Goodbyes hurt… but I am still grateful!

October 27, 2021

Day 111

Tomorrow is the day we say goodbye to the 2 remaining kittens, our adorable ‘twins’ Sipke and Stipke. We also bring Mitsy in for her spaying. So the future for all three cats will be very different after that change.

In the back is Sipke, in the front is Stipke

Even at the best of times, I am not very good at saying goodbye. It was always like that for me, from a very young age. The transition is hard for me for some reason. And this project, that made my heart swell with love, joy and gratitude, is filled to the brim with it. Go figure. I have been worried about every single one of the important milestones. And there were many. And my gratitude comes from all of those moments going as smoothly as I could have dreamed of. Such as…

  • The successful trapping of pregnant Mitsy
  • The smooth delivery of 6 healthy kittens at night while we were sleeping
  • Nursing, weaning, feeding and litterbox training: nature did it all, without us having to lift a finger
  • Expanding the cat room from one to two crates and then the move upstairs and finally, giving them access to the entire room, day and night: nothing was demolished, all went well and we had so much fun together!
  • No aggression was ever encountered
  • All my contraptions to protect the window screen and any cables worked like a charm
  • Mitsy seems OK with being indoors, never tried to escape and seems to be respectful of Suzi
  • Mitsy is more and more receptive to cuddles (albeit mostly during feeding times…. cats are, after all, masters of opportunism)

So much to be grateful for!

The kittens’ move to Pet Smart store at Brant Hills in Burlington

This time we will not drop the kittens off directly at the Adoption Centre; they will first visit the vet to get their vaccinations updated and then they will go to the Adoption Centre at Pet Smart at Brant Hills in Burlington, which is a bit older than Oakville Place in Oakville, but has bigger condos. They will live on the main floor in a 3 room apartment. We, in the meantime, will be cleaning up the cat room after dropping off Mitsy, making sure there is nothing she can bump into with her post-surgery cone. We bring her home in the early evening and then we will have to wait and see how things evolve. Thank the Lord for cat cams. We can keep an eye on her without having to disturb her recovery.

We hope that Mitsy will become friends with our house cat Suzi as she recovers. And our hearts will be with Stipke and Sipke as well, hoping that they will soon find a new family that loves them as much as we do and will get the same joy from them.

A moment filled with emotions. Enjoying Sipke’s companionship and thinking about his future and mine…
May your life be filled with the same joy and love you gave us, little man Sipke!

This afternoon I was lying in the sun in the cat room with Sipke (above) napping on my belly, tears cropping up in my throat. I cannot believe we saw him being born 111 days ago. A tiny little tabby kitten that we could not distinguish from his sister Stipke for the longest time. Both were born pretty close to each other and they are truly bonded for life. Whomever adopts these two: we hope they come along soon, so that their time in the Adoption Centre may be short. They will get handled multiple times per day by lots of volunteers there, they will be out of their condos to play with the other cats that temporarily live there and they will hopefully have a ball there, while we continue to care for their mother.

One last sniff to check out my camera and no more new Stipke pictures… At least not made by me…

Mitsy is still a big unknown for us. How will she react to the sedation, the surgery, the cone… It will probably be a few days before I post about that. We say frantic prayers that she will not go nuts trying to remove the cone herself. And the removing bit: we pray for that going smoothly too. Until then, we are enjoying our little ones and mom in the afternoon sun and we will give them a good long playtime tonight so that they will still be a bit tired tomorrow. That way all transitions will go as smoothly as possible.

Once Mitsy is on her way to recovery, you have no idea how big our sigh of relief will be. We will feel like empty-nesters for awhile, missing the pitter patter of litter paws on the stairs. That is why we hope that all of the 3 families who adopted our babies will send us an update now and then. Photos would be great, stories even better. We will always care about these 6 felines that we took into our house to ensure a happy future!

But the two remaining cats will keep us busy enough, albeit with less litter to scoop and less food to prepare…

I will keep this blog going to update you on how Mitsy and Suzi are doing, though it will no longer show kitten pics…

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