Sibling Rivalry - Days 32 and 33

 Half the weekend down, and Phoenix is doing well.  He's been upgraded to a new "home" that we'll continue to use until he's able to move around the house freely... or until he can jump out on his own.

Upgrades

Phoenix's new pen finally arrived.  We had a delivery date of Oct 9th to 19th, so I'm glad it ended up coming on the 9th.  The space is larger, and a bit more "permanent" than the boxes we had been using to close off the space.  All in all, I'm happy with the set up, and I think it'll give room for Phoenix to grow.

Currently, we're using his old pen as one end of the enclosure.  I have two other pieces that I could close off the whole pen with.  But I thought this might be better for now.  More cozy.  I've asked Phoenix, and while he happily shares his opinion on everything, I have yet to understand what any of it means.  So for now, we'll go with this until Phoenix gets big enough to climb out.

I've also finally introduced the shark hideaway to Phoenix!  I honestly thought this was a lot smaller than it was.  But this thing makes incredibly happy, so I don't regret the decision.  I had originally put it inside his pen enclosure, but quickly learned that he could easily climb to the top.  It seemed like it might make escape easier, so I pulled the shark out and it lives on the side for when we're playing or it's feeding time.

We tried adding a little bit of wet food to Phoenix's milk tonight.  My sister was visiting today and she asked me when I was going to start making a slurry (mixture of wet food and formula).  I told her I didn't have plans to do it unless he had a hard time eating the wet food directly.  We then had a debate about what the kitten lady said about the slurries and if they are required and when you start giving them.  End conclusion?  There's a difference between what was written and what was in the video, so we were both correct.  And that's how we ended up deciding to add a bit of his wet food to his formula!

Phoenix ate it as he would any other meal, so nothing seemed different.  The kitten lady had said that introducing this new kind of protein might make the kitten realize he's a predator.  Whether coincidence or not, Phoenix seemed highly active tonight and was playing quite a bit!  Maybe his inner predatory has been awakened?  Here's our predator post-feeding.  Scary, right?

Sibling Rivalry

Quite the opposite title of last post, huh?  I think the best part is this video happened within 10-15 minutes of the last post going out.  Don't worry, no one was harmed in the making of this video.  Well, maybe Nguyen.  He panicked.  I laughed.

One thing to keep in mind - it's not a problem for the older cat to bat at another cat.  In fact, it'll hopefully socialize Phoenix in many ways.  I did a lot of reading around after the interaction just to make sure about these points.  The only thing I haven't been able to specifically figure out is whether or not 4 weeks is "too young" for this kind of interaction, as most people don't adopt kittens until at least 8 weeks of age.

This was also a good learning lesson for me.  I made a mistake in how I set up the interaction, so in retrospect, I'm not surprised how this played out.  Here's what happened about 1 minute prior to this video.

I made a couple of mistakes here.  The biggest one was bringing Phoenix into a space that is largely Asher's (the couch).  Asher clearly didn't enjoy Phoenix's presence, and I moved Phoenix after Asher made it clear he didn't want him around.  Asher shortly after got off the couch, and I thought this was a good opportunity to let him approach Phoenix.  So I put Phoenix on the floor some distance a way and wanted to see what Asher would do.  When Asher started getting closer, I took the video you saw where he batted at Phoenix.  So even though I let Asher control the interaction this time, I completely disregarded the fact that he was probably still on edge about what happened on the couch.  Nguyen and I have also chatted about how we can't yell at Asher in these interactions.  It's one thing if Asher full on attacks the little guy.  But a bit of discipline is going to be inevitable as our older cat teaches Phoenix some boundaries.  Not to worry though - neither of them seem to hold a grudge!  Here's a clip from this evening.

Asher has given Phoenix two other swipes today as well.  The first one was when Phoenix reached a paw up towards Asher's face.  No hissing, but Asher gave him a soft hit and Phoenix went on his way to looking at something else.  Shortly after, Asher came by again, and gave him another smack that was seemingly unprovoked.  And then he walked away and sat by the couch.  This one did scare Phoenix a little; he backed his way up and went quiet for a bit.  But shortly after, he was back to his chatty self and was running around exploring.

And for any cat gurus out there that have thoughts on other tips, tricks, articles, or videos - send them my way.  I've been reading around quite a bit, but always appreciate a recommended resource!  In particular, I've read things that suggest this is fine, and we shouldn't interfere as long as Phoenix isn't in any danger.  It also suggests that we should make sure to give even more attention to Asher while Phoenix is around just to make sure Asher doesn't get jealous about the kitten's existence in our house.  The only thing I'm generally concerned about is "kitten" include a pretty broad age range, and since kittens don't get adopted until 8 weeks, I'm assuming most articles are about this age group.  So if you know anything different, let me know!

Family Visit

We had family come up to visit today as well.  My mother and sister spent the afternoon and evening here.  Both of them took some time to play with Phoenix, and in general, he's not shy around anyone.  Not that I was surprised about that, but he seemed happy exploring all the newcomers.  My sister played with him quite a bit.  She even got peed on 😂.  That experience caused him to get the nickname Shashu.  I suppose if I had to translate that from Farsi, it would be a cute or endearing way of calling someone a pee-er.  Does that even make sense?

My sister also confirmed that she can also see stripes on Phoenix's tail.  Here's a photo - let me know what you think?  Stripes, or just our imaginations?  Though I also know seeing in through my camera will be hard to tell.  I'm fairly certain at this point that there are indeed some stripes forming on his tail!

There isn't too much more to say.  Phoenix got a chance to play A LOT today.  Definitely a sign of what is to come.  I'm not sure how ready I am to entertain someone with this much energy.  I'll need to look for toys that might provide some of that kind of stimulation even if I'm working on not directly interacting with him.  The amount of energy he has now is a little crazy, and I'm sure it's only going to continue going up for now.

There were also a couple of different "oof" moments today.  As I mentioned, after this protein, he somehow seemed super energized.  He was moving around and exploring and inevitably falling.  The most amusing was when he was trying to climb on a rolled up carpet that unrolled a bit.  Poor guy fell with a bit of carpet over him.  No kittens were harmed, many laughs were had, and a mental note to have him avoid the carpets was made.

Photos and Videos

Phoenix walking around an exploring a small space.

He found Asher's bed on one of his explorations.  Asher doesn't usually use this bed (unless it's on our bed or on the couch), so this isn't a territory problem.  But it was funny that he found this and started falling asleep here.

He kind of got "stuck" back here.  He started meowing as if something were wrong.  Seemed like he had a hard time figuring out how to get "out".  Don't worry, he ended up realizing he just needed to commit to climbing through and he was fine.

Another video of him falling asleep.  This hasn't gotten old for me yet!

Sleep-time photos!