My new feral kitten, playing on my socks. She loves to clasp her hands with her little bear claws… she has seven toes on each of her front paws!
This entry was posted on Friday, September 8th, 2006 at 3:07 pm.
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she can play with my socks anytime!!!!!!!!
Hehe. More action shots! Is she called Seven for a reason (i.e. she was the seventh feral kitten that you rescued)? Certainly is a cutie!
BTW - Anyone know why TDK updates at 15:07 GMT? I never quite figured that one out myself. But whatever the reason, as long as we get to see a new cute kitty every day, I’m happy!
Never mind about the name question, I figured it out now.
The time was selected at random - the only criteria was that people should be awake on both sides of the Atlantic!
Thank you Kittenmaster for all that you do! We love this site and appreciate the smiles that you give us by posting the kittens!
Aww what a cutie! I love black kitties!!
she doesnt know what to do with all those toes!! She has a big fat bare belly!!
Dumb question?…but what does feral mean?
I understand it to mean a wild cat not from a litter of a house cat.
Feral just means “wild” — undomesticated. Cats have not been domesticated to the extent that dogs have, so they revert quite easily to the wild state.
thats b/c cats are smarter than dogs
I have to agree with you Elaine. I love dogs too but a cat’s intelligence just shines through in their eyes! Beautiful animals!
Wild or from American Heritage dictionary:
Feral means “exisiting in the wild or an untamed state; suggestive of a wild animal; savage.”
A real cutie…hope she becames your lovebug soon..give her lots of hugs and bellly kisses please :))
She is something else……..cute as can be……
She’s a cutie! All roly-poly and full of beans.
I love her extra toes!
Seven is beautiful! To all the Seinfeld fans out there (one of my favorite shows EVER); Remember the “Seven” episode? George wanted to name his child Seven, and he was very angry when his friends “stole” that name for their newborn!
Yep, I remember and what sitcom had a girl whose name was Six? I think she (Six) was the best friend of the teenage girl star of the sitcom… hmmmmm….
The sitcom was Blossom.
What a cutie—love the big baby tummy—sweet—
My cat Elijah was teeny tiny as a kitty and had 7 toes in front also—He grew up to be a BIG cat!!!
Enjoy your precious Seven!
Seven toes, seven times the fun! Seven is lucky, don’t ya know? Lucky that you have her and will love and take care of her! She’s a cutie — and ooooohhhh so sticky!
All I can say is that sock doesn’t stand a chance. Once subdued it can be used as a wrap, making sure Seven is a
WARM AND TOES-TY FUZZ
Here’s a picture of my semi-feral kitten:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ceejoe/223715102/
Actually she’s a year and a half old now, but very small, so I still think of her as a kitten.
She came to me as a foster kitten, but will probably never be a real “lap kitty,” so was never really adoptable, so she got to stay with me. Lucky me! I luvs her to pieces.
your patches is beautiful.
I’m not sure if I’ve posted this before, but it’s one of my favorite animal articles. He is the same writer who wrote “A Dog Man Gets A Cat”–which I posted, as well. And, this article is so touching, it always makes me cry. I want to get some donkeys!
* Nice Ass!
Why I own donkeys*
By Jon Katz
Jesus and Jeannette
When I got back from the hardware store this morning, I planned to write a column explaining why somebody from New Jersey who’d never seen a donkey in the first half-century of his life now owned three.
As I was heading back from town, the cell phone warbled. My friend Anthony, working at the farm, was calling to say that there was a baby donkey in the pasture. Knowing this had to be a joke, since I had no male donkeys and, to my knowledge, no pregnant ones either, I laughed, fired off some obscene macho banter, and hung up.
When I pulled into the driveway next to the big barn, though, I nearly drove into a fence post. There was a tiny new donkey, soaking wet from amniotic fluid, hugging close to Jeannette, my most recently acquired Sicilian donkey. The afterbirth was close by and fresh. And Jeannette was snorting like a bull and glowering at any interlopers.
No way, I thought.
Way. Obviously, donkeys have a very long gestation period. Jeannette must have been knocked up just before she arrived last spring. I phoned an SOS to the Granville Large Animal Veterinary Practice and ran into the house for some towels.
Jeannette and I are close, thanks to my daily offerings of carrots, apples, and oat cookies. She let me pick up her newborn—I named her Emma, after my own daughter—towel her off, and make sure her throat and eyes were clear. When I scratched her fuzzy little nose, she closed her eyes and went to sleep in my arms. I gave Jeannette some cookies, checked to see that she had milk in her teats—she did, a lot of it—and brushed her down a bit to calm her.
I knelt in front of her and she put her head on my shoulder. “Congratulations,” I said. “Who is the father? You can tell me.” But she just went over to Emma and nosed her.
There aren’t many donkeys born these days, so people from nearby farms began showing up, alerted by the mysterious rural news network by which everyone instantly knows everything. In an hour or so, the vet showed up, gave the donkeys their appropriate shots, said they were fine, and departed. He told me that Emma was, oops, a male. So, Emma became Jesus (using the Spanish pronunciation), thanks to the mysteriously virginal circumstances of his birth.
I felt guilty about the way I’d been mocking Jeanette for her expanding girth and hearty appetite, never guessing that she was eating for two. Jeannette had fortunately chosen an unusually warm day to give birth. A bitter cold wave was approaching in 48 hours, though, so we scurried to find the heat lamps and make a cozy space for Jeannette and Jesus in the barn.
All this made me think even more about why I own donkeys at all. Once, donkeys were the tractors and ATVs of country life, performing agricultural and mercantile tasks that were integral to farming and commerce. Now, they are useless. Local farmers call them “hay-suckers.”
When I got my troubled border collie Orson, we started learning to herd at a sheep farm in Pennsylvania. A lonely old donkey named Carol lived in the adjacent pasture. We bonded; I was enchanted by her soulful eyes and gentle bray, and she loved the apples I brought her and the pats and scratches that accompanied them. When I bought this farm in upstate New York, I imported some of the sheep we’d been herding with. They arrived on a livestock trailer, and Carol showed up with them, a surprise gift from the farmer, who thought she deserved a better life.
Donkey No. 2 joined her when I got a phone call from a woman who described herself as a “Jewish donkey spiritualist,” a term I hadn’t heard before and don’t expect to hear again. Pat bred donkeys and had studied and written about their symbolic significance, their place in the ancient world, and their profoundly spiritual natures.
Both Jewish and Christian theologies are filled with biblical and other references to donkeys, she pointed out. Carol, like all my donkeys, wore a cross on her back, a pattern of dark hair behind the shoulders.
Pat declared that, since donkeys are social sorts, Carol was lonely. She was not aware of her “donkeyness”; having lived with sheep all of her life, she probably didn’t even know she was a donkey. She needed a companion, Pat said. My wife, already embittered (Carol ran up enormous vet bills that first winter), said she could live with Carol being out of touch with her donkeyness. I couldn’t, so soon little Fanny arrived, and then Lulu, her half-sister.
Pat was right about donkeys: They are sweet, powerfully spiritual creatures. Mine have an ostensible purpose: They’re my security detail, fiercely protective of my flock of sheep. They run off stray dogs and coyotes. Since I’ve lost no sheep to these common predators, the donkeys seem to do their jobs well.
Carol
But they also—and this is why I have more donkeys than I truly need—attach to people. They nuzzle and lean into humans they like, which can sometimes be disconcerting, but is also touching. They are gentle with children, calm around strangers. They coexist reasonably amiably with my dogs and chickens. My ferocious rodent-massacring barn cat, Mother, sleeps near them often, and last week I came into the barn and saw her curled up next to the baby, both of them dozing comfortably on a pile of straw bedding.
When I come out of the house in the morning, all three girls are waiting at the barnyard gate, wheezily braying for their cookies. Serious about snacks, they’re likely to nose into your pockets if you’re slow to produce them.
But our connection goes beyond food, I think. Almost every day, I sit on a tree stump in the pasture, and one donkey or another—sometimes all three—comes over to nuzzle with me, putting a big furry head on my shoulder or the top of my head. During winter storms, I trudge up to the pole barn and comb ice from their long eye lashes and brush the snow off their coats. They hold still, then nuzzle me in appreciation.
When Carol was sick, I brought a boom box into the barn and we sat listening to Van Morrison sing “Brown-Eyed Girl.” She also loved Willie Nelson and Ray Charles.
Early last winter, Carol again foundered. The vet didn’t think she’d make it through another season of sickness and brutal cold; we agreed that a lethal injection would, at some point, be merciful. Carol died within a couple of days.
A few months later, donkey spiritualist Pat sold her farm. Before she moved away, she sold me Jeanette, one of her oldest donkeys (they live to be 30, even 40). Nobody said anything about anybody being pregnant. But Jeannette was, apparently. So, now there are four. “That’s a lot of hay,” one of my incredulous farmer neighbors observed. “Especially for animals that don’t do anything.”
But he’s wrong. They do a lot for me. They connect me to nature and to history. They’re dutiful watchdonkeys and affectionate companions. They exude patience and calm. In many ways, they’re the heart and soul of my farm.
Once I got over the shock, I was delighted to have Jesus join the clan. If it was not imaginable to live with donkeys a few years ago, it is inconceivable to live without them today. This morning, I ordered another 100 bales of hay.
What a sweet touching story he is a person I’d like to know.
For some strange reason, I think I read that in a local paper here a while back. Of course, I’m in NJ, so it was ‘local’ news.
Heck, if I remember correctly, I think it was within like 25 miles of me.
I recall reading that story. Thanks for giving me the chance to do it again; it’s very touching and true.
What an irresistable little baby polydactyl! ! ! And you know with black cats, you have Hallowe’en all year round! Looks like playful little Seven is both a trick *and* a treat. Bless you for adopting a little feral kitten! Love her always.
he is os cute
PLAY, PLAY, PLAY!!! My cat likes to play with socks too, usually when I’m putting them on! I like the picture!
Looks like she’s got six toes on the back feet too!
This is heartbreaking!
*Panda inconsolable after crushing newborn twin*
Fri Sep 8, 11:59 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) -Staff at a zoo in southwest China are in mourning after a sleep-deprived panda dropped her two-day-old baby and crushed it to death, local media reported on Friday.
“It was very sudden, but also unavoidable,” Guo Wei, panda department chief at Chongqing city zoo in the southwestern region of Chongqing, told the Chongqing Business News daily.
Ya Ya, a seven-year-old panda and new mother of twins, “appeared tired” when nursing the younger cub in a patch of grass, the paper said.
Her head sagged, her paws separated and her baby fell to the ground next to her. The panda then rolled on to her side and crushed her baby beneath her.
The tragedy occurred because she hadn’t slept or eaten properly since giving birth, Guo said, adding that Ya Ya lacked motherhood experience.
According to Guo, the zoo had tried on several occasions to separate the cub from its mother for their safety, but Ya Ya “was very cautious” and would “roar and bare her teeth” at zoo-keepers.
The elder of the twins was in good health and being cared for, zoo officials said.
But Ya Ya had proved inconsolable, wailing and looking for her baby after its body was taken away from her.
“Pandas who lose their young tend to be depressed for a month or so,” Guo said, adding that the zoo would assign people to care for her and provide special food to improve her mood.
I, too, am saddened by the news of the panda’s death. Clearly, panda’s are very nurturing. It is fortunate that there is a twin and likely will be more births to this mother. Panda keepers are becoming more and more successful with their breeding programs.
i love action shots
Cute kitten!
Kinda off topic from Seven, but does anyone know what to do about cats that scratch and bite alot. My kitty gets very rough when she playes with me. Also she is terring up my couch. I love her to bits and refuse to get her declawed but I dont know what to do about her nails!
Chey
Chey,
Here is some info from a very informative website on animals…
http://www.metrokc.gov/animals/cattips/cat21.aspx
Chey, here are several ideas, all learned from years of having my own cats and doing volunteer work at a cat shelter:
- have someone experienced show you how to clip your kittens nails, then do so regularly. If you don’t feel comfortable doing it yourself, a vet or groomer can do it for a small fee, or you can have plastic caps put over her nails so they aren’t sharp
- get a sisal covered scratching post and encourage your kitten to use it by taking her front paws and gently rubbing them on the post, and praise her whenever she uses it. A little catnip on the post helps, too. DON’T get a carpet covered post; that’ll make her think it’s okay scratch carpeting.
- whenever she wants to play rough or scratch the furniture, firmly say “stop” and snap your fingers or clap. This will redirect her attention. Don’t say “no” because this generally has the opposite effect of what’s intended; for some reason, “stop” just works better. Try to direct her towards more acceptable behavior and praise her when she does the right thing.
- keep a spray bottle full of water on hand and give her a gentle squirt when she starts to go after the furniture. It’ll discourage her without hurting or scaring her. My boy was an incorrible furniture scratcher, and the squirt bottle worked beautifully. After awhile, just picking up the bottle stopped the behavior, and now he goes only for the scratching post.
Start with these and see how it goes. No matter what you do, remember that cats won’t be discouraged by criticism, but they will respond well to praise, so use a lot of it.
And Kittenmaster, keep lovin’ up Seven and she’ll come around. We’ve had many feral kittens at our shelter who, with a lot of affection and handlling, were turned into smoochy housecats, and Seven looks like she’s ready for that.
*Lucky FUZZ*
…………………..love those ‘gangsta’ toe-pads………
…………the pose is louche, again……………………..
*Spread Eagle FUzz*
Grrr….must attack the ferocious socks! gggrrrrr!
Extra means extra love!
Extra toes mean extra love, and extra love means extra kitty & me time!
i too have a cat named Seven…LOL…but he does not have extra toes. he was named after the Seinfeld episode, but not by me.
your Seven is just gorgeous. i love how she can grab onto things with those bear claws…too cute. since she’s so young, you should be able to get her used to life as a housecat. good luck!
Seven times the love! Please give this baby a big but gentle hug for us, and a tummy rub. May God bless you and Seven always.
Seven is the name b/c of the toes….
I absolutely love black cats!!! My Gally is all black with green eyes. I think they are the sweetest, most lovable of all the colors/patterns! I just want to give Seven the biggest hug and plant a big kiss on her little head. What a doll!
….I love the way the socks support Seven’s fuzzy butt………………………………………………………
Seven is my lucky number and Seven looks like the lucky kitty. What big paws you have! All the better to give big hugs! Adorable and well loved. Many years of happiness together.
Lucky number Seven, to be rescued that is…
Seven is seven times the cute!
My little tabby kitten, Daisy, loves to play with socks too!
ohhhhhhhh so cute i wish i had one i want one so bad
a 7 toe kitty awesome. To cute for words!!
Goodness, look at the claws on this baby. Look out for her, even though she looks like a sweet sweet baby. Too cute.
I love polydactyls! Mine is a polydactyl as well (seven toes on her front paws, six on her back) and I looooooove playing with her little toes.
Black Bear Fuzz!
Her creater has made her Purr-Fect! Those are the best little kind of paws to have.