Monthly Archives: May 2016

We’re having a lot of fun at 8 Lives at the moment.    Our IT wizard  Alan has installed a web cam in the kitten’s bedroom.

The photo I’m uploading from it right now as I write this post looks pretty boring.  It’s going dark in the room and I think Tab & Mowse are off screen sitting on the windowsill,  the older lads are closer to the door playing football (I can hear them) and the younger ones are asleep in the nest.    It’s a bit experimental … and I don’t if the photo you’ll see when I publish this will be the same as I see now, or whether it will update.

Despite the dull grey scene I can see right now, this is really exciting.  I sooooo wish we’d had it before the ladies gave birth …. it would have been brilliant to have been able to check on them without bursting in on them every half hour.   The view I can get within the house is a constant stream of what’s happening up there.  It’s helped Simon to start to integrate with them which I think he needs in order to learn social skills.  If I just leave him in there though, I’m anxious about whether he’s ok.  If I stay in the room he often just sits on my lap … watching …. whilst I try to persuade him to go and play.  If I leave him and go back into the room he’ll come running to me because he’s attached to me.  Like thousands of ‘parents’ with a child at nursery I want to know how he is when I’m not there, whether he settles when I’ve gone or just stands waiting at the door for me to return.

simon in the nest

This shows us that Simon goes in the nest with the others and has been ok in there.   Tabs & Mowse have been lovely with him, and he seems to like to play with Timothy.   The tricky bit has been Simon, being possessive with the food bowl.  I and the other kittens looked on in horror as he spread his arms across the dish, eating and growling at the mummies as they tried to eat!

The stream also shows the family relaxed and playing

We’re working on getting a link to the website.    The web link will upload a photo every minute.  Apparently if you allow streaming  it opens up to hackers …. I think.  I’m slowly learning more about IT than I ever thought I would … but enjoying it.  During the day time the photos will be in colour … I’ve just taken stills in there this evening to   demonstrate.   The next thing I’ll need to learn is to either switch the camera off when I go in there, or not shuffle in in my crazy old cat lady dressing gown and slippers in a morning and have my image beamed around the world 😉

This week saw Tabbytha’s kittens becoming 4 weeks old and Mowse’s 3 weeks.  The age gap is closing rapidly.  When the little Ts opened their eyes at 2 weeks, the little Ms followed the next day at just 8 days old.

cot is very full

standing room only for tabs

The cot is becoming very very full, and although most of the time they still squash into there, I’ve also found Tabbytha taking the odd break and having some space.  Often during those times Mowse is patiently dealing with the little Ts smacking her in the face.  Mowse does appear to be the more maternal of the pair.  Tab rushes to the food at mealtimes while Mowse stays in the cot feeding the little ones.  Tabs does come back and help with cleaning and getting them into their pyjamas and ready for bed, but she’s not as much of a slave to them as Mowse.

tabbytha with kits

mowse with kits

A few days ago we had the first adventurings of Timothy…. first kit out the nest and looks like he’s going to be trouble.  He toddled out, up the ladder on the scratch post, and then wailed until Aunty Mowse came to get him down.

Timothy leaving the nest

starting to climb …

… and getting stuck

Notice that its Mowse who rescues him.  Tabs, his mum, joined in the conversation about what to do to sort the problem out … but ultimately it was Mowse who came and sorted it.   He she is smacking his bottom and sending him back to bed

The rescue is full, but when we got an email on Wednesday about a tiny kitten found alone in a garden …… well ….

Simon arrives

Simon is probably a wee bit older than Tabbytha’s kits – he’s able to feed himself and use the litter tray – though he’s a little smaller than them. He has a big purrsonality though.

He’s hoping to be an IT consultant when he grows up.   Apart from being a wizz at Candy Crush, he’s so far managed to copy and paste my messenger conversation with one person and send it to someone else, and reorganise my drop box files.   Uncle Alan came on Friday to do some work on our new website ….. so Simon discussed apprenticeship options with him

As he’s about the same age as Tab & Mowse’s kittens I thought it might be good for him to spend a bit of time playing with them.   It felt very much like going to playgroup ….. being eyed up by the other mummies and not quite fitting in. Simon looked like he wanted to play but sat anxiously on my lap for a while.   I persuaded him that Timothy looked like a nice little boy and maybe they could play together, and he toddled off, occasionally returning to my lap for reassurance.

Simon showed Tim what fun it was to play in the litter tray, while Tim showed Simon how to play with Tab’s tail (no photos of that … focused on being ready to grab Si if Tab took exception to it).  Huge respect to both Tabs and Mowse who took another kitten completely within their stride.  Mowse gave him a wash because she had her flannel out and was generally grabbing kittens to clean them. They sit there patiently whilst the kits smack them in the face, play with their tails and ears.

simon invited for tea

Timothy invited Simon back for tea ….but Si was a bit unsure about it and after going into the nest ran back to me. He wants Timothy to come and play on the computer with him tomorrow.

…… it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.”

Little  did  Charles Dickens suspect he’d give words to express where 8  Lives is right now 😉   We set up 3 years ago as a very small cat rescue (the rescue that is that’s small … not the cats … though some of them are).    With help from Voluntary Action Sheffield we established ourselves an an unincorporated charitable body.  We couldn’t register to be a ‘proper’ charity as we had less than £5k per annum income … and didn’t expect that to change.    We hadn’t bargained for our amazing fundraising team . .. who have now taken us over that registration threshold.

So now we need to register … like it or not.  Which we do … and we don’t.    It’s amazing to have this amount of funds …. though just to be clear: although we’ve had more than £5K come in this year, most of it has gone straight back out on food /litter and vet bills.   It’s wonderful though to be able to offer a rescue space to a cat without too much fear of the financial implications of any health issues s/he has.   It meant we could take in people like poor old Molly Mable who was found hiding in the bed a week after her human had died, Puddy a long term ‘stray’ who had been living in someone’s shed for years, fed by a kindly neighbour, and little Sage a stray who was ripping her fur out for reasons initially unknown.    Between them …  they’ve cost us about £800 at the vet.  They’re worth it of course, more than worth it.

molly

puddy

sage

Armed with coffee and cake three of us got together a couple of weekends ago to try to make sense of the charity registration process.  There was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Sage would have felt well at home as we tore our hair out  trying to work out which forms we needed to fill in and plough our way through the legaleze.   Sage however was living the life in her lovely foster home and couldn’t give a cat’s whisker.

This week its starting to come together.    We’ve had a meeting with Keith at Voluntary Action Sheffield who was just as amazing and helpful as he was 3 years ago when we were first setting up.   There’s still a way go to, forms to be filled, meetings to be had, stuff to be signed … and signatures to be witnessed.  The good news is that we now have some idea what we’re doing.  I can’t praise organisations like VAS highly enough …. it actually feels like we might be able to do this now.