partial redemption

All right, I seem to be partially redeemed thanks to the fresh litter box. And she’s still purring, so I guess I’m not hated yet…

tough night ahead for kitten

I had a non-cancellable business dinner. Luckily it was just a block from home. Partway into dinner I realized that the vet is open till 10 PM even on holidays. I ducked out of dinner early and ran over there to see if they might have any of these kitten bottles for sale.

Unfortunately, they sold their last one two days ago. So I’m left with Sami’s shop, and I’m not sure what time it opens tomorrow.

The vet on duty said, no, she’s two weeks away from being able to lick milk from a container. He did give me a syringe, free of charge, as a stopgap.

And yes, she was able to take a bit from the syringe. But it was thoroughly unenjoyable. She treated it like horrible medicine.

She’ll do fine, but this is a big step backwards. She’s back into the shivering, somewhat neurotic mode of her first 24 hours after rescue.

I wish I had known just how dependent she was on this single means of milk delivery; then I would have made sure to have a couple of backup bottles to cover for her inevitable destruction of all the bottle nipples.

It might not sound like much in principle- waiting 12 or so hours until the pet shop opens. But you have no idea how much milk she normally drinks in any given 12-hour period. She’ll get through it, but this is going to be a really un-nice night for her. I’ll keep looking for stopgap solutions in the meantime.

The one saving grace is that she’s actually shown a surprising ability to eat some dry food tonight (the vets last Monday told me she might). So she won’t be entirely without nutrients. But the lack of liquid is what worries me. I’ll have to keep giving her minimal syringe drinks.

But here she comes brushing my leg. What a sweetheart, not angry at all.

Purring! Wow, what an adorable kitten.

milk crisis

The cat-feeding bottle came with just three rubber nipples, and little Tamanya’s vigorous feeding has now led her to bite through all three of them.

Normally, no problem: I would just go down the street to Sami Pet Shop and get another bottle for her. The problem is that May 1 is Labor Day in Egypt as in most of the world, and thus Sami is closed for the day. Unfortunately, this coincides with a near-Napoleonic milk campaign by the kitten; never has she been drinking so constantly and ferociously as now.

None of the other options have worked. She’s unable for some reason to use the familiar bottle with the top half of the nipple bitten off, when I expected she’d like that even better due to the increased flow. I also have a small human baby bottle that I bought her before finding the special one for kittens, and even though it doesn’t look much bigger to the naked eye, she seems to be horrified by having this unfamiliar one in her mouth, and refuses to try to drink from it. Nor does she seem able or willing to lick milk straight from a plate, despite bits of evidence suggesting that she’s gone ahead and done just that a couple of times in the past. And worst of all, there’s no way I can get back to Sami’s shop or any other open one until deep into tomorrow afternoon.

In the middle of all this, she ran directly in front of my right foot as I was walking and got kicked halfway across the room, which she seemed to think was deliberate. Boy, never have I looked so mean in her eyes as now. I’ll have to find some trick to reassure her for awhile, but I probably should have foreseen this and bought an extra bottle a couple of days ago. That poor creature.

The best-case scenario is that she’s simply rejecting the lick-from-the-plate option for sheer oral pleasure reasons and will finally cave in and utilize that option within the next few hours or so. Otherwise, I’m going to have an insanely angry and undernourished kitten on my hands by the time I get back here with a new kitten bottle a little under 24 hours from now. I’m feeling really bad about her right now.

prancing

Right now Tamanya is leaping in the air and landing nearby on all fours, like a baby gazelle. I wish I could shoot video of it.

We’ve had some challenges in the last 48 hours, but she still seems to be on the right track– eating like a fiend, and with clean and shiny fur.

speaking of Schelling

His generally dismal public reception in the late Berlin years is a fine warning as to why it’s not a good idea to be too precocious in philosophy.

I once read an interestingly argued claim that Schelling and Duns Scotus were the only real prodigies in the history of philosophy, though this is factually inadequate since it leaves out Berkeley and Hume who had written major work by their mid-20’s (though that used to be older than it is now, with our modern invention of ultra-extended adolescence; I read an article recently saying that on average we all develop 10 years later intellectually than was the case in 1900). In analytic philosophy there is of course Kripke and probably some other cases. But again, I don’t think Kripke actually improved after age 30. Maybe you get just one pistol, and if you fire it early, it’s fired.

philosophers harshly critiquing other philosophers

Concerning my post last night about philosophers harshly critiquing other philosophers (and here I’m talking about philosophers they basically admire in some way, not just enemies they’re contemptuously dismissing), Michael Austin sends some gems. I’m simply going to quote his email verbatim:

“A good couple of people to add to your list of thinkers who trash their predecessors would be the treatment of Fichte by both Schelling and Novalis. Schelling’s first few books are all about Fichte’s short-comings, with his summation of transcendental idealism (criticizing both Kant and Fichte) being in his On The History of Modern Philosophy. Novalis has several essays against Fichte as well. Both of course studied with him in Jena.

There’s also Kierkegaard’s wonderfully mean letter to his brother, written while attending Schelling’s Berlin lectures:

‘Schelling drivels on quite intolerably! If you want to form some idea what this is like then I ask you to submit yourself to the following experiment as a sort of self-inflicted sadistic punishment. Imagine person R’s meandering philosophy, his entirely aimless, haphazard knowledge, and person Hornsyld’s untiring efforts to display his learning: imagine the two combined and in addition to an impudence hitherto unequalled by any philosopher; and with that picture vividly before your poor mind go to the workroom of a prison and you will have some idea of Schelling’s philosophy. He even lectures longer to prolong the torture. … Consequently, I have nothing to do in Berlin. I am too old to attend lectures and Schelling is too old to give them. So I shall leave Berlin as soon as possible. But if it wasn’t for Schelling, I would never have travelled to Berlin. I must thank him
for that. … I think I should have become utterly insane if I had gone on hearing Schelling.'”

from a vet on the web

“The kitten will knead the mother whilst feeding as this stimulates the milk flow.”

Makes sense. The vet continues with more good advice:

“Some cats want to be with their human all the time. They stay in physical contact if possible and are vocal in demanding attention. Many of these cats knead and suck their owner’s clothes when they are being held. They may show signs of stress if they are left alone or do not get enough attention. Overly dependent behaviour in a cat can occur if the owner’s attitude to the cat encourages it, or if it has intensive nursing.

Start trying to teach the kitten to be more independent and when it starts to knead, discourage this. Try to distract it from what it is doing and get its attention on something else. Maybe get a tickle feather and play with this as soon as it starts to knead.

Playing games is beneficial for kittens. However, if it gets too excited or aggressive stop and walk away. If it plays gently, make sure you praise it in order to reinforce this good behaviour. You can also reward with a tiny treat.
Unwanted behaviour must be distracted – a sharp noise like some stones shaken in a tin or dropping something on the floor.”

aggressive kitten measure

Tamanya’s really a sweetheart, but yesterday her feeding aggressiveness made me realize she couldn’t be trusted to sleep in my vicinity in the near future.

Her usual method of telling me she wants to be bottle-fed is to paw my lips gently, whether I’m awake or asleep. But yesterday it went a bit too far on several occasions. Once she clawed my lips rather than just pawing them, and it really hurt. Another time she pawed me directly in the eyeball, though thankfully without claws. On yet another occasion, she bit my nose. I was on the phone last night with a friend, and she told me about a friend of hers in England who received serious eye damage in a case like this, and that settled it– little Tammy was going to have sleep in a different room.

She did fine with it. She didn’t cry outside my door, and she was able to lick up most of the milk from a dish that I had left for her during the night. She also doesn’t seem filled with anger and resentment towards me today.

Naturally, I also feel much better rested after a full night’s sleep without three kitten wake-ups, so this is the way we’ll do it until further notice.