Its a Girl!

Meet Marley!

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6 weeks old

0.7 pounds, 10 inches

A beautiful Tuxedo with a Tom Selleck mustache-lip

Joey brought this precious bean home on June 18th. He went to work at VMI that rainy morning, and some other ensigns had mentioned that they saw a little kitten outside. Joey, with lunch meat in hand, spent an hour or so in the rain trying to catch the poor thing but she kept running into the bushes and crying. After several unsuccessful attempts, he said a little prayer, asking that he could just find the baby and make sure she was ok. Almost immediately, she walked out of the bushes and just sat there as Joey picked her up. The poor little one was soaking wet from the cold rain and was so lethargic. He brought her home to me and I just about died. She was such a little thing!
I went by the vet and got a little kitten care kit and spent the day feeding her with a syringe and snuggling with her to warm her up. The next day we were able to see a doctor and we found out that she was about 6 weeks old and severely malnourished. She did have a virus, but considering that she wasn't dirty, didn't have ear mites, and wasn't acting like a feral cat would at 6 weeks, the doctor figured that she was probably dumped by someone (how terrible!).
For the next few days, my life revolved around her. Since she was just a baby, I had to teach her how to do a lot of things her mom would've taught her, like cleaning herself, going to the bathroom, finding and eating her food, etc. And the poor thing would just cry and cry if she wasn't being held (which meant some "baby wearing" for me) or if she hadn't been fed in a couple hours. I even had to burp her every time after she ate otherwise she would vomit (hmmmm, starting to sound like a real baby...). And to make sure she didn't get stuck somewhere where we couldn't get her out, someone always had to have an eye on her. As silly as it sounds, it was a bit of a crash course in newborns!

Now Marley is doing much better. She's gaining weight and has become a pretty feisty little thing. We weren't able to keep her at our apartment--you can bet I cried all weekend when we had to giver her up (I'm a big softy, so sue me). But luckily she has some awesome "foster parents"who are taking care of her (and putting up with her crazy kitten antics) until we can take her with us to South Carolina in the fall.

And because I'm a total mama, here are some of our favorite photos of Marley--