So last month I took home a stray cat from my workplace. I called her Antigone, and a week later she had two kittens. Well, three, but one was dead. Anywhoo, now their eyes are open and their ears came unfolded, and they look something like cats. So here they are:
Kitten 1, now named Todd. Todd already has a home to go to when he’s old enough. He has a litter box, a bed, and toys just waiting to be played with. He also has a frindly hound dog named Copper. I’m sure they will be the best of friends.
Kitten 2, who has acquired the nickname MV, which stands for Majin Vegeta. (Majin Vegeta also has a M on his head.) I’m considering keeping him as a permanent resident.
Antigone has made a hobby of sneaking up on and attacking my other cat, who is minding his business. I got her a collar with a bell so he could hear her coming. Hopefully she will stop being so aggressive when the kittens are a bit older. I introduced them to the other cat and he licked their ears, so I guess he doesn’t mind them. All is well as far as I can see. I have enlisted the help of a friend in socializing them, he comes over a couple times a week and plays with them for an hour or two. I usually snuggle them while reading a book at bedtime, so they are learning to like being petted. Also, they are learning to meow. Sort of. They sound like they are saying “Eeeww! Eeeww!” Oh, and they can hiss. It’s not very intimidating.
We recently took home a newborn kitten whose feral mother had abandoned it when the SPCA caught her (she escaped into the ceiling of the building and the kittens were left to fend for themselves.) Out of a litter of seven kittens, all but one died within a couple of hours as they were only two or three days old.
The one we got was a real fighter, and for a while it looked like he was doing well. His umbilical cord fell off, his eyes became slits, then tiny cracks, then tiny watery orbs, then they finally opened as his ears began to perk up. He was always voraciously hungry and, we discovered, even had something of an oral fixation (we gave him the nipple of a bottle to suck and he’d sit there, contentedly purring away for an hour or so ‘making biscuits’ with his paws against whatever he was lying on).
Then, all of a sudden, he started breathing with a raspy wheeze one morning. The local SPCA (who were were fostering him for) said that it was nothing, and that we should bring him in the next day for a checkup just to be sure. By that afternoon, he was already dead. He was just over three weeks old, and had just started crawling earlier the previous day.
Probably, in that case, not having mother’s milk was what did him in, as the vet at the SPCA thought it was a case of pneumonia or something of the sort.
Much, much better luck to you and yours. Keep them warm and well fed and don’t mess around with any breathing problems (I wish I hadn’t been out of state when our kitten got sick, as I’m stubborn enough to have demanded we take him to the vet immediately. Lunar is sweet and smart, but sometimes she needs to kick a bit more ass. I still blame myself for not being in town to help out.)
Yours are cute and seem to be in a very good place. Any higher power surely awards extra karma points for those who take care of kittens.
By the way, sorry to make the thread all morbid, that totally wasn’t my intention.
Just take good care of your kittens and watch out, as they’re very delicate when they’re that young, even with mother’s milk.
No, kitten hisses are more cute than intimidating.