Latest updates on the Kats

Hmmmmm.... it just occured to me that I forgot to mention that sometime in September, we picked up another kitten. It was white one that looked exactly like the one who had died back in July. This time the mother had for some reason deposited him under my neighbour's car. The previous pics on caregiving were taken using that kitten as model.

Here's more of him and the black one. My bro and his family can't seem to settle on names for them so they've basically come to be called Black Kat and White Kat. Yeah.... don't say it.... I know.... *rolls eyes*

White Kat at about 3 weeks old... eyes just opened...

A couple of weeks older... snoozing....

Pics taken last night... Black & White Kats sharing a bowl... White kept using his head to block Black from eating.... heehee...




White won out and fell asleep.... ZZZzzZZzzz....


Sorry about the fuzzy pics. They where taken with my phone cam under bad lighting conditions :-( Black Kat is now about 4 months old and White Kat about 2 months.

I'm very proud of my bro and his family for having undertaken such a responsibility and achieving a much better success rate than experienced rescuers. Yay for them :-)

Kat update

This is Kat... half of the duo we found about 3 months ago. Pics taken 3 days ago...

Kitten Updates

Apparently, newborn kittens are damn difficult to raise. A seasoned rescuer told me that their survival rate without the mother's care is only 5%. There're lots of things you need to help the kitten to do, not to mention the 2-hourly feedings. Here are some pics of the feeding process.....

First, massage the privates to stimulate peeing cos they can't pee or poo by themselves at this stage of their lives...


squeezing out the last drop...


Milk! I want milk!!


aaaaaahhhhh... that's more like it....


Making him pee again after his meal..


Massaging his tummy to make him burp


He's been constipated for 2 days... running warm water to stimulate pooing..


A crude measurement of growth (a week ago, he was swimming in the ring) :-P


Peed, fed and burped... now for a nice snooze on top of the hot water bottles...

More on kittens

Remember them from a few posts before?

Well, the white one died a week later probably due to pneumonia. It had difficult breathing one Sunday night and on Monday morning, we rushed it to the vet. The vet couldn't tell what was wrong exactly but we got some antibiotics and glucose which my brother had to administer intravenously every 2 hours. Poor fella died the next morning at 3am. RIP sweet one....

Anyway, 3 months later, the black one now named Kat, is a fiesty little fellow who loves to play and can shoot around the house like a rocket. She (we think it's a "she") as also managed to get herself shut into the kitchen cabinets every so often because nobody knew she had sneaked in. Here she is :-)

This is Kat at about 5 weeks old. These pics were taken on National Day, 9 Aug...


Here she at 10 weeks old. Pics taken yesterday :-)








aaaaaaannnnnnndddddddd............


NEW ADDITION!! Rescued on 4 September from under the neighbour's car. The mother had once again abandoned this little one. It's a dead ringer for the one who died and we suspect it's the same mother :-( His (we think it's a "he") name is Fluffy...

Just wondering...

... if anyone actually reads my blog. I've told only a handful of people about this blog. Even my closest friends and family don't know about it. Bloody hell, even I don't read it. Every now and then, I remember that I have a blog so I update it with my ramblings. I wouldn't be able to find it on another computer because it's only bookmarked in this computer.

So who reads my blog? If you do, please leave me a comment so that I'll know I'm not really talking to myself. Thanks :-)

I'm not a sportswoman but....

... I do like to WATCH sports :-)

I've been glued to the telly this past week watching the Beijing Olympics. I think Michael Phelps is part fish... maybe once he hits the water, he grows webs between his fingers and toes and if you examine under his ears carefully, you'll see gills. That man is sheer genius in the water!!

That aside, I happened to catch the 200m women's fly finals. It was an ok race at the start but at the turn for the last lap, China's Liu Zige starting catching up with the defending champion and beat her by about a body length, cutting the world record by 10 seconds. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.!!

These wonderful feats bring to mind 1976 Nadia Comeneci's perfect 10 performance and Barcelona 1992 Fu Minxiang's winning dive from the 10m platform. I don't think I've ever seen anything to beat these 2 breathtaking and beautifully executed performances.

Oh yes, I remember from eons ago in some vague part of my memory Mark Spitz's wins in the pool. If I'm not wrong, he had a full head of hair, a big moustache and a triangle Speedo. But now, all the swimmers are either bald or double-capped with shark skin suits that compress their bodies to be as aerodynamically efficient as possible. So are the new world records a result of their own prowess or the suits?

So ok, Singapore won silver in the women's team table tennis but it's all very hollow to me as at the end of the day, all 3 players are imports and not trained and developed in Singapore. I'm sure I'm not the only one saying that it was essentially a China vs China match. But Zhang Yining is another kettle of fish altogether. She is by far the coolest player I have ever had the pleasure of watching. It's no wonder she's World No. 1 :-P

Badminton... now that's about the only sport with a net that I know how to truly appreciate, having played it myself since I was so high with the neighbour kids and joining the badminton team in school just for the heck of it. Strangely enough, they didn't show badminton on Channel 5, the "official Olympic channel". Funny how the official channel missed out so many events. Maybe they weren't officious enough.

Well, I managed to catch the men's final between world no. 1, China's Lin Dan and Malaysian Lee Chong Wei. That Lin Dan... W.O.W. I've never seen him play before but I'm glad I channel-surfed to the Malaysian station and caught that match.

Caught gymnastics last night and was a bit shaken by the hairlessness of the men gymnasts from the eastern bloc. Men really shouldn't shave anything other than their faces. Since we're on that subject, men shouldn't do floor exercises either, especially big men with bulky muscles. It's not a pretty sight.

I don't know what's on tonight but I think it's beach volleyball. I'll give that a miss and get on with reading my Eddings.

Waiting for the air-con man

Last night the air-con in the room went a little haywire. It wasn't cool at all and if you are in sunny Singapore right now, you'd know how torturous the weather is these days.

So D called the air-con man who was supposed to have been here at 5pm, but it's 7.14pm now and still no sign of that all-important figure in our lives.

Here are my dogs confined to the kitchen so that they don't pounce on and tear our dear air-con man to shreds... the feral beasts...

Bak Kut Teh anyone?

Today D and I had bak kut teh for lunch. Ok... so it wasn't just bak kut teh... we also had pork trotters, braised dried bean curd and skin, bean sprouts, brained groundnuts, and fish with jackfruit. The fish with jackfruit is an interesting dish. It's a bit like fish & chips but instead of chips, they had a honeyed jackfruit with is really refreshing.





I'm not a huge BKT fan but I did like the shop and their concept. It's at Bukit Timah opposite Beauty World and it's a quaint little place next to the HUGE coffee shop that sells Indian food. The deco is really nice and best of all, it's AIR-CONDITIONED! heeee..... I loved their tableware... white ceramic plates, bowls and spoons in avant garde shapes. Lovely to look at, to hold and best of all, so CLEAN looking! Their use of leather-like pvc black table covers is also very original and adds a touch of modernity to this age-old dish.

The food is very comforting... just the sort of thing that I would cook at home, especially the soups. Simple but flavourful. And they serve them up in stone pots which keeps the dish hot till the last drop is scooped up. The co-owner cum cook said that all the recipes were passed down to him by his grandmother. That's why they tasted so homey :-)

They day we cat-napped kittens...

...yep...that we did; cat-nap a couple of nearly newborn kittens right from their little den in my mother's back kitchen.

Mommy had been away for about a week and when she came home, she nearly got a heart attack when something shot past her and out the backyard. It took her a minute to catch her breathe and to make sure her heart was beating normally and then she realised that a little cat family had made their home in an upturned box in her back kitchen.

Apparently, the mother cat had decided to give birth and raise her little family there. Mommy asked the elder bro for AVA's number, thinking that the mom cat surely wasn't going to want her babies anymore since unfit human eyes had already seen them. Elder bro thought they were cute so took them home to raise as his own.

Needless to say, I had to come to the rescue when he needed to buy kitty milk, so we've been at it all of last night and today feeding them at 2-hourly intervals.

We can't really tell if they are boy or girl yet but they're really cute and the white one has already learned to suckle on the feeding syringe.

What shall we name them? Elder bro wanted Midnite and Snow, Mommy suggested Cokey and Snowy which the niece said made the black one sound like a drug addict. Then Mommy suggested Blackie and niece said that was racist. The nephew happily named them after himself *rolls eyes*....

The sad part is that the mommy cat has been sitting outside my Mom's house and we think she's looking for her kittens. Now, we don't know if we should return them and risk her killing them. If she abandons them, that's fine as we can raise them but if she kills them, then we would have blood on our hands. It's a tough decision...

Anyway, here they are... pics taken today. We're guessing they must be about 4 days old as their eyes are still closed and their bellies still has a piece of dried up umbilical cord attached.

The Food Post

This is all about food. I guess I must be hungry :-)

Pics of the bbq we had for mom's day...

Lamb on the grill

Garlic bread with lamb. The garlic herb butter was home-made :-)

The beef and chicken wing..

The veggies. And wine, of course...

Baby can't join in... too bad... here's his food :-P

Ah Pew and I made nasi lemak last week :-D

Morning at the soup kitchen

Noooooo.... NOT Soup Restaurant where they have the fabulous Samsui Chicken.

A soup kitchen, where volunteers gang up and put migrant workers at their mercy eating the food the volunteers have cooked for them. But seriously, it's really good food.

The Archdiocesan Commission for Migrants and Itinerants set up a soup kitchen a couple of years ago. They cook meals for newly arrived migrant workers who do not have money to buy food for themselves. That's because they pay a king's ransom to the agents who bring them over here to work, so the ACMI helps them save whatever meagre pay they receive by providing them with free meals for the first few months they are here.

It's also a chance for a bunch of retirees or the ungainfully half-employed like myself to get together and do a little bit of good.

Getting up at 6.45am to be ready and at the kitchen by 7.30 was awful but worth it. The work wasn't too hard as there were about 10-12 other volunteers helping. Everyone just chipped in wherever they were needed and the whole atmosphere in that kitchen was lighthearted and warm - not just from the stoves but from the fellowship as well.

I don't know how many people we cooked for today but I heard it was about 100. I suppose if the ACMI gets more financial support and volunteers, they can cook for more. They started out with twice a week, then now they are doing it 3 times a week (Tuesday to Thursday). They will be starting Monday and Friday sessions soon and I shall be helping them on Mondays and Tuesdays which are my off-days. I shall leave Thursday free for Woofy's Choice :-)

It's fun and I'm looking forward to the next session already :-D

World's Cutest Cat

The husband and I went to visit a friend today and he was very excited to show me his cat... the world's tamest and cutest cat. She only wanted to play and unlike most cats that unsheath their scary claws and bite when they get too excited, this one didn't. I must have played with her for a good hour before we went down to the dining for some tea and then she wanted to play catching with me. She is simply adorable! And her name? They call her "stupid cat"... affectionately, of course :-)