Yet Again Still More Kitten Talk

OK, all that exhausting work and worry I've been putting in trying to grow a cat from that tiny scrap of life I found in my driveway is finally starting to pay off. Because Vir-kitty, at one month, is becoming all cute and catlike and fun.

He was seeming increasingly unhappy at living in a box all the time, so I cut a hole in the side of his box-bed, put down some towels on the floor, removed anything dangerous or icky, and converted the bathroom into Kitten World. Vir seems to be enjoying living in Kitten World, and I had this beautiful heartwarming moment earlier when I stopped in to check if he was awake -- he was, curled up in his bed -- then went off to the kitchen to warm him up some milk, and when I came back, he was up and out of the box, and he came toddling up to greet me. Aww! Heart-melting kittenness!

I also had another motivation in letting him roam about a bit... As I think I mentioned earlier, I've been having trouble getting him to take very much milk at a sitting, which has lead to considerable worry about whether he's getting enough nourishment. It occurred to me that a lot of the problem seemed to be that I was taking him out and sitting him on my lap to feed him, and, once the initial hunger pangs had been sated, the interesting world-outside-the-box became far too distracting. I'd hoped letting him crawl around and explore on his own time would make him less likely to want to do so when I was trying to feed him. So far, it does seem to be helping. He's still not drinking half a bottle at a feeding, the way I'd like him to, but he does seem to be eating much longer, and with much less coaxing. He actually seems quite happy to stay settled in my lap now, in fact, which is nice for both of us. Yay!

Still haven't had any more success with the solid food thing... Occasionally, he will lick or mouth at the stuff, but he really doesn't seem at all interested in eating it, and I couldn't get him to lap milk from a saucer even when he was clearly really hungry. And my bright idea of leaving out some moistened Kitten Chow in the hopes that he'd figure out what to do with it eventually didn't work so good, as it proved much more attractive to ants than to kittens. Stupid ants. Ah, well. I'm sure he'll get the hang of it eventually.

And for those who have asked, yes, there will be pictures, but it might take a while. I still don't have a digital camera, and I've still only taken a handful of shots on the disposable I bought.