night and was waiting for me when I got out of the bathroom.  I turned off the lights, crawled into bed and was besieged by the kitten (which was entertaining, cute and annoying all at the same time!).  My daughter rescued me.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:Pearl,
Please make no mistake, I LOVE WINSTON!!!  In fact I would be tempted to say that he is *my* cat, but more accurately, I am *his* human!  He likes to follow me around.  That’s why he followed me to bed last night.

I apologize if it sounded like I said you didn't love him :D He sounds very lovable! :)
I love attack kittens, they also tend to grow up to be good hunters. the kittens I am not fond of are the ones who are non-active, and grow up to be lump cats who just want to sleep. (I also prefer goats to sheep, same concept.)
I was just saying this is a very teachable stage, just as when a 3 year old kid starts counting everything is the best time to teach him numbers and math, the best time to teach a kitten how to be a good hunter without being a crappy roommate is at the attack kitten stage. I never had children, so the skills most people have for raising kids got translated into raising animals in me, and I was showing some of the things I do, because a lot of people know what to do with a 3 year old kid who is counting, but may not have thought about what the kitten is learning right now (besides that your ankles are good targets) and how to work with it. :)

And if you get tired of him, mail him to Missouri!!  I love good clever kittens, they can grow up to be awesome cats!!  :D  And Tag Along cats make me smile :) The two bottle kittens I kept (Maculato and Hematite) were both tag along cats, that's part of why I chose them to keep, out of a batch of chaos that was 18 bottle kittens or so deep (that's a long story!)  

No apologies necessary Pearl, I knew exactly what you meant.  And yes, I do love the active kitty stage.

On the other hand, possibly the best cat we ever had was a Maine Coon.  He was amazing.  Absolutely huge!  Almost intimidating!  But he was sooo gentle and the loudest sound he ever made was an “eek.”  What a gentle giant!  And also what a terror to mice!

But I totally get what you mean by attack kittens.

Eric  

This is Dolly. When she was six weeks old I tried to take back a chunk of meat she'd snatched out of my hand and got a scar that took six months to go away. She turned five this year, but she's still got the same attitude. Systematically swats everything off the countertop like she's teeing off a bucket of golf balls.

kittens want to catch mice, its in their dna. they want to play all the time when they are not napping or getting petted/love. they tare into anything they can and poke head and claws into any little place they can