Posted: 12/30/2009 3:54:15 AM EDT
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Hi everyone.
About 2 months ago I wrote about 3 feral kittens we found and have now absorbed into our family. One of the kittens does not have much of a meow at all. Actually, most of the time she just sorta chirps like a little bird. While that may be cute, it's caused us some troubles as she was also born overly curious. Unfortunately, when she gets into trouble we can't find her because she can not meow to let us know where she is. We've found her in the refrigerator (after she sneaked in after only having it open for a second), thankfully she was only in there for a few seconds. She loves to play with doors and is constantly shutting herself into the dark bathrooms, closets, and laundry room. All of a sudden we'll realize that there are only 2 kittens running around and we'll go on a panic hunt for Caspian. We check all of the dangerous places first, fridge, dryer, dishwasher, oven. Then we move on to the safer places she could be. Today, however, she got up on the counter and fell behind our gas oven/stove and was back there lodged between the wall and the fire plate. The only way we knew she was even back there was that her siblings alerted us to where she was by sniffing under the stove. It took some doing to get poor Caspian out. We're working on closing the gap so that she can't fall back there again. We've been working on keeping them off of the counters also. It might seem like we don't watch her and that is why she is getting into trouble, but that is not the case. These little guys are played with and snuggled most of the day. She tends to just get into mischief when we turn our back for a moment. My question is this, are there any collars or devices that I can put on her that I could use to track her? I've seen collars with beepers on them, but most of them are bulky, heavy and very expensive. Not exactly made for a cat./kitten. If any of you have any advice on how we can find our little girl when she gets herself locked in places or lost around the house, I'd be so grateful. She's such an awesome little girl and we're afraid that one day we won't find her until it's too late. She is an indoor only cat, as are the others. Here is a picture of Caspian, now 13 weeks old. 
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I honestly think you're worrying too much about her. In my experience having cats my entire life, if they can get "into" something, they can get out of it (except the fridge, lol)
It almost sounds like a game she's playing with you. She'll come out when she's ready, I'd reckon. And soon she'll be too big to get into as much trouble. 
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My cat Zipporah is the same way. She sort of chirps/cackles.
She escaped out into the apartment hallway a couple weeks ago. She was probably out there for an hour. When we found her, she was napping on the floor. She got into a hole in a wall in my parents' bedroom (renovating, door's supposed to be closed). She went in the hole, under the tub, to the steps. We heard a long scraping sound, which alerted us to her being missing. It ended up being her sliding down inside the sloped ceiling underneath the upstairs steps. We looked down the basement and saw dust coming out of the ceiling, and had to cut her out. She didn't make one noise, and seemed to be quite enjoying her little adventure. With her brother, Moses: 
ETA: I'm glad Moses can't fit into a ceiling. |
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Thank you for your suggestions for the bell collar as well as the Keyringer.
I think one of those will definitely help. =))) Love the stories, too. Zipporah and Moses remind me of our kittens with our German Shepherd. I love it when different types of animals become friends like that...extra special. Hopefully your kitty will keep out of mischief. I'm glad she was OK. Here is a picture of Caspian curled up with our German Shepherd's(Abby) tail. We find Caspian there often. Poor dog, the kittens love to jump on her tail when she wags it like they are riding a bull or something. Thank God Abby doesn't mind. 
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I thought the key finder was an excellent idea also.
The only drawback I saw was that it was 2+ inches long and Caspian isn't too big. She's a rather small kitten at this point and the 2 inch long finder would be awfully long on her. However, when she's bigger it would be an excellent idea for her. The key finder mentioned here is light, whereas many of the others I've researched were bulky and too heavy for a cat. Oh and Misery...I didn't know that about maternal closeness relating to meows. Since Caspian was a stray, you could be right. Her two siblings that we have meow just fine though. Maybe lack of attention and closeness affects them all differently. I DO know that Caspian's brother, Kimber, drinks water by taking the water into his mouth and then making sucking/nursing noises to swallow it down. It's kind of cute. I know that the kittens were still nursing when they were left here by their Mom. They appeared to be about 4-1/2 or 5 weeks old when we found them. We took them away from their Mom after she had left them all day long in our backyard by some wood and we didn't want her relocating them so that they became strays also. I was glad that we did take them, because she didn't show up again for a couple of days. They are getting plenty of attention now. Man, can they purrrrrrrrr!! |
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For the spots you want to keep them off of....
Get some masking tape or duct tape, pull off a long piece of it, lay it on the counters/couch with the sticky side up. Works wonders. Also hillarious to see a cat go flying past you with a piece of tape stuck to it while it goes into panic mode when it got attacked by the mystery snake. |
