lavendertook: Cessy and Kimba (Default)
( May. 21st, 2021 04:03 am)
Happy Birthday, [personal profile] hanarobi from Purrsimmon, Shuri, Kimba, and Tuxie!

Hope Bangs and Gideon and new kitty I don’t know the name of are loving you up!





Tuxie is not into this Meezer Family togetherness thing, so he did not take part in the above pic or ever intends to for any other.

lavendertook: (meezer kitten and ice drip)
( Nov. 9th, 2020 12:35 am)
So. New kitten! I brought him home today! Loooooooook!

Before he was 3 months old

This pic was taken by his foster and put up on petfinder.com and I as not strong enough to resist applying for him. He was named Spencer, but I am calling him Kimba--my earliest childhood anime hero, and also a name close to our Kimbra. I’ll give him his full name when I'm sure it fits him. He is about 3 1/2 months old--about 2 weeks older than Shuri was when I brought her home last year, but the pic is probably closer to when he was 2 months. And OMG, he is soooooo sweet! He loves to be held and purrs like a motorboat and goes straight for your face with his nose locking his eyes on yours. So, so, so loving!

I met him on zoom almost 3 weeks ago--yup the kittens are all up on pandemic tech, too. And I of course said I would take him. The very next evening, poor Tuxie started bleeding out his rear all over the placeand peeing all over. I got him to the vet and it was a urinary tract infection as I suspected. They are apparently very painful, poor baby. The doc gave him a shot of Covenia, and gave he heavy duty probiotics to give him. We decided to wait 2 weeks before bringing in the kitten, depending on how he was doing, not wanting to add stress until he was well. He progressed wonderfully, and had his followup last Monday, and the go ahead on the kitten. So we worked out the details this very insane week in this country. Tuesday I was busy voluntering with Election Defenders as a poll monitor/voter aide for my county down in Fort Washington. Then I was scattered and kind of off the rest of the week like most of us. But we worked it out, and I drove out to Round Hill, VA a little town near the Appalachians, met his wonderful foster and brought him home with a gorgeous sunset over the mountains in my rear view mirror. It’s not far from El Trumpo’s golf course, so I am glad I did not run into his motorcade either way.

Read more... )
Shuri attacked me tonight, but it wasn’t her fault.

We were in the kitchen and I was swinging her light-up squeaky mouse teaser and she was laying down grabbing and chewing it, when I spotted a huge (to me) spider about the size of a quarter and not a house spider crawling across the floor. I immediately went into kill-it-before-it-escapes-and-jumps-on-me- when-I-least-expect-it mode. I picked up a cardboard tray Purrsimmon sometimes sits in to squish it and failed the first time, and then all of a sudden felt claws ripping my calf and shin. Shuri had wrapped around my right lower leg and was clawing the helll out of it.

“warning-for-descriptions-of-bleeding” )
Happy Birthday, [personal profile] claudia603!!!!!

Purrsimmon, Shuri, and Tuxie send their birthday greetings!

Shuri’s birthday was Sept 20th (she is 1) and Purrsimmon’s birthday will be Oct 1st (she will be 2) so they are very happy they get to sandwich yours between theirs.



Tuxie would like everyone to settle down so he can go back to sleep.



Hugs, love, and purrs!!!!!
For the first time, I am sitting on the sofa with Tuxie in the cat bed to the left of me, and Purrsimmon in the cat bed to the right of me, and Shuri slithered in between Purrsimmon and me, and is snuggled against me. All 4 of us are on the sofa together! Shuri and Purrsimmon look so cutely intertwined.

The girls don’t sleep together too much, because it’s hard for one of them to not start licking and then wrestling the other, so they usually sleep separate. But they’re managing it for now. They would love to be cuddling with Tuxie, too, but he still would not allow that. If he lives long enough, that may change one day. I am a happy human with my fuzzy kids around me.

In 4 days, Shuri will be a year old! She is the first of my kitties whose birthday I know since her mother gave birth to her litter in a foster home. For her birthday present Sunday, I am going to move the refrigerator, and sweep out the dozens of toys she has shoved under it for safe-keeping. It will be like being in a cat toy shop! There are times I have tried to stop her, but she is too quick, and so off her toy went where it would be stored and safe. That she wouldn’t have it to play with, is one causal chain link too far for her little brain, excellent cat brain as it is. Cats are really great at causal reasoning for one step, but one step only. Still better than a lot of people.

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Shuri just sneaked up to my bowl of salad on the table, extracted a crouton from it with her mouth, and ran off with it. Just a very smooth stealth meezer move as I was handing other things. Gave me the best belly laugh I've had in a while.

I just pulled the bowl away as another heist was underway--I don't think those spices are good for her tummy, or she'd get half of everything I eat. Tuxie is a good sneak as well, but his diabetes limits what I can let him have. Sweet Pursimmon, however, is a little too timid to steal, so far at least, or it may be beneath her royal status as a lost princess. We'll see if that changes over time.

Hi!
So back to a simpler time, when cat wrangling was my major anxiety and hope, back to the last day of 2019 and the saga of Purrsimmon and the rocky introduction of little Shuri.

Though Shuri did not have such a storied background as Purrsimmon, and thank goodness for that, here is what I do know about her history. Her mother Silverbell was found or surrendered to a shelter in Rowan County, NC between Winston Salem and Charlotte--central piedmont area of the state. I had driven just north of that county many times when I lived in Carrboro and Chapel Hill in the 80's. That shelter needed to make room for coastal shelter refugees from the effects of Hurricane Dorian in September, so a foster in Harford County, MD took in the pregnant Silverbell and there she gave birth to a litter of 7, on September 20th, Shuri among them. Here are pics of Silverbell I saw on petfinder:



Her fluffy coat is nothing like Shuri's short one or in color except for the cute little snowshoes. I can see a resemblance in face shape.

Read more... )
When we left off, it was Saturday night, the last night of Chanuka, and I had just brought Pecan Pie home and set her up in the bathroom for the night with beds and plenty of toys, and she was a happy kitten with a constant motor boat purr, though she'd try to walk out every time I came to the bathroom during the night.



Since the upstairs bathroom was small, and I didn't want her stuck in there when I took a shower, I put her in my bedroom during the day with more toys. I just couldn't keep her in the bedroom at night because I didn't want to shut out Tuxie, since he sometimes came to bed with me and I wanted to avoid causing whatever resentment I could. So that all worked out and then there were several calls and emails on Sunday to the rescue to set up getting new antibiotics for Shuri to replace the bottle I threw out in the bag she peed in.

Now I had 3 cats in separate places to divide time with. Purry now had the run of the house, along with Tuxie and no blood had been shed, and the likelihood of that happening was dropping so that was great. The downstairs bathroom was still her base and she spent most time in there, with play runs in the living room.



When I emailed my cousin and brother I was deciding on whether to name the kitten Shuri or Iskierka (Iska Kitty), they both stated a preference for Shuri, and I saw the benefit of the easier name being her first name, so Shuri it was.

So it was time to introduce Shuri to Purry and see if they'd get along and be the companion they each needed. I shut Purrsimmon back in the downstairs bathroom that was still her safe space and toy filled, and brought in Shuri. Shuri immediately started playing with all these wonderful new toys.



Read more... )
When I was deciding whether or not to keep Purrsimmon's name, I googled "persimmon" and was surprised to learn it was a Native American word, or rather, an aglicization thereof. Specifically, it is an Algonquin word of the Powhatan people, which are the people who lived where Purry was found, fostered, and now lives, and if I followed correctly, some descendants have taken up tribal recognition in NJ, the state where I was born and grew up. So these are all awesome connections arguing for keeping the name.

I had always thought "persimmon" was an Asian word, probably because more grocery stores carry Chinese and Japanese varieties of persimmons. But since Purry is a siamese cat, it's good that there is an Asian connection here in usage and there are varieties of persimmon trees grown in the highlands of southeast Asia. There are hundreds of varieties world wide, but the Powhatan would have been referring to the Virginia Persimmon, a tree that grows throughout the eastern US up to CT and as far west as Minnesota, and has a smaller fruit than the popular Asian varieties. In those of these trees that live at least a century, their heart wood (dead core) becomes a hard ebony wood, and ebony trees are actually of the same family. Technically, the fruit is classified as a berry, which means I have me a Purry Berry! A Creamy Dreamy Sunny Funny Furry Purry Berry with the Bluest Blueberry eyes!!! Mooooore nicknames! I will save telling you her full name for another entry.

Here's a good pic I finally got of my Elf Princess's eyes:



Read more... )
So here's what I know about Pursimmon's back story: she was found at the end of July as a pregnant stray in the northwestern most county of the Maryland panhandle by animal control and taken to the county shelter. The county is sparsely populated and the Alleghany Mountains of the Appalachian Range runs through it. So there's lots of wilderness and state parks with a few small towns and some villages and resorts.

I don't know if she was found in a town, around homesteads, a resort or camp where she was left behind by tourists, or in the wilderness, but I'm glad it was summer and hope she didn't go stray in the winter, because that would be some cold country to be out in winter. But there's no telling how many days or weeks or months she had been living stray, whether she was a young kitten or a young cat when lost or dumped, and what kind of socialization she had before being homeless. Siameses can get pregnant earlier than other breeds, as early as 4 months old.

Within a day of being captured and brought to the shelter, this mountain girl gave birth to 3 kittens. I imagine even a shelter cage felt safer than the life she was living as a place to give birth, poor thing. One of them died within a few days. The remainder were a flame-point boy, like his mom except he was deaf, and a dilute tortoiseshell girl.

A rescue out there transported Purrsimmon and her kittens south to a rescue group in Purcelville, VA in the Virginia foothills, a little more populated area at the far edge of the Washington, DC metro area where she and her kittens would have a better chance to find adopters. A fosterer with a spare room to keep a mom with her kittens in separation from her other foster animals was found, and Purrsimmon was put on mom duty for 2 months until her kittens were old enough to be adopted. Her daughter was adopted then, but her son broke his leg and so Purrsimmon was kept on mom duty with him another month. Her son was then adopted by a man who works with deaf people, so that was a nice connection where his disability could be an asset in his new home.

Purrsimmon was spayed in October. They determined her to be about a year old, so they made her birthday, October 1st. Off mom duty, she could now hang out with the other foster cats and she liked to sit near another young cat, a dilute tortoiseshell girl, but was skittish with people. Now it was time to find her a home and they started advertising her on Petfinder.com and other sites. This was the pic of her I saw on Petfinder before I decided to ask about her in December after Moo died:



Read more... )
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lavendertook: Cessy and Kimba (Default)
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