The kitten I ended up with is firmly integrated into the home and is growing up. He is Very Smart-- he learns super quickly from experience, and more than any other animal I've known he is able to attach actions and consequences in a less-general way. For instance, he understands that mugs might be hot so he approaches all my mugs cautiously after one unfortunate paw incident, but is unconcerned about water bottles. He knows not to attack bare feet but needs to learn not to attack each different pattern of socked feet, and when I'm putting on pants the dangling leg of the pants is fair game until my foot comes out the bottom. He knows when jumping on me not to use his claws, and is learning that per different pair of pants too. That said, the skin on my hands and arms hasn't been fully intact for awhile even while he has learned to mostly keep his claws in when playing. However he's a bit of a bully and isn't great at reading the room around the other cats. He's especially obsessed with Hazard, and will jump onto hazard's back with his arms around the older cat's neck and just hang on like a little black cape. Also, he has never been completely successfully photographed.
His primary mode is flitting from cover to cover like Things in the backdrop of a horror movie, or alternatively curling up with his paws around my neck and his head under my chin, sleeping and purring. Kittens, right?
Solly was disappearing for a day or a day and a half at a time and returning for food for the last little while. This concerned me for obvious reasons and I built more fencing, blocked holes in the fence-- and then the neighbour who has his own two LGDs tracked me down and let me know he saw her get hit by a car on Friday and had been trying to track me down and tell me. Now, when he told me she was in the fence and doing fine. I've been in the habit of doing a quick body-check when I haven't seen her in a day, just running my hands over all her limbs and spine and belly to check for injuries because who knows what could happen to her out there, and she'd always and continues to be fine.
The weather has been really mild and I'd made her a dog house in case that's why she was disappearing, but she didn't use it. After learning she'd been hit I let her come in the house and she stuck in there all day when allowed. She's still acting very afraid of Avallu even though Avallu politely ignores her now, though who knows what they get up to when I'm not around. Ideally she'd feel comfortable using the downstairs dog door but that's where Avallu sleeps, so it seems unlikely. At this point I'm letting her in through the front door to the upstairs, and it looks like she wants to be a velcro/house dog. If she could just let herself in and out I'd be fine with that, though I'll need to work on resource guarding around the cats. Like Avallu used to, she guards snuggles with me. I've also made her a second dog house that she seems to like better - at least, she slept in it last night. I'm not leaving her in at night until the upstairs is better set up, too.
She's been playing with the next door dogs when she escapes and I suspect she'd like a similar-aged companion. Four dogs at once is A Lot, but it does make sense to keep in age-similar pairs. Nothing is happening on that front while I still have pigs and a scary financial situation though.
Avallu seems to be doing well. He's staying outside more and is more active so it looks like the antibiotics worked to clear up his UTI. His x-rays showed a bit of arthritis in his back and he tends to want me to let him in and out instead of using the dog door, so I'm wondering if he does have a bit of pain and I need to talk to the vet about that. HE's not young anymore.
Thea is a little food-guardy around Solly, and I suspect would like more solid routine around food. They all get fancy fresh meat when the grocery store has extra in my expiry-day pickups and that semi-rhythm seems to upset her. We're getting into the time of year when they all need lots of extra calories, so I can start supplementing with fatty pork belly and that will likely help. I also want to renovate the A frame she chose for a doghouse so she has more visual range and more protection in it.
The other cats all still are very snuggly and also miffed at Bear. I don't blame them, since his primary cat interaction mode is attacking, and he initiates most interactions by attacking from stealth. Whiskey and Bear have been sleeping on my bed until I build a door to my bedroom, and Whiskey is very happy with that but even more happy when I work from home and sit in just exactly this one spot at this one time with my computer. Hazard wants me to carry him around whenever the kitten is nearby so he can't be attacked. Demon has taken it on himself to play with the kitten a lot of the time, which means he's often socialled out, but he very much appreciates quiet petting if he's protected from the kitten.
It's still extremely warm out, at least for this time of year, just hovering around freezing this week. We've had maybe 4" of snow total and it's mostly either melted or subsided into ice sheets. There's no insulation on the ground if the temperature drops quickly so I expect there'll be burst pipes in town all over this year-- unless we don't actually get those low temperatures. The ground has just finally got cold enough to begin freezing duck and goose feathers to the ice sheet overnight so they get left in the ice when the birds get up in the morning. I'm unsure if they'll go indoors or not.
When Avallu was feeling so bad I took down the original dog bed (crib mattress) I got for Thea that has gone unused. He slept on it and seemed to feel less painful on it, but now that the fire is on downstairs the cats have taken it over. He's far too polite to ask even a single cat to move off it, so he whimpers and settles down on the concrete. Combine that with pottery stuff and I'm making a pottery bench to replace my downstairs table, with the goal of enough room underneath for a second dog bed. I'm also making up cat beds that might be more appealing to them, potentially to put on the wall to give myself more floor space. I've also put up one shelf for pottery and need to put up a bunch more. There's no reason not to display this stuff. So, doing a bunch of rearranging down there ideally to increase both functionality for me and liveability for the animals.
I also finally started cutting out my winter sewing, which has been a challenge with one kitten, one Very Large dog, and three cats in the room. I basically made it work by putting up a gate to keep Solly in the kitchen, feeding the cats, and dumping Bear outside on the deck that doesn't have any way to the ground. By the time he had figured out how to climb down and gone around in through the dog door I'd cut out two and a half pairs of pants.
I take so much comfort in these loved ones, even when literally the entire floor and hall is covered in bodies and it's challenging to move around.
Had some great social days at the pottery studio, answering questions at the open house, and I met someone at the community studio who's equally obsessed with wheel throwing who I can actually talk to about it, so that's nice, but it doesn't feel the same kind of safe and interesting and loving that my pack does.
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