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What a gentle soul
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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I got 2 kittens a few years ago for my calico who liked watching kitten videos on YT. She did NOT like the kittens in person. We addressed her as Hissy Sissy to the kittens. The kittens had been weaned too early (due to their foster mama cat getting kitty flu pretty bad and the rescue had to quarantine her). So the kittens were all about trying to get to know Hissy Sissy. She had had a hard street life before we found her, and didn't trust other animals. I was swerved by her YT habits, but her kitten curiosity didn't extend to in-person kittens. Sadly her kidneys quit on her so I'll never know if she would have eventually warmed up to them.
We have our own hissy sissy right now trying to ignore the 1 year old kitten brothers. Our long gone Orange stray took 14 years to sit on my lap, but then I got three years of constant lap attention. Cats are so stubborn.
I picked up my daughters cat in the turn lane during lunch traffic one day. She was very young and grew up unsocialized. She was hostile to all animals until one day she wasn't. She chilled out and started playing and snoozing with other cats. It only took ten years.
Well, lucky isn't the right word, but I'm glad those two kittens were able to stay. I guess the lesson is to try fostering the kitten first, without the expectation of adoption, just in case the current cat isn't a fan.
They were always going to be permanent additions. We have enough room that H.S. could live on another floor. I wouldn't have put her in that situation if we were in a condo. She wasn't restricted; she had free rein of the whole house; the kittens were cloistered to the upstairs via baby gate. And while they were kittens and rambunctious, they were getting put to bed in their own bedroom, not allowed to sleep with us. I.e. the calico would take advantage of that and get her snuggles in at night (as well as on & off throughout the day as we both WFH).
We did become their fosters when they got unfortunately early weaned, as we had put in adoption applications on them when they were 2 weeks. We got them at 5 weeks. I fed them a wet food/formula slurry and monitored their weights, got them that stuffed cat surrogate that has a heartbeat, etc. And basically I hedged and adopted 2 instead of only 1 in case the calico didnt like them, they would have each other.