# The new kittens thread



## ycbm (30 August 2018)

Here's mine. I got kitten envy when  another thread was started. We picked him up today. He is desperately tiny for his age, three months, because he had to be taken away from an alcoholic who wasn't feeding him. But he's healthy, and a very bold little fellow. Our tortie and tabby aren't very impressed yet.










Let's see yours!


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## Peregrine Falcon (30 August 2018)

Arggghhhhhh, I now have kitten envy!!! Not fair. 

Has he got a name yet?  He's smashing.


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## ycbm (30 August 2018)

He's such a tiny scrap, we're thinking of Skrapp to go with Skratch and Snyff. But he's only been home two hours so we'll see what his character is like. He's very bold, and a complete tart, he'll sleep with anyone. Currently on my chest.


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## splashgirl45 (30 August 2018)

he is very cute....


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## BeckyFlowers (30 August 2018)

Want a kitten!  I don't think Daisy would be impressed though :-(


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## ycbm (30 August 2018)

Well he's already done a huge runny poop all over the carpet. Smashing


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## poiuytrewq (30 August 2018)

Poor little soul, glad you have him now. How did that come about? 
Arlo is a chest sleeping fan too! Its a bit weird


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## texas (31 August 2018)

poiuytrewq said:



			Poor little soul, glad you have him now. How did that come about? 
Arlo is a chest sleeping fan too! Its a bit weird 

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They like the comfort of your heartbeat I think   I used to put on a hoodie backwards and tuck mine in the hood in front of me.  Being on my chest is still his favourite place now, but he's a bit bigger at 5+kg!  Loving the photos


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## ycbm (31 August 2018)

poiuytrewq said:



			Poor little soul, glad you have him now. How did that come about? 
Arlo is a chest sleeping fan too! Its a bit weird 

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An alcoholic owned the mother and a close relative realised what was going on and rehomed the kittens. Mother has now disappeared so can't be neutered, so there will be more.   I can't believe he's three months old, he is so small. And very bony, he's semi long haired so it hides it. Eating well though, and seems pretty healthy. 

We need more Arlo pictures!


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## PorkChop (31 August 2018)

He is gawgeous  Love a ginger

I have a pregnant Shmitten .... very excited!


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## Chinchilla (31 August 2018)

Congratulations, he is lovely. 
Though I can imagine the poo on the carpet is a tad less lovely....


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## poiuytrewq (31 August 2018)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10215736194051872&set=pcb.10215736194291878&type=3[IMG\]

Arlo has some spare tummy if you like? 
Thats so sad, poor mummy cat too. I suspect Arlo's mother is probably already expecting again :( They struck me as that kind of people


Oh bloody hell- what have i done wrong now? why is that not a photo


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## ycbm (31 August 2018)

poiuytrewq said:









Arlo has some spare tummy if you like? 
Thats so sad, poor mummy cat too. I suspect Arlo's mother is probably already expecting again  They struck me as that kind of people


Oh bloody hell- what have i done wrong now? why is that not a photo
		
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[/img] not [img/]  ...


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## ycbm (31 August 2018)

ycbm said:



			[/img] not [img/]  ...






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But it's not showing for me either even though I've just put it right.


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## ycbm (31 August 2018)

ycbm said:



			But it's not showing for me either even though I've just put it right.
		
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One more try


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## ycbm (31 August 2018)

Looking much stronger already    Such a happy little chap!


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## ycbm (31 August 2018)

Phone is a standard size, you can see how tiny he is for three months old.


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## poiuytrewq (31 August 2018)

Bless him. Hopefully hes young enough not to have any lasting effects. 
Erm... dont know if you do Facebook but theres a ginger cat owners page


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## Rumtytum (31 August 2018)

He's tiny but I sense  lion size adventures are on their way


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## ycbm (1 September 2018)

poiuytrewq said:



			Bless him. Hopefully hes young enough not to have any lasting effects. 
Erm... dont know if you do Facebook but theres a ginger cat owners page 

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No I don't do Facebook, but I've always had a ginger tom. We lost our last one eighteen months ago to heart failure, but he was a bit of a bully and the twins we have changed so much when he left that we gave it a while for them to allow their true characters to emerge. I just think they are different, somehow, so full of character and very interactive. He's asleep on my collar bone atm.


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## ycbm (1 September 2018)

Rumtytum said:



			He's tiny but I sense  lion size adventures are on their way 

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I fear you may be right. He's surprisingly athletic and has very long legs!


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## poiuytrewq (3 September 2018)

Whats the deal with kittens and faces? Is this a known thing like the sleeping on chests/round your neck?
Its Uber cute and has totally sucked me in but Arlo likes to touch noses and will stretch up and gently touch my face (keeping his claws in) seemingly to pull me face down to him to rub noses!? 
Is this a cat thing &#128008;


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## ycbm (3 September 2018)

Yup. Skip is currently on my collar bone . Necks and faces are a must with kittens. 

I found out he's nearly four months old. He looks about eight weeks now w, and he's a good bit bigger than he was last Thursday. He must have been very close to dying.


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## BeckyFlowers (3 September 2018)

Head-bumping, nose-to-nose and cheek-rubbing are signs that your cat loves you - woohoo!  Kittens like sleeping on or near your chest and neck because they can feel your pulse.  I remember watching a documentary on telly about a big cat rescue sanctuary in Africa and they had two tiny orphaned cheetah kits.  To simulate mum and to make them feel secure they wrapped a tick-tock alarm clock in a towel and put it in their cage and they snuggled up to it because it feels like a heartbeat.

The first night we had our (now deceased) Amber back in 1999 she slept all night on my head.  Literally on the top of my head, like a hat.  She was a bit unwell and the vet said it was probably to keep her warm.  After that she liked to sleep in the crook of my arm but draped over it, maybe she was feeling my pulse.  It was lovely until she got a bit older and heavier and it felt like my arm would necrose and drop off.


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## poiuytrewq (3 September 2018)

Ycbm, such a lucky kitten, do you feed him anything in particular or just lots of food?
I wanted Arlo to be less boney  and have just used normal kitten food but often, tiny meals whenever I think of it. Hes a pig which has helped a lot. 

Beckyflowers that has made my day!! It did seem to be a loving thing but my OH laughed (hard) so I decided I was wrong &#9786;&#65039;


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## ycbm (3 September 2018)

We feed all our cats ad lib, which means that kitten food is out. I always figured that feral kittens don't get special mice just because they are young. So he's eating vast quantities of Tesco tinned in jelly, which had the older cats' favourite at the moment, and Aldi dry food. 

He's doing so well !   When he arrived his lower jaw didn't match his top one and was very under shot. But it's getting bigger and bigger, and nearly matches now. He's starting to play and the other two are beginning to talk to him. 

I'm just so pleased he is healthy after what he's been through, poor little mite.


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## ycbm (3 September 2018)

When he arrived last Thursday







And today. He wouldn't pose at the same angle, but I think you can see the change.


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## poiuytrewq (4 September 2018)

Definitely yes! So much better.


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## laura_nash (5 September 2018)

These are apparently our two new ones (at least that is what they have decided):








The mother moved into a derelict barn near by with four kittens, then she took off with the two biggest and left these two behind.  They showed up outside our back door mewing their heads off and we fed them, so now we seem to be stuck with them!

I asked around the neighbours and the consensus seems to be that the mother is probably one of the cats of a lady down the road who has been struggling with dementia, her family come around twice a day but the cats are semi-feral and feeding them etc has probably slipped.

The tortoiseshell has been very friendly from the start, the ginger is coming around, we can stroke it now, but it is very nervous.  I expect if it had been alone it would have stayed well away from humans.  

They now have a special "kitten hole" in one of the outbuildings with a bed etc in there, which means they can be fed in peace without have to deal with chickens and the dog trying to nick their food.


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## ycbm (6 September 2018)

A boy and a girl, unless you've got an extremely rare ginger female. They are just gorgeous. If you have to have two kittens abandoned on you, you'd want two like that


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## BeckyFlowers (6 September 2018)

Completely 100% adorable!


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## poiuytrewq (7 September 2018)

Kitty Arlo was today proudly big enough for his first injection. It was quite scary but the needle bit was nothing to a tiger &#128005;


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## JenniD (7 September 2018)

He's a little sweetie! We have two cats we rescued from a farm up the road when we lived in Scottish Highlands. They were in a terrible state. Fleas, ticks, thin, hissie and spittie! Supposed to be sisters one long haired mog, one shorthaired 'blue' type mog. Fluff and Fang. Took 3 years for them to settle in the house. Fluff goes around as if she's stoned out of her brain and Fang acts as if she's on 'speed'!! Is it true that 80% of ginger kitties are male? Looks like Arlo is nicely chilled in his new home.


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## ycbm (7 September 2018)

I found the genetics:


The red colour is a sex-linked colour, which means it is only carried on the x chromosome. A female has two x chromosomes and a male has one x and one y chromosome. The gene that determines red is called O and it is dominant, and since it is carried on the x chromosome the males need only one red gene to become red. Females on the other hand will need two red genes to become red - if they only have one, they will be tortoiseshell. To get a red female you will need the mother to be tortoiseshell and the father to be red, this way 50% of females (statistically) will be red and 50% 'torties'. There are two ways for a male to become a tortoiseshell: either he has a genetic mutation and has 3 sex chromosomes xxy (if so he is most likely sterile). Or he might be the result of a fusion of two embryos in an early stage in the womb. If one of the embryos carried the genes for red and another carried the gene for black and the fused embryo is a male he can become a male tortie. But this is rare - though not as rare as the genetic mutation. In conclusion, red females are not really that rare, especially not in the breeder environment where a lot of breeders focus on colour. Male torties are very rare but they do occur both in virile and sterile form.


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## ycbm (7 September 2018)

The person I got Skip from is now fostering a very pretty 8 weeks tabby with white undercarriage female if anyone wants one from the Huddersfield area. I have a picture if you want to see her PM me your email.


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## ycbm (3 October 2018)

He's growing 

,


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## Peregrine Falcon (3 October 2018)

Aw, look at his lickle paws!  Too cute.ðŸ±


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## ycbm (1 January 2019)

Just why?


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## LadySam (1 January 2019)

Because he can.

If he damages anything, I can help you out with a spare curtain ring...


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## BeckyFlowers (1 January 2019)

Why not, more like.


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## Peregrine Falcon (1 January 2019)

Lol! Cats are great. ðŸ˜€


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## Rumtytum (1 January 2019)

Scaling the north face of C2 (that's Curtain 2 for the uninitiated)  - all in a day's work for a busy kit


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## DabDab (1 January 2019)

He's super cool

The genetics stuff is interesting. I think ginger females seem more of a rarity because most seem to have a lot of white, whereas you seem to find a lot more male gingers with minimal white. Our ginger Tom is a bit of a mystery colour-wise because he's got black patches and I've tried and failed to find out what causes that genetically. I've not seen another like him - don't know if you've come across it?


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## DabDab (1 January 2019)




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## ycbm (2 January 2019)

DabDab said:



			He's super cool

The genetics stuff is interesting. I think ginger females seem more of a rarity because most seem to have a lot of white, whereas you seem to find a lot more male gingers with minimal white. Our ginger Tom is a bit of a mystery colour-wise because he's got black patches and I've tried and failed to find out what causes that genetically. I've not seen another like him - don't know if you've come across it?
		
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In theory, your male is either xxy, or he is a combination of two embryos into one at a early stage of development. Colour in cats is on the x chromosome, and to have two different colours a cat must have DNA from two different x chromosomes. Which is why almost all torties are female. I studied it once, it's fascinating.

I don't think there is as clear an explanation as to why the majority of gingers are male.


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## DabDab (2 January 2019)

Ah ok, yes your post up thread got me thinking that...
He's just come in and sat on me, so ice told him that he's a genetic rarity...he said 'but of course'. ðŸ…


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## ycbm (2 January 2019)

DabDab said:



			Ah ok, yes your post up thread got me thinking that...
He's just come in and sat on me, so ice told him that he's a genetic rarity...he said 'but of course'. ðŸ…
		
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To be fair, being a cat, he would have said that if he was as common as muck ðŸ˜…

I'd forgotten I'd already written it upstream ðŸš£


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## SEL (29 January 2019)

Very interesting - we had a ginger female when I was young. She was long haired and I guess the lady who rescued cats in the village didn't check too closely and assumed the ginger kitten was male. Only when mum took "him" to the vet for the snip did we find out we had a girl. No white on her


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