It's official

It's official: Miss Kitty is indeed a girl, about 6-7 weeks old, which means she was only 4-5 weeks old when she was abandoned out here, and she weighs 1.2 pounds.

Mr. P. took her to the vet yesterday. Unless you insist on seeing a particular vet at this place, it's luck of the draw. We like some of the vets more than others (Dr. Betsy is our favorite), but they're all good. Mr. P. and Miss Kitty got to see Dr. Buckles, the vet who started this animal hospital (who we thought had retired). He is the quintessential kindly country animal doc. Dr. Buckles was astonished that Miss Kitty had survived at all because she probably wasn't even weaned when she was abandoned (I hope there is a place in hell where animal abandoners starve to death for all eternity). She is too young to be medicated for her fleas, so she'll just have to scratch for now.

Mr. P. mentioned the 10 new puppies, and Dr. Buckles said that it will be OK to give them away at 6 weeks old because mothers usually wean big litters early (Blackie is certainly doing her best to wean them already). But Mr. P. thinks 6 weeks is too young and wants to keep them until they're 8 weeks old. We'll see how he feels about that after another week or so of cleaning up ever-increasing piles of puppy poop.