It’s always a bit disheartening to come home to the unmistakable odor of poop in the house. Usually our fosters don’t smell bad, so if we actually smell something, it means that either:

- someone has pooped outside the litter box
- someone has had runny poo
- someone has gotten poo on their fur and will need a bath to get rid of the smell completely.

Guess which one happened yesterday? We check the enclosure, all visible poo is nicely covered in the litterbox. Next we let out each kitten and do the “sniff test”. Our lucky winner was Licorice. Somehow he got poo ON HIS HEAD. He had cleaned most of it off, but his head and ears were still crusty.

How does that happen? Our theory is that someone didn’t cover their poo, then Licorice ran into the litter box, got tackled, and ended up headfirst in the ick. Poor guy.

The first bath is always the most exciting. Licorice was doing OK for a while, but then suddenly he had HAD ENOUGH and yowled. Luna came out of the enclosure and mewed at us, obviously concerned. We quickly finished up and snuggled Licorice in a towel.

The truth is that they need to be in homes. The space we have for them is just too small, they need room to play! Please spread the word to anyone who is looking for a cat!

Most parents become obsessed with poo at some point, and we are no different. We’ve been dosing the buns with various forms of good bacteria, and yesterday we were thrilled when we noticed that they are producing perfect little healthy, firm, tiny poops! Yay!

They are definitely doing well so far. They are active and definitely know where the milk comes from. After they are full of nummy warm milk they want to cuddle for a bit, but they would just as happily run around and play.

Cute note: Their little ears twitch when they’re drinking milk. SO CUTE.

The remaining two baby bunnies seem to be doing quite well! They are definitely active and playful, and they have begun to realize where the tasty milk comes from. Now when we uncover the cage to feed them, they are both trying to get to us through the bars. It’s so darn cute!

This morning we found another of the buns sitting in their water dish, hardly breathing at all. We have a fairly shallow water dish in there and only his paws were wet, but he was very cold. We rushed to get a heating pad and towels and we rubbed his fur gently to stimulate him, but he didn’t make it. It wasn’t really a surprise, he was sitting apart from the other two last night, kind of hunched up.

Please send happy thoughts for the remaining two bunnies. They do seem very energetic and were bouncing around the cage this morning and eating timothy hay. Soon I’ll be trying to feed them some formula.

Our foster family has grown again! This is our “M” litter!

Today four baby domestic rabbits were found without their mom. We’re not sure where Momma is, but we’re keeping a lookout for her where the babies were found. Unfortunately one of the babies, Mortimer, was attacked by a cat and didn’t survive. He died in my arms this evening. He wasn’t looking well, but he didn’t seem to be in pain, and there wasn’t anything we could do but hope. At least his last few minutes were spent with someone who loved him.

The babies are about three weeks old. We’ll be feeding them some Kitten Milk Replacer and offering them hay and other food. They enthusiastically chomped down the timothy hay earlier, but they will still need milk until they are about six weeks old.

We have to warn our readers now: baby bunnies are very hard to raise to adulthood without their mom. Most of it has to do with how their digestive system works. When they are transitioning from milk to eating on their own, their guts need to get full of “good” bacteria. Normally this comes from the mother’s milk or from eating a special kind of poo the mother creates that is full of beneficial bacteria and vitamins. The babies may already have some of it, but they will need more. Most orphan bunnies die because of this bacterial imbalance. We can use a special supplement called Benebac, or acidophilus supplements in their water. Or, we can try bunny poo. Since there was another rabbit at the SPCA, I collected some poo and crumbled a bit in their water. We’re trying everything we can.

It’s criminal to be this cute:

Luna is doing well, she has a good appetite and was feeling playful this morning. She even forgave us a little, she came out and accepted treats and some petting. We didn’t try to pick her up. We will have to give her deworming pills very soon, hopefully that will go smoothly and she won’t hate us too much afterward.

I stopped by to see our foster kittens yesterday. They’re getting so big! Loki was adopted, so now only three are left: Licorice, Lahl, and Lyra. Lyra is so orange now!

This morning we had to put Luna in the carrier for the trip to the vet for her spay. She is a smarty cat, so we hid the carrier by the bedroom door. Luna came out and seemed to want to play(!) so I crumpled up some paper and she batted it around. It’s so great that she’s feeling calm enough to play! Then I got out the laser pointer and she really got some exercise. It’s been years since I’ve seen a cat chase that little red dot so hard!

When it was time to go, we thought that we could surprise her by whisking the carrier out quickly. Her countermove was to spread her back legs and grab the edge of the door with her back toes. I swear she’s part monkey. Oh, and she can dissolve her bones when needed. She more or less flowed out of Leslie’s arms and back into her enclosure. Strike 1.

Leslie had to go in and get her from the enclosure, which isn’t what we wanted to do, but our options were running out if we wanted to be to work on time. Once again with Luna safely in her arms, we tried the carrier. This time Luna wasn’t getting anywhere near it, and she performed some amazing gymnastics in Leslie’s arms, which combined with the aforementioned bone jello move, let her slip away again. Now that her enclosure wasn’t safe, she instead managed to slip underneath the couch. The gap there is incredibly small. Stupid jello bones. Strike 2.

I closed Luna’s enclosure door and waited as Leslie herded her out from under the couch. Luna ran to her enclosure door and you could almost see the question mark above her head when it was closed. Then I was there. Luna looked up at me and gave an unhappy meow and hunkered down. I picked her up and scruffed her carefully but firmly, then put her in the carrier. She huddled at the back. We were very sad that we had to break her trust in us, but there was no way around it.

When the vet examined her, he said that she didn’t act like a feral cat. She hunched on the table as he examined her and she looked unimpressed, but she let him look at her ears and teeth. He weighed her without much incident, although he did hover over her. She meowed unhappily a couple of times, which is in itself a great thing because she’s trying to communicate with us. When the vet left to get the sedative shot for Luna, she jammed her head into my armpit and I cuddled her. Apparently I was the lesser of two evils.

I left shortly after she got the “happy juice”. I’ll pick her up later today.

An interesting fact about Luna: The vet said that she is at most eight months old. The poor girl had kittens when she was only six months old. This is why it’s important to get your cat fixed early, anytime after they are 8 weeks old.

Luna has been spending a lot of time in her enclosure, even when we’ve opened the door and called her to come out. Tonight we decided to try and lure her out with a new kind of treat, ham.

Luna is like a lunchmeat-seeking missile. She hasn’t nipped us yet, but her rather enthusiastic pursuit of the ham tonight had us rather nervous at times. It made her forget all about being shy. In fact, we managed to put a cat harness on her and clip her front nails while she was being distracted with nummy bits of ham. Unfortunately, before we decided to clip her nails, she did manage to accidentally snag Leslie’s leg while reaching for a treat. That’s when it became apparent that a nail clip was in Luna’s future.

Due to all the excitement of getting a few morsels of ham, Luna seemed to not notice she was wearing a harness at all. She wandered around, then lay down to rest. Suddenly she sprang up and did an odd slinking run around the livingroom. She looked at the harness and then settled down again. That went a lot better than expected!

She did spend a few minutes on the couch purring, but then went back to her enclosure. We let our dog Annie back into the room (we didn’t want her competing for the ham) and just left the door to Luna’s cage open. Now she’s come out again and is lying down in front of the TV a few feet from Annie.

I really hope that she isn’t truly feral and that she’s just relearning what it’s like to own a human.

Leo and Lacey have both been adopted!

The rest of the kittens are now at Petsmart Preston Crossing. You can go see them and adopt them right from there! A big thanks to Petsmart for providing adoption space for the Saskatoon SPCA!

Luna was meowing yesterday when we woke up. We hurried to open up her enclosure and let her come out. She was a bit cautious, but was stropping against everything she could that was within reach. Finally we went to sit on the couch and she came out to see us. Leslie petted her and then picked her up, and she purred and clenched her paws while being skritched. She didn’t want to stay too long though, soon she was down and scouting around. We didn’t block off the futon, and so of course she went under there and hid. After a while I shook a treat bag and Luna came running out again, but for some reason ignored me and went for her home. I tossed her some treats in there. She is such a sweet cat, just so shy.

Great news, Leo has been adopted! He’ll be going home to a family with three dogs. I’m sure he’ll keep them in line!

Loki and Licorice are both nice and big and ready to join their sisters at the SPCA! They’ll be going there tonight.

Then we’ll just have Luna. I think we’ll get a harness for her to make her easier to catch. She has seemed a bit depressed about her other babies leaving, or maybe she’s just tired of having Loki and Licorice bouncing around her all day.