Bossy Kitten update

Lola has been living with us for a week, and it's hard to imagine life without her now. She is the cutest, and sometimes when she's doing something amazing and adorable our hearts get full and we look at each other and say, “What's it going to be like if we have a baby?” Surely a million times worse (better).

She's getting stronger and smarter every day, and she's a curious little monkey. She knows how to jump off the bed to get to her food, and when she's in the right mood she can go down the stairs with a lot of coaching and encouragement. She's too little to go up.

Because she's so young, and really too little to be away from her mama, she can't eat regular kitten food yet. So we warm up cat milk replacer (basically baby formula for kittens) and mix it with baby cat food. For the first few days she was putting her front paws in the dish every time she ate and then tracking milky footprints all over, but she seems to have learned not to do that. She's very good about using her litter box.

She spends a large portion of the day sleeping, and when she gets sleepy she will happily fall asleep in any position, particularly next to or on top of a warm body. She loves getting under the covers in bed. For the first few nights we kept her in the guest room and switched off sleeping with her there. Then we left her in there alone for a couple nights (we missed our bed), and she slept through the night tucked into a blanket without making a squeak. On Saturday she was hanging out in our room around bedtime, so we decided to try having her in there, and she slept on the rug next to our bed without waking up until morning. (The Bossy Cat sleeps on that rug as well, but as far away as possible from Lola). We'll keep her with us at night for the foreseeable future.

As for the Bossy Cat, she's starting to relax, but she decidedly does not like the kitten. She can tolerate Lola being in the same room, as long as she doesn't get too close. When the kitten gets too curious, she gets hissed at (and once, swiped at). The Bossy Cat is a bit of a bully. It's getting better, though, and we're holding out hope that eventually they'll be friends. In the meantime, we're mostly keeping them apart, and marveling at how enormous Lucy seems compared to Lola.

It's going to be hard to say goodbye to my sweet little family in a few weeks, so I'm trying to enjoy every moment of being home.

All photos by CameraMan