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If you could find a way to relax, Rum, that’d be great.
Reverb’s havin’ a think.
Fred pointed out this box as being “A good box!” and I didn’t want to add it to the humongous pile of boxes in the shed (we do auction packing and shipping here, so I always have a zillion boxes on hand), so I took it into the foster room. I thought for sure Rum would climb in and Rumdangle, but Reverb claimed it before he could.
Rum did eventually check out the box, but was not impressed.
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Confession: I ALMOST posted this picture as last night’s “good night innernets” picture.
But I just KNEW that people would see that tortie sitting there in the background and be certain that it was a pregnant cat and get all excited.
That tortie is a male and is not pregnant.
Yes. That tortie is male.
Some of you are VERY excited to hear this, and others of you are like “…And?”
Only 1 in 3,000 torties/calicos are male – pretty rare!
So anyway, before I go into their story, meet the fosters – two of them.
This is Kate. She is a female tortie. (Please note the orange dash on her forehead.)
And this is Ollie, the male tortie.
Kate and Ollie both had wet FIP. They underwent and completed treatment, and now they’re in the “observation” stage. A very small number of cats who are treated for FIP relapse; if they’re going to relapse it’s in the 84 days after treatment ends. Ollie is actually through his observation period, just needs bloodwork before he can be declared cured. Kate will be through her observation period in mid-March.
They are brother and sister, are 9 1/2 months old, and came from a trailer park when they were much younger. They are scaredy cats.
Kate.
Ollie.
I’ve had them since last Wednesday and while Ollie was hiding at first, he’s now out and about. He really likes the beds on the wall. He hisses if you walk toward him, reach toward him, or otherwise do something he doesn’t like. However, if you give him some treats you can pet him while he’s eating. Fred has picked him up and held him VERY briefly a few times and he put up with it. I don’t think it’ll be long before he’s demanding petting. He has an upper respiratory infection, for which he’s on meds (he eats his medication mixed with Churu, thankfully. If we had to pill him or shoot liquid meds into his mouth, there’s no way we could. He is SPICY.) His right eye is visibly smaller and cloudy AND a darker color than his left eye. That’s due to a suspected previous injury to his eye, and is permanent.
Kate, on the other hand, spends all day hiding. At night, once the lights go, she’s a party girl – comes out, eats, plays. I gave her a few days to decompress and now we pull her out of her hidey hole a couple of times a day and hold her. She doesn’t like it and breaks away at the first opportunity, but I believe she’ll come around in time.
I don’t – at this point – consider them a bonded pair. They totally ignore each other, but we’ll see in the weeks to come.
Rum and Reverb are totally fine with them – basically just shrugged and pretty much accepted them immediately. I’ve seen them all chasing each other around and playing with/near each other, so there’s been no drama on that front.
That’s the news from the foster room!
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Alice is a perfect little cinnamon bun.
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Posted on social media (Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr/ Bluesky) this weekend.
Reverb’s sweet, curious face is the CUTEST. He’s all “You talkin’ to me?”
Reverb pie (my favorite!) with a side of Rum.
YouTube link
Reverb’s feelin’ kneady, and Rum is feelin’ purry. ❤️
“Tryin’ to Rumdangle here, lady.”
The cat tree is bearing fruit! Reverb on the top, Rum on the lower level.
Good night innernets. (Rum)
Let’s start off the day with your daily Rumdangle, shall we? We shall!
Reverb came up to get some petting and Rum thought it was a good time to lay the ol’ chomperoo on him.
In case you missed it, the online auction to benefit Forgotten Felines of Huntsville (that’s the rescue I foster for) is now going on – check it out and get bidding! (New items are added each morning; it ends Saturday, February 7th.)
Reverb needs a kiss. 😽
Good night innernets. (Rum, with the lights-on, no-one-home situation.)
Rabbit rabbit rabbit. (Rum)
Wikipedia: “Rabbit rabbit rabbit” – a superstition in Britain & North America wherein a person says/repeats the words “rabbit”, “rabbits” and/or “white rabbits” aloud upon waking on the 1st day of a month, ensuring good luck for the rest of it.
I will never get tired of watching Reverb play. He is a big fan of the track toys!
Reverb’s all “Rumor has it it’s Churu time, lady.”
Good night innernets. (Rum & Reverb)
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Previously
2025: No entry.
2024: Good lord, these three and their Precious Moments eyes!
2023: Queen Brioche wouldn’t mind a little breakfast in bed, if y’don’t mind.
2022: A closer look at the belly.
2021: “SHE’S IN MY HAM-MICK.”
2020: Haaaave you met Isabella?
2019: No entry.
2018: “Whatchoo MEAN ‘child support’?”
2017: She’ll be 10 in April which is not by any means OLD, but it’s certainly oldER and technically she’s in the senior category now.
2016: Extreme Ears of Annoyance.
2015: I swear she must be half monkey.
2014: No entry.
2013: No entry.
2012: Giving me the side eye to see if I’m impressed (I’m not).
2011: How tiny IS Tiny Alice?
2010: M’Lynn the skittish.
2009: It wasn’t until after she put her glasses on that Samba realized she’d been whispering sweet nothings to a water bottle all evening long.
2008: No entry.
2007: Possibly if I stopped buying toys for the cats there wouldn’t be such an issue with them scattered everywhere, but I guess cat toys is my other illness.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
In the first picture, I love Rum’s upside-down-dangle!
That boy will dangle in any position. 🙂
Count me as one of your followers who said “WOW!!” when you introduced Ollie! What a handsome boy! And Kate is beautiful, too! I hope they warm up quickly and continue to get healthy at Chez Robyn & Fred.
O-M-G! I wasn’t prepared for that bombshell (a male tortie!), and my coffee flew out my mouth! Holy Hannah, Batman!
Hopefully, with Rum and Reverb’s help, they’ll be more social in no time. (How lucky are you? Buy a lottery ticket!)
Is it unusual to have so many kittens with FIP lately? I ve been following you since 2021 and this is the first time you ve had kittens with FIP. Just curious.
I’ve been fostering since 2005, and this is the first time I’ve had kittens with FIP – but I think it was probably just going to be a matter of time before I needed to deal with it. I don’t think the number of FIP kittens right now is unusual – a large number of cats/kittens go through Forgotten Felines every year, and the more there are, the higher the chance that there’ll be issues, I think. (Also, Michelle tends to get the more medically complex cases – which includes FIP – so I very highly suspect that if someone she knows has an FIP cat, she ends up offering to take/treat it.)
Welcome, Kate and Ollie! You’ll soon figure out that you’ve won the kitty cat lottery, getting to live with Robyn and Fred (and Rum and Reverb)!
Aww, Alice! Cinnamon bun perfection, indeed.
Rum and Reverb are such sweeties for accepting the presence of the new guys like that. Looking forward to eventually (hopefully) seeing Kate and Ollie with not-worried faces; I love them already!
Male tortie ftw! They’re both gorgeous, and I’m definitely one of the super-excited readers. I have been fascinated by cat color genetics since getting my orange girl a while back, and I love that male torties exist.
(I’m playing a casual life sim game, Heartopia, where you can adopt dogs and cats. The cats have various coat patterns, color patterns, gender, and personality traits. There’s a different selection of adoptable animals each day. Anyway I ended up adopting a male calico; I’m pretty sure it doesn’t bother with RL genetics, just random, but it amused me so much.)
A male tortie? A *male tortie*? Oh my gasp squeeeeEEEEEeeee wow! I am awestruck. I’ve been hoping for years and years that either I’d meet a rare male tricolor in RL or that one would come along somewhere in the kittyblogosphere, but I haven’t gotten either version of my pipe dream wish… until now! Ollie, you are a truly remarkable being indeed! You and your seester have landed in catnip and clover. Fingers crossed that in no time, between the human And3rsons and Reverb and Rum the sweeties, the two scared rarities turn into gentle friendlies. Why do I want to elaborate Ollie’s name to something like Toliver Olivier Tricolor Mew, and Kate’s to… hmm. Let’s see, Katie the kitty, Kalispell Taraji! Yep, there I go again. Feel free to ignore me. XD
My gosh, a male tortie…! 😀
Hee… I didn’t have time to say so when this post went up yesterday, but as a long-time L&H reader (eg, someone who knows the “regulars” in the comment community, even if I don’t interact that much) as soon as I read “male tortie” it was like, get the popcorn, Chanter’s going to have an absolute conniption. LOL
And since I know you can’t see the pics, let me describe the newbies to you! Ollie is a very handsome boy–his fur is mostly dark with a liberal “salting” of orange flecks, plus a more solid orange patch on the left side of his face (around his “good” eye), a couple of small orangey spots on his chest and tummy, and one little adorable bright spot on the outside of his left front paw. His good eye is a pretty goldish color with maybe just a hint of green, and the injured one looks darker, almost more of a gold-brown, although that might just be due to the clouding. His sister looks very similar, but her orange spots are distinctive enough to make the two easy to tell apart–besides the little dash on the top of her head that Robyn mentioned, she also has a streak high up on her chest and a little splash that covers the right side of her chin and part of the whisker pad just above.
… Oh. Conniption in a good way, hopefully, as in, Chanter’s gonna squee? I hope I’m not obnoxious. I’m one of those people who wears her emotions on her sleeve, and I’ve been accused of overreaction many, many times before, and… well.
Thank you very much for the descriptions of these beautiful newbies! <3 I was wondering which tortie variation they were (orange/brown/white, orange/black/white, one of the cinnamon or fawn colorations that aren't quite dilute) and now I know!
Oh, heavens, no–I didn’t mean it that way at all! I’m a HUGE heart-on-sleeve type myself in Real Life, so I would never, ever judge someone else for that, and I honestly adore seeing people get excited over something that’s dear to their hearts, even if only virtually on the internet. I know how long you’ve been hoping and wishing for our favorite foster-mom Robyn to end up with a rare maile tortie/calico, too, and thus could guess at how much joy it was going to generate that the universe had finally arranged for that wish to come true. So my comment was just a little gentle tease with great goodwill behind it, and I apologize sincerely if it came across otherwise!
Also, now that Robyn’s posted a few more pics, neither Ollie nor Kate seems to have much pure white on them at all–I think Ollie might have a small spot on his tummy, and Kate looks like she has a tiny white locket on the bottom edge of the orange streak on her chest. And there may be other white flecks intermingled with the orange that are hard to see in photos, but really, they’re both mostly dark with some patches/bands that look almost solid black, and then big swaths of black-to-very-dark-brown salted with orange (though Kate has more/bigger pure orange streaks and spots than her brother, I see in one of the pics in today’s post that her left hind foot is solid orange). Also, from a distance, the lighter markings on Ollie’s face make him look a bit like he has mismatched cartoon eyebrows to go with his different-sized and colored eyes, and a little light-colored lopsided mustache too. LOL Definitely plenty of cute all around, regardless!
Oh goodness, I’m sorry. I took no offense at all. You didn’t say a single thing wrong, and you have nothing to apologize for! 🙂 I was just worried I’d been the unpleasant sort of strange. Gentle teasing with good will behind it is completely and utterly fine. 🙂 And now I’m smiling.
I love the mental image of Ollie’s orange-patched face and differing eye colors, and the little bright flash of orange on his one paw. Awwww.
Cute torties. I hope the FIP is gone.
They are both bootiful!!!
A rarity indeed!! He may have already been infertile but I guess they still removed the trouble poofs to eliminate testosterone production.
I hope Kate and Ollie can come out of their shells with you, they have landed in Kitty Paradise aka Miss Robyn’s Finishing School For Kittens.
Will they be with you until Kate’s monitoring time is completed?
Will Rum and Reverb be with you until the end of their monitoring times after treatment is completed?
Will it only be these 4 or might you end up with a Momma and babies while they are with you?
Yes, I’m sure Kate and Ollie will be with me ’til her monitoring time is over.
I don’t know for certain, but I suspect that Rum and Reverb will be with me until their monitoring time is complete, too.
I don’t really have anywhere to stash a Momma and kittens for the long term, so I think it’s likely going to just be these 4 for the time being.
Oh a bit of a dry spell with Momma/new babies. You will be jonesing in a while…LOL
It looks like Ollie is starting to gain some confidence, hopefully Kate will too.
Rum and Reverb are going to need a furever home where they are VERY spoiled after their time at Miss Robyn’s Kitty Spa!!
Very lucky kitties. Thank you for ALL you do for these wonderful cats.
Rumdangle calendar 2027!!!
Looks is a male and NOT pregnant.
We’ve fostered a male calico but never a male tortie, I don’t think we’ve ever seen one at the shelter at all. I hope the two of them settle in soon and are playing like the rest before you know it.