Greetings Readers ~
This blog is dedicated to our newest adopted family member and mascot, Leonardo D'Kitteh. Leo, as we have come to call him, came to us when he was still blind and deaf, not more than a week old, at the beginning of August, when he was found mewing inside a thickly insulated wall in a barn here in Washington, Maine where we are currently parked with some new friends. It wasn't known whether or not he had an attending feline mother or if he had been abandoned, lost in the wall, where the feline mom could not reach him, so erring on the side of caution, J rescued Leo and brought him out of the barn and handed him to me as I was passing him in the driveway.
At the time we didn't notice that his leg was injured, because he could not walk or hardly even hold up his own weight at that point. Later on we noticed his left back leg was swollen, it seems it was likely sprained in the fall down behind the wall where he was found.
3 weeks later, he is growing bigger and stronger and smarter every day and his leg seems to be healing on it's own quite well as he is learning to walk and navigate his world very well.
His eyes, like ripe blueberries, ever wider and taking in the existence reality that he has now inherited with us.
Ram started potty training right from the beginning, and 3 weeks later, we have had two completely dry nights in a row after adhearing to a strict schedule of going to the bathroom before every feeding begins without exception over night and during the day he visits the bathroom after every nap he wakes up from which is also before each feeding he receives, currently day in and day out it amounts to every two hours, with exceptions to "play times" which today nearly balanced out with his napping times so that means he is staying awake nearly as much as he is sleeping during the daytime.
We are curious as to whether or not he will adjust his natural tendency to be nocturnal to a more diurnal schedule, if we continue as we do now to take him with us and keep his play & active times mainly during the daylight hours.
We started offering small pieces of raw liver, tuna & chicken to him as well as the milk he still nurses from his little feeding bottle. He has not shown a great deal of interest yet, but his teeth are still just coming in, so he can not really chew yet, although he does like to chew on my fingers. I added some small bits of liver to his milk today, to see if I can get him to imprint to some raw solid foods. We plan to feed him a completely natural raw diet, so it is my understanding that to eliminate a restrictive diet, he must be imprinted to, thus offered many different foods while he is still young.
Leo is also starting to show an interest in playing. He rolls over on his back now when we are holding him and paws our faces and hands playfully and bites and licks our faces & fingers. His big blueberry eyes watching our facial expressions intently.
At nights after his pottying and feeding he crawls up between my head and neck, upon my shoulder & intertwined with my hair and curls up in a little ball to sleep. He purrs softly as he and I both drift of to sleep for while longer, until the next round of pottying and feeding is due.
During the day, we take him to the green house and the garden with us to work and he usually sits or lays and sleeps in his wicker potato basket. Sometimes in the garden I will let him down in the cool dirt to sleep under the bean plants while I am weeding/harvesting, hoever, we will soon need to apply the use of a harness and leash when we are outside, because as Leo's curiosity and mobility increase, the further away he is likely to wonder exploring his existence reality and that which governs it.
We give him plenty of floor time in the motor home and Ram has built a ramp from the floor to the toilet in the bathroom for him to start using anytime he is ready to navigate it.
It will be interesting to observe as he develops relationships with Ram & I respectively as he gets older and more mobile and I will document my observations here along with pictures I take as well. Enjoy the read and feel free to express any thoughts you have in the forum below this blog. Thanks