Mazie Came Home!

Finally!

After a long week of preparation, Mazie is home where she belongs.

Her foster mommies, Diane and Martha, drove her down to Charlotte on Friday.  She was a little tuckered out from a 90 minute car trip, but she settled in pretty easily.  She spent much of the afternoon snuggling her new dog and learning how to wrap her mommy and poppa around her little paw.

Mazie's foster mommies, Martha and Diane, showed us all the little idiosyncrasies.  Mazie presently needs a lot of TLC.  She would be considered severe on the CH scale for now and is in need of help with most motor functions.  She can pull herself around for very short distances, but does not have much strength in her rear legs.  

She needs help getting to and from her litter box.  Eating and drinking can be tricky too since she tends to have a lot of nervous head bobbing when she's trying to feed herself.  Nothing we can't cope with and work with try to teach her to compensate.  So, for now, we are feeding her by hand and giving her water from a syringe a couple of times a day.

With time and patience, Mazie will be doing a whole lot more on her own.  We were thrilled today when she climbed out of her litter box not once, but three times all on her own.  That's a big deal for a kitty who doesn't know where her own butt is.  Here's a short video of Dave helping her to finish her dinner last night.  (There is definitely something magical about this little kitten).

Today she played, she practiced walking in her contraption (a cool cart made by her foster mommy, Martha), she got sat on by a dog and managed to extricate herself.  We were afraid of a smoosh and now it's happened.  Everyone survived.

She really likes the ribbon toy we bought for her and killed it at least seven times today.  She enjoys the bright plastic springs that she had to play with in foster care too.

Must catch ribbon!!!

She seems to have pretty good kitty instincts.  Her vet in Winston-Salem thought she might be blind, but based on her behavior with the ribbon toy and the strings, she's definitely not.  She has great vision and wants to take that ribbon out!  Her hearing seems to be pretty good too.  She looks up when we enter the room and responds to whistles and clicks.

Her appetite is great too.  She's gone through a can and a half of wet kitten food and about a tablespoon of kitty kibble.  She probably burns as many calories as she takes in when she eats the kibble on her own.  We're feeding her the wet food by hand and she really munches out!  Camille likes it too and has begun to learn that if she looks very, very sad that mommy will let her lick the spoon a little too.

Our neighbor, Stephen, came over for pizza tonight.  I'm pretty sure Mazie's fan club grew by one.  She cuddled up right in his lap and gave him her best "I'm cute" face. 

She is pretty darn cute, we have to agree.

So now it's time to tuck Mazie (and ourselves) in for the night.  She's had another big day in kittyland.

Everyone have sweet kitty dreams!

Meep!