Hello... uh... this is my first time posting here and I've got a bit of a puzzle with my new kitty. I adopted him two weeks ago from the Humane Society with who was supposed to be his brother, but the vet says she doubts they really are siblings due to the size difference & teeth development. It was her opinion that the puzzle kitty, an orange tabby named Cheddar, was four weeks old when I adopted him and the "brother" was more like 8 weeks. Big boy is named Rosco, a dark fellow with stripes on his underside. Cheddar, even at the Humane Society, has been a stressed out number who cried incessantly, and when I brought him home I realized he simply wasn't eating. I ran to get this, that and the other, trying to get him to eat - called the vet & they told me to buy the KMR formula, which I did and he wouldn't drink. I finally broke down and started offering him less conventional choices, and he loved my half n' half, the occasional cooked egg. No sign of diarrhea. I augment this with some food from the Nutro kitty food packs or Science Diet Savory Cuts for kittens, slipping in some KMR 2nd Step whenever I can. He won't eat dry foods at all. He has quit losing weight, and that is the good news, and his appetite is beginning to climb along with playful behavior. However, the problems are that a) Rosco beats the daylights out of him when he's just playing, being literally twice as big (Cheddar weighs in at just over 1 lb.) and b) Cheddar MEW MEW MEWs for everything and still needs to sleep next to my skin under my shirt for daytime naps. What I wonder about is how long I should expect this loud crying to continue inside of interpreting it as legitimate need, and when can I begin to regard it as a behavioral habit because his needs are being met now and he clearly knows I'll meet them??? Any ideas about this would be much appreciated.