Category: Hachitaro News

Hachitaro News, 1 to 6 August

Tuesday, August 1st

It’s really hot today, too. Hachitaro and Kuro are energetically playing together.
In Hachitaro’s mind, it seems Kuro is his older brother, and Kyoku his uncle or mother. Are maybe we’re just the ones who give him food and flush his toilet? (He also sometimes steps on us like furniture.)

Kyoku and Hachitaro have grown accustomed to each other, and that’s good.
Kuro sometimes challenges Kyoku without any reason, and that’s a little problem; but Hachitaro loves Kuro dearly as a his rough older brother.

Today, Kuro and Hachitaro met their mom (Moku) through a window screen. Kuro has done it many times so he may feel it’s nothing, but it was the first time for Hachitaro to see her in half a month. He may remember her even though she left him alone in our yard: he climbed halfway up the screen to follow her. It’s a little painful, isn’t it.

His weight today – 585g

 

Wednesday, August 2nd

His weight today – He finally became over 600g! The weight is 615g.

 

Thursday, August 3rd

He plays well, eats well, sleeps well, and did poo twice. Even though it’s hot, Hachitaro is fine today, too.
During the day, Kyoku was playing with him. We also saw him sleeping beside Kyoku.
After we saw that, we noticed older brother Kuro (who has a strong possessive streak) sulkily sleeping on the concrete at the entrance hall. (?)

His weight today – 622g. This is about double his weight on the day he appeared at our house, eighteen days ago.

 

Friday, August 4th

Because Hachitaro’s weight has been increasing aggressively, we bought an electric kitchen scale that can weigh up to 5kg. We bought it by net auction, and it arrived today.
Actually, after I made a successful bid, we went to a discount store and checked their electric kitchen scale corner, but they had only scales up to 2kg. We guess he will be 2kg very soon. The price was also not much different from the total of the bid price and sending fee, so we felt satisfied.
However, after the product arrived, we wanted to check how it worked, but it didn’t include a nine-volt battery. Anyway, I was going out after that, so I bought one at the hundred yen shop.

In theory, we also could weight Kyoku and Kuro, because the maximum weigh is 5kg. But they never stay on it. Finally, Chris put Kuro on it, and his weight was a dubious 4kg.

His weight today – 646g

 

Saturday, August 5th

Kuro was noisy even before dawn. He was picking a fight with Kyoku! They often sleep side by side during the day. (Kyoku is often dominant in the daytime.) Why is Kuro especially noisy in the early morning? We feel bad for Kyoku if Kuro is too persistent, but we are also sleepy, so we leave them alone.
Picking fights with Kyoku, and violently chasing and following Hachitaro: Kuro’s wild party continues until about 8:00 a.m. Hachitaro can’t yet jump as he wants to, but we guess he will do it in some months, and we are afraid that at that time the inside of our house will come to pieces. Because we have a lot of stuff in the house. (Mostly junk though.)
Anyway, we really feel Kyoku is a quiet cat.

His weight today – 678g

 

Sunday, August 6th

Because Hachitaro doesn’t drink milk much, I give him paste food and dry food for kittens. So we have leftover powdered milk for kittens that we bought for Hachitaro.

As usual, Moku, Icchan, and the Komoku family show up in our yard. Our washing machine is outside, so Moku (mother of Kuro and Hachitaro) persistently asks me to give her more food. To tell the truth, her character and appearance both are not so cute. We want her to go to Ryo’s house or somewhere; but she is still lactating and also unhealthy-looking, so we pity her and feed her. (Many people around us who don’t like cats easily say that all we need to do is just not feed them. But if we could do that, we wouldn’t have the current situation. Actually, we are home all day, so we notice some things it’s better not to know.)
I was continuing the laundry, Komoku’s kids (they’re about four months old) also showed up. Beside me, they asked Moku to nurse and Moku actually did it. We have seen Komoku’s nursing many times, but mot Moku. She always looks hungry. I wondered if she could nurse all right, so I gave her Hachitaro’s leftover milk. They all drank aggressively. Moku and the two kittens drank it up very fast.

Hachitaro is now a six week old kitten. As we know Moku has two more kittens the same age as Hachitaro. But we haven’t seen them since she dropped Hachitaro at our place. They used to be bigger than Hachitaro, but they were also sick with something they caught from their parents. We are wondering if they could survived. We think Icchan also gave birth after Moku and we never see her kittens, either. (We just notice it when we see their tummy size and teats.)

His weight today – 671g

– YS, 7 August 2006

7 August 2006