Meet Litter #8

We've taken a 6 month break from fostering and now we're ready to jump back into it!

A couple days ago I got word that the shelter had a stray Mama cat giving birth and we committed to take this litter. When John went to pick up the kittens and their Mama he found out that 2 of her kittens had died last night. Tonya told John that the Mama wasn't taking the best care of the two surviving babies. He called me to make sure I was up to taking this litter and we agreed we could handle it. We knew right away that there's a chance this Mama will reject her kittens or continue to show little interest in them. This means that she may not nurse them and we will need to hand feed them every few hours.

She is very young and it's another case of babies having babies. When we got her and her babies settled into the master bathroom, she let us love on her and even purred for us, but she kept ending up hiding behind the toilet. She wouldn't go to her babies at all. I can tell she's scared and she looks like she has no idea what she's supposed to do with these tiny babies.

We've gone in every hour or so today to coax her into the bed and lay down with her babies. The only way she'll lay down to let them nurse at all is if we sit in the floor and love on her the whole time to keep her there which doesn't work well. Since we don't know for sure if she's going to let them nurse while we're not in there, it was hard to figure out when to step in and hand feed them. We don't want to discourage them from nursing by filling their bellies and we don't want to cover them in human cooties and discourage her from wanting to let them nurse.

After several hours she still wouldn't let them nurse and the babies were looking lethargic. It was time to step in and hand feed them. They eagerly gobbled down their kitten formula and afterward they finally had some energy to move around and cry a little. Mama is very loving towards us but still has no interest in going to them.

It will be a long night but I'll be setting my alarm to get up every couple hours and go in to hand feed the two weak kittens. I'm hopeful that Mama will start to go to them but right now I just want to make sure they live.