Frankie is now 5 years old, a long lanky orange & white boy who adores his mother. He is the male of the 3 kittens wwe rescued when they were 2 weeks old. They had been dumped behind an abandoned building the next town over from us in MA. When we brought them home, Frankie’s eyes were open but his sisters eyes were still closed.
We bottle fed for a month before weaning them. Frankie would get so excited when the bottle got near that he could not latch onto the nipple. It took a little patience at each feed to get him started so I usually took him if I had help. My mother-in-law and her aunt helped us a lot when they came to visit; when Rachael was home she could be counted on to help as well. Once they were fed, they had to be cleaned, their bedding changed, more formula prepped and food/bms noted on their charts. I did at least 1 load of kitten laundry per day until they were potty trained.
Our vets were wonderful, we stopped in every 10-14 days to get a weight check on “the babies”. One of our vets told us that most babies get constipated or have diarrhea on teh Queen’s milk replacement formula, so weight checks were pretty important. Of course all business in the office would stop when we came in toting 3 little kittens. The staff would haul out the postage scale & the weight would get noted on their charts.
Weaning was quite a different story. The week they were to be weaned I was on the phone with the vet’s office at least 3 times. All 3 were old enough to climb over the one being fed and try to knock the bottle out of his/her mouth. I was getting them used to kitten chow so the queen’s milk was mixed with mushy kitten chow. This mixture usually wound up all over me, all over them & usually on the floor for a 5 foot radius. My theory was that I smelled like the bottle to them so they were not cooperating with me!
I then had to leave town on business. Rachael experienced this first hand the first night I was gone and in the middle of it, decided she wasn’t having it. She then put down a bowl of kitten chow and a bowl of milk and said “Factory’s closed. This is how you eat now!” Presto-they were weaned!
Frankie, however, still wasn’t ready to give up the bottle. Every night for 2 weeks at bedtinme, he’d climb on my chest & nurse on my neck. I wore a lot of scarves & turtlenecks those weeks. He was being particularly mischevious one Friday afternoon, getting into everything in my office & tearing up paper. Fiunally I put him on my chest & called my mother. The sound of my voice soothed him to sleep and no more mischief, at least while he slept!
At the time, we had 4 adult female cats, none of whom wanted anything to do with the babies. In fact, my old dog Travis was more of a mother to Frankie than any of the cats. The girls really needed much less human attention than Frankie. Everyone wanted him, and we did not want 7 cats… so the babies went to live with Rachael’s parents. Frankie eventually got to the point where he was beating up one of his sisters so he came back to us.
I swear he is the reincarnation of my beloved cat Sylvester. He seems to think he’s half human & half dog. He loves to lie on my desk while I work-not good. We are having “space wars” at the moment: he gets up, lies down & I take him off. This happens regularly at least 8 times a day…
Anyway, here he is in all his glory, my Frankie:
Frankie May 2009
Of course it’s heavy as heck so I had to drag it across the yard. Then I needed to experiment with placement-should it face the street? Which one (it’s on a corner). Finally I was satisfied & then planted the new perennials behind it. I love it. And I love the fact that it’s done! 
