Our dear little Auri…the sweet little tuxedo kitten that we just wrote about the other day…we now have evidence that she’s criminally inclined!

I guess it’s true what they say about Saturday night being reserved for wild behavior. I woke up early Sunday morning when I heard some odd scratching. I followed my ears to the closet. I opened the door. And what did I see?

Auri, Agile, and Charger, guiltily looking up at me with their beautiful eyes, imploring me not to turn them in to my wife Susan (“The Furminator”)! Together, they had broken into the locked closet and had been greedily wolfing down Panther’s special prescription diet food (40 bucks a bag, thank you very much!). Because it’s prescription food, this may be a federal offense!

But wait, there’s more! Google News reported that Auri was also identified as a member of the notorious Tuxedo Gang! They even have a known hideout!

We’ve tried to raise her right, but she just wants to raise hell (or maybe just raise heck, after all, she’s still a kitten!). Where did we go wrong?

Auri is such a joy to have around. Really, she’s so adorable and happy that every once in awhile I check her belly to see if maybe there’s a battery compartment in there!

When we first got her from the Folsom Carl’s Jr. (no, she wasn’t in a bun, she was begging outside) she was all fire and brimstone, hissing and growling at all our other cats — even Charger, who back then was easily five times her size! But a good dose of our patented Unconditional Love eventually solved that problem, and now she mostly just annoys Aurum for some reason.

Auri is still a kitten, although she’s grown quite quickly, and she can always be counted on to flip her little toy wolf in the air, or fly down the hall in pursuit of a laser dot. She is quite an expert at sleeping, and when sleeping next to one of us will stretch out, turn into a little black-and-white ball, or assume any other reasonable shape in order to stay asleep and stay next to us while we toss and turn.

Having grown to kittenhood on the kindness of Carl’s Jr. patrons, she is also one of the first to the feeding bowls, which is no doubt part of how she has grown so quickly! Here she is in her current sundae best, looking delectable enough to kiss and kiss and kiss some more:

She is a sweetness.

I was on lunch break, so I asked her to bring the kitten (who was kenneled in our grooming salon). Everyone at work knows I have cats. OK, read "sucker for hard luck cases" But where did you get her and why can’t you keep her…? Questions and more questions.

The groomer had been eating at a local fast food restaurant. The kitten came up to her, meowing, and then when she opened the door to leave, the kitten followed and jumped/scrabbled into her car. This was three days earlier. Kitten was very skinny. The groomer is renting an apartment; the lease says two pets only and the kitten makes three. Kitten has been sleeping with her small dogs. She has trimmed claws and freshly washed and groomed fur (hey, she’s a groomer…).

I am holding the kitten who is a cute, cuddly, black and white tuxedo cat. I feel her belly and she gets squirmy. Suddenly I asked about if she had a litter box in the kennel. No, she does not. So I quickly improvise one. Kitten steps in and immediately "does her business". She must have been holding it in because after that she wasn’t squirmy.

Sigh. Oh, BTW, all the local no-kill shelters we know of are full. And even the kill shelters have too many kittens this year (as if we’d leave any animal for one of those ).

So I am able to borrow the groomer’s carrier to take her home. I am sort of dreading the trip home. Sundays at work are exhausting, plus I have to persuade my family that taking this little girl in is the reasonable thing to do.

Worries For Nothing, And the Kits For Free

My husband knows me. He makes no fuss, neither does my 13 year old son. We set her up in our bedroom, quarantined until she has shots, etc. I gave her a kitten dose of Revolution, which I just happened to have handy, since she’ll be sleeping with us. She gobbles down almost a full can of canned kitten food. Sniffs the kibble. Drinks water. Explores the room and plays with the toys. Purrrrs!! After a quick dinner, she meows when she sees us and greets us at the door, tail held high.

She hisses and growls at our other cats as they come to the gated door to sniff around. Standing her ground, saying she has the right to be here. No hostility really, just a declaration of belonging.

Oh, did I mention I dreamt of a tuxedo kitten recently?

Based on her personality, we think she is a "keeper".

What a contrast to this other kitten I’ll tell you about.

About 3-4 months ago someone dumped a pregnant black and orange tabby in our area. Like all the other strays in the past, we began feeding her, seeing if we can approach her. No good. Eventually she turned up with three tiny orange furballs. We fed and watered them, too. Their den is very close by, as they come soon after we open the back door to put out food. The kittens grew.

Keep in mind we have foxes, skunks, racoons, possums, deer, neighbors dogs, etc. Keep in mind that of all the many abandoned cats we have seen here, only Agile’s parents survived even one winter in our area. Right now, Agile is snuggled up near me on the cat shelf by the window as I type this. He is the first feral kitten we were able to catch, born of two feral parents, whom we called Eager and White Paws. They lived for about three years here and both died before last winter.

We started setting out our trap, using canned kitten food as "bait".

Amazingly we caught one just three days ago and took her to our vet. She bit me — through a heavy towel — when I grabbed her to put her in the carrier (we used a lot of antiseptics at the vet’s office). She is FIV and FLV negative, about 9 weeks old, and weighs 2 lbs 13 oz. She was covered in fleas, so the vet gave her a dose of Revolution and her first vaccinations. She was so terrified, hissing, scratching, and trying to bite that the vet had to give her a dose of ketamine and valium before he could safely examine her. I helped clean her ears, all the while asking questions.

The final bill was well over $200, not something we can afford to repeat if we catch her two siblings and mother. We took her there because getting an appointment with Animal Outreach (a local non-profit low cost spay/neuter cats only health clinic) can be problematic and well, we had a wild cat on our hands.

So if we catch them, we will take them to Animal Outreach which does the medical workup and spay/neuter really inexpensively. Our marvelous Agile’s 3 day stay with Animal Outreach plus vaccines, deworming and neutering cost us only about $60. He is the sweetest, calmest cat we have, and always has a friendly greeting.

She is noisy! She yells when she knows her siblings are nearby…calls for them mostly at night, when we are trying to sleep. She is calling right now! So we have white noise generators running and doors closed so we can sleep. When we go into the bathroom she is in, she runs and hides behind the commode or in the carrier, hisses and tries to swat if we get too close. She eats wet food and kibble. We tried to give her some commercial kitten milk in a dish but she ignored it. Won’t play with toys. At least she uses the litter box.

We are fostering her, and any other members of her family we can catch. If necessary, we will spay and release the mom cat. I already have a lead on one family that wants an orange kitten. But we will screen people. No kittens in a box at a supermarket for us. Thinking about her getting abandoned while pregnant gets me angry. I may have to write a blog entry about that, too.