Dear Diary - taking care of the kittens

As I told you, Greta had six kittens. Just four of them seamed to fit to eat at once. Of course those that were the smallest were always pushed away by their siblings So I found myself having to choose between feeding them myself, from a bottle with kitten milk formula, or going once every hour and moving all the kittens around so all of them had a chance to eat.

Newborn kittens are soo small and soo limp, and their umbilical cord is still raw. So I wanted to avoid having to touch and handle them too much. Feeding from a bottle has the danger of not feeding enough or overfeeding, plus you have to burp them, but the biggest danger is for them to inhale the milk (if too much is coming from the bottle) and damage their lungs.

So I chose to try to rotate all the kittens at the mom nipples. I had to stay on my knees and hold the little ones while they were eating. And they would eat for few minutes and fall asleep, and their brothers would push them away and take their places, and then they would fall asleep. So then I would put back at the nipples the little ones. I was both worried and physically hurting. Theoretically I knew I would have to weight them all every day to see if they indeed gain weight. But after the first two days they seemed to gain similar weight (the starting weight was very different) and I just didn't have the energy to weight them every day, so I developed the "squeeze test", I should patent it, it worked great... I would gently squeeze the kittens belly to be sure they are plump, so full...

An interesting thing I found on the internet, is that each kitten puts its own pheromones on the mom nipple, and each of them goes and eat from that specific nipple all the time. So after the first days, I tried to be aware of which kittens eats on what nipple. They seemed to be only four easily accessible nipples. But, as I kept moving them around, one of the biggest kittens gave up on its nipple and went  underneath its siblings. The place that s/he gave up was just under the back leg of mom, protected.  So one of the little kittens found its safe place to eat. I've tried to put the other little kitten on the nipple near the moms front leg, but it wasn't such a success, s/he was moved as the others were moving. So I had to go to them for the whole week, really once every hour, to be sure everybody is eating and to help the one that was always pushed away.

So it was hard work, but they are all doing fine and getting cuter and cuter!

Dear Diary - the kittens were born

Read the Introduction, to get the general picture of my interaction with the alley cats, and the Summary, to put the stories on a timeline.

Sooo, Greta gave birth.

At first I put her in the closet in the spare bedroom. Moms with kittens seem to enjoy living in a small space, they feel safer. But Greta wasn't a mom yet so she didn't really enjoy to stay in the closet, especially as my other cats went to that room and to the closet door. So I left Greta roam in that whole room, but by herself. She was very happy and very cuddly. I visited her every hour or two.

And at some point in the afternoon I caught her giving birth... in the litter box. Two kittens were born already, one looked fluffy, the other, probably just born, was wet and FULL of litter. I firstly cleaned the baby a little so mom wouldn't lick him with all the litter on... Then I moved them in the closet. The last born still had the amniotic sac attached so I was extra careful to not pull the baby umbilical cord and get him hernia. Usually the mom eats the amniotic sac and cuts the umbilical cord. But with the litter situation going on, I disinfected a scissor and cut it myself. They already were staring to eat, and while I was there she popped out another one! The first two were black and white, the last one white and black. I closed the closet door and let them be so I would rest my back and knees a little...

I checked on her probably every 15 minutes. In less then an hour she had another one, white and black. The bedding was quite soiled at this point, so after she cut the umbilical cord I changed it, I thought she was done... Nope, here came a back one! I waited for mom to clean him and changed the bedding again. I thought that surely she was done. Nope, here came another black one. This one was very tiny, and all the others were already eating so I went to check on him repeatedly, obsessively. I had to see him eating. I actually had to place him myself on her nipples and hold him so the others won't get him on the side.

Greta ate very well before giving birth, now, during birth she hasn't eaten much. A cat that I helped with giving birth a year before, was eating and drinking water continuously. At some point I changed the bedding and put the dirty ones in the washing machine.  I put two types of canned food and some dry food, and I went to sleep! It was almost midnight.

Dear Diary - hanging in there with a pregnant fairy

Read the Introduction, to get the general picture of my interaction with the alley cats, and the Summary, to put the stories on a timeline.

We continue the feeding with no problems during this stay at home time.

We also have no problem in finding food to buy. There were maybe few times that we didn't find specific items, but no biggie. I'm still careful to have a week supply of all the cat food I need in the house, just in case.

And the news... My husband brought home a pregnant cat, He was so regretful he couldn't get the other one that I mentioned in my previous post, and now she has the babies outdoor, I couldn't say no. He said she is friendly but he didn't sound that convincing...You know from my previous post about Lizzy not getting to be friendly enough for adoption, after a whole year, so she lives with us.  She seems happy, just not interacting with us much. The new one is black and white so we named her Greta (after the black and white movie star Greta Garbo). She is soo big, I think she'll explode....  any second now. And I'm relieved that she is actually very friendly!

And that's all we do for now, all we can do for now.