Another day a little more progress. I have roused at Seb becaues of his vigorous attempts to enter the bathroom in the early days, so now he will not come into the bathroom at all. In his doggy mind it is entering the bathroom that is his sin, not lunging at kittens.

So today, after considerable persuasion I not only got him in there, but also got the door shut once more, so he could see the puppy pen in which the kitten resides. The kitten was there (she is now sitting out watching as the door opens and held her ground with some hissing. And Seb lay down and watched. I was astounded. While the kitten was far from welcoming, it seems Seb has identified her as part of the household (and a very curious one at that!) and therefore not prey. If the kitten can come to similar opinions of the dog, it will be good - I miss having a cat on the bed, for all that there is little space left for me.

Also made a little more progress on the scarf I seem to have been knitting forever and will hopefully finish it some time this decade. I have more interesting things I want to be knitting but am not going to allow myself to do so till it is finished. After all, Vera will not live forever.

Feeding time at the zoo - she is rather keen on wet food, but still cautious about  leaving the pen. This is probably because of her experience this morning. Billy looks quite similar to the brown tabby that I am assuming is this one's mother. So this morning, when I shut him in the bathroom with us, and opened the pen door, the kitten walked forward cautiously then lunged at him, throwing itself down in an excess of affection with its back against his legs. Billy was appalled and said so. He resisted her blandishments and looked affronted till she retreated once more to the pen.

She has, however allowed me to not quite lift her, but transfer her millimetres above the ground, onto my lap where she put up a token resistance but settled for more cuddles. I will need to take her to the vet next week - hope they take Friday bookings.

Had a call from the Hospital today and have my first driving job - well, two of them, next week. The guy who organises this is incompetent, inefficient and full of himself. He has now shown me through all the vehicles three times, shown me the forms, the bag with the relevant info, instructed me about petrol purchases, and today went so far as to give me detailed instructions about timing, locations and so forth. Pity he didn't know Woodsdale is not 15 minutes from Oatlands, but 40. One we had that sorted out, I flew home to watch Dr Who before walking the dog and cleaning the bank.

He also insists on assuming I know where places are that I don't know about, while giving me detailed instructions on how to get to places I know all about. It could get tiresome. But my first passenger is someone I know and like so it won't be too tiresome at all.

Lunch at Kitten Kabin is wet food - mainly because it is easier to mix the worming mix in it. Since wet food has rather a stronger odour than dry, the kitten tends to charge out of the box aiming for the dish, hissing and spitting at me. So today I put on a leather glove as a precautionary measure, and had a go at giving it a stroke. It seemed to accept this very well, so I took off the glove and gave it a proper stroke. It responded so positively that, having licked the pattern off the plate, it came toward me butting for more cuddles, and even ventured to put a paw on my thigh. I had to cut things short or I would still be there! Amazing!

I will try for a video tomorrow as it is quite astounding the transformation between hissing spitfire and purring kitten (and back again!).

Day three of the interloper, and Billy went to the vet to have his booster shots. They kindly looked after him while I continued to Shiploads where I acquired the necessary paraphernalia to deal with a kitten.

Home once more, I dropped Billy off and headed out once more to visit a friend who fortunately was not at home, but her husband provided the necessary newspaper supply without any social obligations to be met, and home once again.

 Once everything was in place there was not much space left for the kitten, but decanting it was not as traumatic as I had expected. Basically I lifted to the door of the trap, tilted it slightly and the kitten slowly uncoiled, then paced, very slowly, down the slope into the puppy pen. It put itself into the cat carry cage cum cave, the door was closed and it sat and watched.

After a little settling  in time I added some worming liquid to some wet food and approached the pen. And the kitten approached me (hissing like a steam engine) and barely allowed me time to add the basin to the pen before plunging in head first to eat it all. Apparently it works on the principle that any meal may well be its last and to hell with personal safety.

I even managed to steal a quick petting without interrupting the vacuum attack. And even dropping some spilled food on its head without a reaction.

I finally concluded the bathroom was the best spot after all as there are challenges in the spare room, not least space. So I can now sit on the toilet and commune with the kitten. As you  can see, a foot against the bars warrants inspection but not reaction. I suspect the hissing and spitting is becoming an obligatory objection rather than a serious expression of fear or aggression, though it does still tremble when I put my finger through the bars (thoroughly encased in leather gloves I would add!).

It does now approach the finger with its nose though, so hopefully that will become a more adventurous exchange not too soon.

Kitten progress is slow but seems to be moving in the right direction. I remembered one of my facebook friends in the UK specialises in domesticating feral rescues so, while I suspect the sort of 'feral' she comes across in London might be a bit more socialised than this wee beast, her advice has been very helpful.

So, Billy is going to the vet tomorrow to have his jabs updated and while there I will call into Shiploads (I will leave Billy at the vet for an extra hour or two), get a puppy pen to house the kitten till I can touch it confidently, and also some wormer I can add to its food.

Have been sitting in with it for quiet conversation from time to time, and used the handle of a wooden spoon through the mesh of the trap to touch it. Oddly it accepted this without hissing or attack, so I will continue to do this. It has been using the litter tray (a shoe box lid with garden soil), but also slept in it last night. But today it did a poo and I have emptied it and added more dry soil. The lid is plasticised so should survive till tomorrow when the puppy pen provides for a larger more fit-for-purpose container. Food and drink are being utilised but food is rationed to develop an association between me and food. A lot of the noise and drama seem to be bluff rather than fear, so I remain confident.

As you say EMW - definitely good to have it off the streets and once I have emptied the trap it will be going out there again to catch mum and dad. There is a burly b&w tom that frequents my garden, and a brown tabby feral that occasionally puts in an appearance. Since I have no idea if they are 'owned' by anyone local I will ensure they are hurried off to the Cats Home as soon as possible to avoid future irresponsible breeding activities.

Still no clue what gender the kitten is - as it never turns its back to me. No doubt time will tell.

You might recall I have mentioned my attempts to trap a feral kitten that has been loitering around for some time. If only because I was concerned for its welfare being so young. It doesn't seem to have grown at all in that time, so may not actually be as young as I have been assuming, but it finally fell for the breadcrumb trail today and is now in the bathroom.

 It was less than impressed and attacked the cage (and me) with some enthusiasm and stalked around the cage looking death at all comers, but after some food and water, and a draped sarong to provide a cave to retreat to, it seems to be settling in fairly well - or biding its time as the case may be.

I have yet to find a shallow tray to provide a litter point, but will rummage later and pop soil in it, as I doubt he would know what litter was for.

A shoe box lid should do the trick I hope.
















I have acquired some fabric from my local antique dealer and he tells me he is clearing a house at present that contains bolts of the stuff. So I will have no shortage of fabric to play with - I will end up looking like those poor 13 kids though if I have to find a use for an entire bolt.

Here are the feet from the machine. As you can see, two of two varieties, and not much in the way of basic feet, but a good range of options - I am told the zigzag mechanism doubles as a walking foot.

And these are my various
Dye experiments. I rather like the results.

 

That cold snap was a bit of a shock to the system. The only way to keep warm was to hang around in the shed and mess about with dyes.

I had a jar of agrocyte sitting in the sun in salted rainwater which had gone a nice deep yellow, so I popped in some wool during the hot spell, but by the time the chill arrived it was still pretty anaemic. The same could be said for some other wool I had put in with the dark brown fermented lichen. That turned out a pale fawn.

So I cooked them (individually) in the crock pot and that did little to improve the situation. So I started adding powdered acid dyes. The fawn had quarry and wombat added (dark  blue and dark brown, and it has been grabbing in various places with the result it is a multicoloured yarn. The yellow had Landscape lichen and wheat added, and is now multiple shades of yellow, brown and green (fairly close shades though so not shockingly different. This left me with the difficulty of what to do with it, so I also dyed up some red. There was quite a bit of that, and it was fairly tightly packed into the crock pot. So I put Coral and Kangaroo paw powder at the bottom, then sprinkled Clay on the other end, added water and cooked. It went clear long before the yarn was dyed, so I added the three colours in sequence as the water ran clear and it seemed to work pretty well.

But there were still some very light patches on the red, so I went looking for the gum tree that is supposed to give red colour. I had been told it is common in these parts and easy to spot as it has a blue bloom over the entire tree. So finding a tree that matched that description, I brought it home, added some suffolk yarn and one skein of the red, and cooked it. And got a medium green/brown. Still it filled in the pale gaps of the red and the suffolk picked up some of the red as well so I threw in the other two skeins, added some more leaves and now have three matching red skeins.

I have also finally got the Singer going - the drive band arrived promptly (thanks Fran for that tip) and was fitted, and then I fiddled around trying to get the bobbin thread to join the needle thread, only to discover the needle goes in a different position to my old Singer (flat bit to the left). Then putting the bits in the wrong position resulted in further problems which, when rectified allowed sewing. But the tension was all over the shop so I had to dismantle the tension button and re-set it (following instructions from Youtube), and I had a stitch. The wrong length stitch. So that took further reference to the manual and a bit of pot luck as the gauge is worn off, and still I had a bit of tension problem and the occasional missed stitch. A new sharp needle sorted out the stitch issue, and a twiddle with the bobbin tension, and voila - I have a fully functional machine! Now to work out what all the feet are for. I seem to have two types in duplicate, so will see if I can swap them with someone who has excess ordinary feet, as the less complicated feet are the ones missing from the set.