Saving strange kittens

It seems for a time we have gained a new, very young kitten. Currently named Soot, he’s a black cat with white socks, nose and spot on his chest.

At first he was very scared and did nothing but hiss at us. Once we caught him, we kept him in the bathroom. Slowly we’ve made friends. Although he is still very skittish and bolts when first approached.

About 6 days before this post we started leaving the bathroom door open. This allowed him to see us more and exposer to our cats. It took a few days but now he wonders the house and him and Pippin seem to enjoy chasing each other around. When Pippin is indoors that is. I think Soot has the potential to be a great cat. When you do get to pet him, he has a loud rewarding purr and appears to enjoy being pet. He also purrs when we play with him.

Here’s his backstory thus far.

The story actually begins a few weeks back. I came home in the early afternoon on a sunny day to see a tiny baby kitten sunbathing on the top edges of the seats in the neighbors boat. They had it tarp over it for the winter and just uncovered it the day before.

I needed to take some items over to Nikki and Steve(they are expecting a baby in Dec), so I gathered them up and ran over. While I was there I asked Nikki if they got a new kitten. She said no but Steve found it and the mother when he took the tarp off the boat. He tried to catch them but didn’t have success. She also told me that she’s seen that mother cat with kittens in our yard for the last couple years. Our house sat empty for just over 2 years so a perfect yard for cats with babies. I asked if it would be ok if I tried to trap them, she said sure.

Right after that I got a bowl with wet food and took it over to the boat. The mother was interested but didn’t come close, the kitten was just plain scared and ran to hide.

Next day, I went over there but no sign of either what’s so ever. The 3rd day I found them and completely on accident again. I was doing yard work outside, so I left the back door open. Both Huhu and Pippin like to get some outdoor time in, especially Pippin. I’ve decided he would be really happy as a mostly outdoor cat, expect when he wants to eat. Loves food and warm, soft place to nap. I had just come back inside to grab something when suddenly Huhu bolted indoors clearly startled by something. She was looking towards the wood shed so I went over to check it out. That’s when I saw the mother and the kitten. Ah-ha! She moved it to under our wood shed. And so the courting began. I started putting out wet food and some kitty crunchies.

I caught the kitten once by using a string tied to the door of the pet taxi a friend let me borrow. Soot then spent the night in the house in the carrier, of which it was not happy with and spent a good portion of the night crying. The next day, father’s day, we decided to move him to the bathroom. Soot went right into the drawers of the vanity to hide. I placed a heating pad in the larger drawer and that’s where she was when we left for the concert.

Came home, I went to check in on her and the outlook wasn’t good. Both Richard and I forgot that the vent for the heater wasn’t actually secured to the wall. Since we painted it’s just been resting in it’s spot. Well shit, is all we could think. In our air ducts we could hear Soot crying away, throughout ever room thanks to the system. Richard went into the cellar and pulled the access panel off the furnace. He made sure to disable it so that it didn’t come on. It hasn’t really been a problem in the summer but sometimes at night it will click on.

Close up photo. That face says: like hell I’m going to come out for you, weirdo.

Well, if we reached in there back up into the ducts Soot would go. So we put food outside the open panel and went back upstairs. At this point it was 11 pm and we needed to sleep anyway. At some point in the middle of the night Soot came out, scaled the concrete wall surrounding the unfinished cellar area and went into the crawl space to find an opening to get back outside.

The next morning Richard discovered he was back under the wood shed. During the furnace time, Richard had also found a video on youtube of a mother cat calling her kittens. This worked really well to get Soot and Pippin’s attention, causing both of them to meow a lot. He used this video in the morning when he went to see if we still had a furnace cat.

Also that day it was nice and I was out doing some yard work. Quickly I learned that if I was in the yard and he heard me, he would meow.

Here he is that morning, happily drinking the milk I put out. Later that afternoon I got him to come out more onto the sticks you see at the bottom of this photo.

The next day I sat outside while he ate at my eat. I couldn’t move and I had to be looking like I was doing something else. But we were inches apart. Still really scared but I felt like this was pretty good progress. Before I had to be feet away and he would only come as far as the shadow is. It was actually Richard who caught him this time. Just grabbing hold of him while he was eating. He probably spent a good 45 minutes out there just sitting while he played the cat video. As you can see he made sure to use Pippin to lure him out as well. It worked amazingly well. Both respond to the video with meows and coming near by.

She’s much better this time around for being inside the house. In fact I think she’s exploring the bathroom now. A could of hours ago her and I were playing with a cat toy together. Still not ready to be touched and I’m not sure if the milk I put in there has been drank. The make shift litter box I did was used.

Richard said he thinks Soot might be closer to 7 weeks old, my guess was about 12 weeks. He made his guess on the fact that when he last got a good look, the eyes were on the blue side and now they aren’t. After looking it up kittens lose the blue coloring at about 5 weeks.

Oddly, just tonight he saw another group of kittens, looking very similar with a different mother cat. His idea was that perhaps this one was rejected and picked up by another mother or stolen. It could be that the litters also share common genes. He did say they look no bigger than Soot.

So, why the name Soot you wonder? Well, first I was calling it Cedar since it was living under our wood shed. After it got stuck in the furnace I decided cedar didn’t’ work anymore. Richard came up with Soot. Ha! Punny I know. 😀

Our local friend’s of animals shelter is packed and won’t take him. Also just today as I was telling someone about this I remembered that our friend Sam found a kitten but the humane society wouldn’t take it because she didn’t know how old it was or anything else about it. I didn’t get a chance to ask her about it though.

Not really sure what we are going to do with Soot in the long run. If he is in fact only about 7 weeks old, we can’t even get him fixed until at least 4 months. Finally, here we are more out of the bathroom and meeting Huhu for the 2nd or 3rd time. It’s an experience each time.

When Pippin is inside the two will often play together. We still haven’t taken Soot to the vet as of this post(July 2nd), right now when you walk up to him he still bolts. Although the last two nights he has made his way up onto our bed and slept there at night. I’m going to see if we can take him in next week.

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