kitten sleeping position

Directly against my face. I’m used to it.

This also must mean that my cat allergy is gone, which I started to notice a few years ago. When I was about 12, my mother, youngest brother and I all suddenly became very allergic to cats at exactly the same time, pretty much overnight. I don’t know enough about allergies to know how that sort of thing happens, but mine has been fading for a few years; not sure about my family members. If I had had a cat directly touching my face when I was about 15 or 16, it would have taken a couple of days to recover from.

Levinas conference in France

Click below for the brochure.

TI50-brochure-20-04-11

warm milk

It’s like a drug for this kitten when it’s warmed up. She goes into a trance, probably for actual chemical reasons.

The pet stores were closed during the holiday weekend, so I had no choice but to use regular cow’s milk. The vet said it’s acceptable in the short-term, but causes gas since cats don’t have the enzyme to digest it. So I was told to dilute it with water and then to replace it as soon as possible with a special powdered milk, which I finally obtained last night. Michael Austin and his girlfriend are very experienced with kitten rescues, and Michael wrote in to suggest goat’s milk. I simply couldn’t find any for sale in the neighborhood, however. So now I have the powdered stuff.

The two cans of food sold to me by the vet were a smash hit too. She goes crazy as soon as one of those cans even enters the room, and she steps right into the middle of it while eating it.

why are we still wasting time on this nonsense?

“CNN investigation: Obama born in U.S.”

Why not the following instead?

“CNN conclusion: Birthers using birth certificate red herring as coded racist innuendo in place of socially unacceptable direct racism”

the Bulls advance

Chicago eliminates Indiana, 4 games to 1. Atlanta or Orlando next.

Despite the Bulls having had the best record in the NBA, I worry that they’re probably still too young and green to win the NBA title this time. I hope I’m wrong.

April 26 photo

This is a photo of Tamanya from last night (Wednesday). She seemed to do fine spending 11 hours by herself, but with the price that she refused to be even one foot away from me throughout all of last night. I think we can cut her some slack on abandonment fears after what she went through last weekend, though.

Last night, instead of waking me up at 1:30 as usual, she decided to wake me up at 12:30 and 2:30, just for variety’s sake. And then at 5:30 again, though I’m enough of a morning person now that 5:30 isn’t an outrage.

More signs of playfulness as well. And after a few days of practice, I’m better at understanding the subtleties of Tamanya language: what means food, what means “put me down,” etc. I’ve gotten especially good at understanding the bottle-feeding language nuances. A certain pitch of whine, for example, means that the bottle is at a bad angle and nothing is coming out, while another means she’s really not hungry anymore and will soon start spilling all the milk out of her mouth instead of drinking it.

The other thing about yesterday was that I was surprised to miss her just as much as she missed me. It only takes a few days to become deeply invested in the cause. I had to skip a nice dinner party last night, and it was the right decision. Normal social life will be suspended perhaps through the end of May or so.

In any case, this is now a healthy, normal small kitten with a little bit of catching up to do on nourishment. The danger zone is well past, as are the most extreme initial personality quirks that were based on fear.

My one regret for blogging purposes is that feeding is a two-handed job and so can’t be photographed. It is the most hilarious thing to watch and hear her chewing on that rubber bottle nipple with those minuscule sharp teeth. It looks almost like she’s joking, but of course it’s very serious.

[ADDENDUM: Sorry, the initial photo I put up was a repeat from the previous night. The one below is the real photo from last night. Her eyes are fine, by the way. The reason the one eye always looks more dilated than the other is because there is a bright lamp on that side of the couch, and that’s usually where I am sitting while taking photos.]