Kittens Now 10 Weeks Old

How quickly time flies. We have now had our kittens for a whole week, and they are ten weeks old already! Over their first week they have grown not just in size but in confidence, and in personality, and they are bonding with us and showing us great affection, especially little Ruby towards me. This is so great for me, because for years I’ve put up with both our old kitties favouring my hubby over me haha!

They are gradually exploring the big interactive cat tree my hubby made for them, and they have both been through the moving tunnel (no photos or videos yet as I’ve never had the camera handy in time to catch them at it!) and yesterday Ruby overcame her fear of the moving basket and hopped in, and she’s been in it today as well. To start with we thought they didn’t really like the bits that moved because it made them feel insecure, but they are getting bolder by the day!

Here’s the video of her playing in it.

We took them to the vet yesterday for their inoculations and had a new vet who was very charming and thorough. It’s a lovely practice and they’ve looked after our kitties so well since we moved here. Everyone in the surgery was delighted with our new kittens and enjoyed having a good look at them, but they weren’t too happy about it!

After the battle we had to try and clear the house of fleas before they arrived, I was a bit fed up when the vet found one on Lily. It’s a battle on several fronts really – we keep spraying the house, and I’ve recently discovered a non-chemical remedy which I am sure is going to help – diatomaceous earth. This fine powder made from ground-up diatoms affects fleas and other insects mechanically rather than chemically, and is totally harmless to animals and humans. It is very useful to put in parts of the house where it’s hard to reach with the vacuum cleaner, and I’ve also put some in the Hoover bags to kill any fleas that get hoovered up. I’ve also just got a little powder puffer from Ebay that I have filled with the stuff, and have been puffing a bit onto the kittens’ fur and rubbing it in well. Diatomaceous earth is also used as a food supplement for humans and animals so is totally harmless to them when they wash their fur. The vet wanted us to spray them with flea spray, and then keep them separate for a couple of hours to prevent them washing each other, but I couldn’t see how you could prevent them washing themselves and ingesting the stuff, so I wasn’t too happy about this.

Unfortunately fleas are an endemic problem wherever there are pets, and the warmer weather we have these days doesn’t help the problem, nor does the fact that we all keep our houses warmer in winter than we used to 50 years ago. They don’t bite people if there are cats and dogs in the house, but in the period when we were without kitties, my poor hubby was getting eaten alive again – for some reason they don’t like me and I never get bitten and neither to I get bitten by mosquitos! I set some flea traps overnight (a shallow dish of water with some washing up liquid in it to reduce the surface tension, put on the floor with a lamp over it) and managed to catch quite a few. There are lots of hints and tips online on how to attack them and with a multi-pronged approach, hopefully we’ll keep on top of the problem from now on!

I am delighted with my new video editing app on the iPad, LumaFusion, because it saves a lot of time with each video I make. Today I’ve started working on some of my art projects which I’ve wanted to make into videos for ages – I have made a new template for my art videos, after doing a kitty video template, which makes creating the videos a lot faster, as well as producing a consistent look. I said to my hubby this evening that my iPad Pro is one of the best things I’ve ever bought.