Spring 2009 - Ember and Kittens
In the spring of 2009 I had to have surgery on my left wrist to repair a fractured scaphoid that hadn't healed (I'd injured it in a fall three months earlier). So, knowing I was kind of handicapped, the shelter had refrained from asking me to foster any cats or kittens for a while. However, a situation had come up where they thought I could help out. Two under socialized Siamese kittens had arrived at the shelter and one of our other fosters had offered to take them in (she was especially fond of Siamese and knew there would be someone home most of the time to help them adapt to humans). At the time, she already had a mamma kitty named Ember and one female baby named Jo Jo and didn't have the space to set up two separate foster rooms. So, the shelter asked if I would take Ember and Jo Jo (figuring that would be easy enough for a one handed person to handle).
It seemed like an easy fostering situation so I said yes. Well, when I went to pick up the mom and baby, I discovered that there was a second kitten. At first I though maybe I'd had a blond moment and misunderstood but, in fact, what had happened is that a feral cat had been caught by a TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release) group and the mom had only the one baby. So they decided to see if Ember would accept the feral kitten. Having two kittens to tend wouldn't be any more strain on me and it would benefit both kittens to have a "sibling" to grow up with. Also, they appeared to be about the same age, just under a week old. Fortunately, Ember had no qualms accepting the additional mouth to feed. She acted as if it had always been there.
I was told that the new arrival was a male. Both were black but the kitten from the feral mom had a couple of spots of white on it, on its chest and one rear toe. So, off we went. I got the brood all settled in and life was good.
Then I got a call a couple of days later that someone had dropped off a box of kittens, three boys and a girl, that were about the same age as mine that they had reportedly found. However, there was no sign of a mamma kitty. Kittens that young have a high mortality rate if there is no mamma kitty to nurse them. So they wanted to know if I'd be willing to take them. I said it wasn't up to me but to Ember. The next day Ellen from Fox Valley Animal Welfare League arrived at my house with a carrier and four adorable little kittens. They looked to be maybe a few days older than the other two I already had as their eyes were already starting to open.
We opened the door to the carrier and Ember walked over and started sniffing the babies. Then she walked out and laid down. So, I picked up a baby and set it down next to her so it could nurse. Ember didn't blink an eye. So, one by one, I put each of the babies on her. Again, she acted like they had always been there. Success!
A friend of mine who's had a lot of experience taking in orphaned kittens says it's rare for a mamma kitty to reject someone else's baby when they are that young. On the rare occasion she's had a mamma that balked at a strange kitten, she's just removed mamma from the area, rubbed the new kitten with mamma's existing kitten(s) and let mom back in. Since all the kittens now share the same scent, she's happy (and fortunately can't count).
It would seem all was well. However, there was one thing that no one took into consideration and that was that Ember, while willing, was not producing enough milk for 6 kittens. Since she only carried one kitten to term, the amount of hormones that were generated during her pregnancy only activated some of her mammary glands. While she had plenty for her original kitten and the first orphan, the additional four were demanding more than she could produce. Besides feeding her lots of the higher calorie kitten food, I was also providing her kitten formula and an herbal supplement that is suppose to help increase lactation. I hoped that that, along with the demand from the kittens would do the trick.
Unfortunately, it didn't seem like that made any impact on the amount of milk Ember was producing. Concerned that not all the kittens were getting enough, I began weighing them every day. Kittens during the first few weeks of life should put on several tenths of an ounce every day. The four new ones, being larger and stronger, were pushing the two black kittens away and they started losing weight. Even the one female in the new group was also not putting on weight the way she should. So my "easy" fostering" became decidedly more difficult as I had to now supplement some of the babies with additional kitten formula from a bottle. I concentrated on just the three smaller, female kittens as they seemed to be the only ones having difficulty gaining weight. It meant feeding them three times a day, morning, noon and night. As I work in an office and they don't permit telecommuting, that meant driving home every day at lunch to feed them.
Of course, I also had to come up with names for my little brood. It was then that I made a small discovery. As I was caring for the little black"male" kitten that was the first orphan added to the litter, I noticed a distinct lack of boy parts. Concluding that this was, actually a girl, I decided to name her Shelby since it is a gender neutral name. For the rest of the kittens, I searched through baby name books to find ones that I liked and that spoke to some aspect of the kitten, whether their personality or their appearance. I also tried choosing names that were a little unusual but not difficult to pronounce. I ended up with:
These four along with Jo Jo and Shelby were the youngest set of kittens I'd had yet. All the previous fosters had already been eating solid food and had mastered (mostly) the use of the litter box. So it was interesting to see them progress to those stages of development.
One of the things I discovered is that you can tell when a nursing kitten as a good suck going by their ears. They will twitch in unison to their sucking. That was a great indication as to whether they were getting enough milk.
During the first few weeks of life, they need to have their bottoms stimulated in order to poop and pee. Mamma kitty usually does this by licking them. I would help out by using a damp cotton ball. Once they were big and strong enough to waddle over to the litter box, litter training was simply a matter of them watching mom and trying to imitate her. Occasionally, I'd have to pick up a kitten who decided to simply poop or pee where they happened to be standing and place them in the litter box. The funniest thing was seeing the kittens lined up around the litter box like spectators at a hockey game watching their mother go potty. Inevitably they'd start climbing in the box to stare at her rear end and to sniff at the substances that would emerge. Privacy was not something they respected.
Transitioning them to solid food was relatively easy as, again, they just mimicked what their mother did. They started trying to eat the Babycat dry food (Babycat 34 is manufactured by Royal Canin and is smaller than traditional kitten food, thus easier as a starter food for kittens). I also started providing them with canned kitten food watered down with formula. To get them to eat it, I would put some on my finger and put it up to their mouth so they could get a taste of it, then use my finger to lead them down to the bowl. If they turned their head away, I'd put a little on the top of one of their paws so they would be compelled to lick it off. Once they got a taste of it, they generally got the hang of eating it from the bowl pretty quickly.
The harder part was weaning the kittens from the bottle. While the male kittens primarily nursed from Ember, I would let them finish off whatever the girls were too full to drink. I was eager to get them drinking out of a bowl as quickly as possible so I would no longer have the extra work of bottle feeding them individually.
I began by putting the warmed kitten formula in a bowl. Then, one by one, I would take each kitten and set them in front of it. As I did with the canned food, I'd dip my finger in the bowl and put it up to their lips to get them to lick it. Once they recognized the familiar taste, I would gradually lower my finger into the bowl until they realized that the milk was in the bowl and start lapping it up there. For the most part this worked, though it would sometimes take several tries. Often their first attempts resulted in them dunking their nose completely in the formula. It took a certain skill to figure out how far down to put their head so they could reach the formula without getting their nose covered in it.
The funniest incident was when I had taught Farren how to drink from the bowl. Once I was pretty sure he understood the concept, I simply placed him in front of the bowl and let him figure it out on his own. He dipped his head down but instead of sticking his nose in the milk he kept going and the top of his head landed in the bowl. He looked up and gave this pathetic cry as milk streamed down the sides of his head. I burst out laughing then picked him up and handed him to his mom who was more than willing to lick the kitten formula off him.
The hardest to wean was Shelby. She became quite attached to me and to her bottle and would scream at me until I gave it to her. I had to get the rest of the kittens drinking from the bowl before I could turn my attention to her. She protested the change in delivery method but eventually she, too, relented and mastered the bowl thing.
Despite the amount of work it turned into, this was a fun crew and I thoroughly enjoyed having them at home. Most of them, even Ember, were adopted quickly. Shelby turned out to be the difficult one to find a home for. First there's the fact that she is black and black cats often take longer to get adopted. The other problem was that they moved her from the kitten room at the shelter (a room dedicated to kittens under 6 months of age) to the main adult room too soon. They use to have a "Teen Canteen" for kittens that were 6-12 months of age but opted to merge the adult and teen room together. The poor thing was very stressed by all the adult cats and hid a lot. Plus she started over grooming and pulling out her hair. I spoke with the vet tech about getting her moved back into the kitten room or to one of the smaller community rooms where she wouldn't be so overwhelmed. Fortunately, before that happened, someone fell in love with her and adopted her. Still, she was at the shelter almost 6 months before she was adopted which meant she was about 9 months old at the time. That's unusual, even for a black kitten. She just had a hard time dealing with the stress of being at the shelter.
It seemed like an easy fostering situation so I said yes. Well, when I went to pick up the mom and baby, I discovered that there was a second kitten. At first I though maybe I'd had a blond moment and misunderstood but, in fact, what had happened is that a feral cat had been caught by a TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release) group and the mom had only the one baby. So they decided to see if Ember would accept the feral kitten. Having two kittens to tend wouldn't be any more strain on me and it would benefit both kittens to have a "sibling" to grow up with. Also, they appeared to be about the same age, just under a week old. Fortunately, Ember had no qualms accepting the additional mouth to feed. She acted as if it had always been there.
I was told that the new arrival was a male. Both were black but the kitten from the feral mom had a couple of spots of white on it, on its chest and one rear toe. So, off we went. I got the brood all settled in and life was good.
Then I got a call a couple of days later that someone had dropped off a box of kittens, three boys and a girl, that were about the same age as mine that they had reportedly found. However, there was no sign of a mamma kitty. Kittens that young have a high mortality rate if there is no mamma kitty to nurse them. So they wanted to know if I'd be willing to take them. I said it wasn't up to me but to Ember. The next day Ellen from Fox Valley Animal Welfare League arrived at my house with a carrier and four adorable little kittens. They looked to be maybe a few days older than the other two I already had as their eyes were already starting to open.
We opened the door to the carrier and Ember walked over and started sniffing the babies. Then she walked out and laid down. So, I picked up a baby and set it down next to her so it could nurse. Ember didn't blink an eye. So, one by one, I put each of the babies on her. Again, she acted like they had always been there. Success!
A friend of mine who's had a lot of experience taking in orphaned kittens says it's rare for a mamma kitty to reject someone else's baby when they are that young. On the rare occasion she's had a mamma that balked at a strange kitten, she's just removed mamma from the area, rubbed the new kitten with mamma's existing kitten(s) and let mom back in. Since all the kittens now share the same scent, she's happy (and fortunately can't count).
It would seem all was well. However, there was one thing that no one took into consideration and that was that Ember, while willing, was not producing enough milk for 6 kittens. Since she only carried one kitten to term, the amount of hormones that were generated during her pregnancy only activated some of her mammary glands. While she had plenty for her original kitten and the first orphan, the additional four were demanding more than she could produce. Besides feeding her lots of the higher calorie kitten food, I was also providing her kitten formula and an herbal supplement that is suppose to help increase lactation. I hoped that that, along with the demand from the kittens would do the trick.
Unfortunately, it didn't seem like that made any impact on the amount of milk Ember was producing. Concerned that not all the kittens were getting enough, I began weighing them every day. Kittens during the first few weeks of life should put on several tenths of an ounce every day. The four new ones, being larger and stronger, were pushing the two black kittens away and they started losing weight. Even the one female in the new group was also not putting on weight the way she should. So my "easy" fostering" became decidedly more difficult as I had to now supplement some of the babies with additional kitten formula from a bottle. I concentrated on just the three smaller, female kittens as they seemed to be the only ones having difficulty gaining weight. It meant feeding them three times a day, morning, noon and night. As I work in an office and they don't permit telecommuting, that meant driving home every day at lunch to feed them.
Of course, I also had to come up with names for my little brood. It was then that I made a small discovery. As I was caring for the little black"male" kitten that was the first orphan added to the litter, I noticed a distinct lack of boy parts. Concluding that this was, actually a girl, I decided to name her Shelby since it is a gender neutral name. For the rest of the kittens, I searched through baby name books to find ones that I liked and that spoke to some aspect of the kitten, whether their personality or their appearance. I also tried choosing names that were a little unusual but not difficult to pronounce. I ended up with:
- Isabelle - the calico female
- Fynn - the buff colored male
- Farren - the smaller gray and white male
- Taro - the larger gray and white male
These four along with Jo Jo and Shelby were the youngest set of kittens I'd had yet. All the previous fosters had already been eating solid food and had mastered (mostly) the use of the litter box. So it was interesting to see them progress to those stages of development.
One of the things I discovered is that you can tell when a nursing kitten as a good suck going by their ears. They will twitch in unison to their sucking. That was a great indication as to whether they were getting enough milk.
During the first few weeks of life, they need to have their bottoms stimulated in order to poop and pee. Mamma kitty usually does this by licking them. I would help out by using a damp cotton ball. Once they were big and strong enough to waddle over to the litter box, litter training was simply a matter of them watching mom and trying to imitate her. Occasionally, I'd have to pick up a kitten who decided to simply poop or pee where they happened to be standing and place them in the litter box. The funniest thing was seeing the kittens lined up around the litter box like spectators at a hockey game watching their mother go potty. Inevitably they'd start climbing in the box to stare at her rear end and to sniff at the substances that would emerge. Privacy was not something they respected.
Transitioning them to solid food was relatively easy as, again, they just mimicked what their mother did. They started trying to eat the Babycat dry food (Babycat 34 is manufactured by Royal Canin and is smaller than traditional kitten food, thus easier as a starter food for kittens). I also started providing them with canned kitten food watered down with formula. To get them to eat it, I would put some on my finger and put it up to their mouth so they could get a taste of it, then use my finger to lead them down to the bowl. If they turned their head away, I'd put a little on the top of one of their paws so they would be compelled to lick it off. Once they got a taste of it, they generally got the hang of eating it from the bowl pretty quickly.
The harder part was weaning the kittens from the bottle. While the male kittens primarily nursed from Ember, I would let them finish off whatever the girls were too full to drink. I was eager to get them drinking out of a bowl as quickly as possible so I would no longer have the extra work of bottle feeding them individually.
I began by putting the warmed kitten formula in a bowl. Then, one by one, I would take each kitten and set them in front of it. As I did with the canned food, I'd dip my finger in the bowl and put it up to their lips to get them to lick it. Once they recognized the familiar taste, I would gradually lower my finger into the bowl until they realized that the milk was in the bowl and start lapping it up there. For the most part this worked, though it would sometimes take several tries. Often their first attempts resulted in them dunking their nose completely in the formula. It took a certain skill to figure out how far down to put their head so they could reach the formula without getting their nose covered in it.
The funniest incident was when I had taught Farren how to drink from the bowl. Once I was pretty sure he understood the concept, I simply placed him in front of the bowl and let him figure it out on his own. He dipped his head down but instead of sticking his nose in the milk he kept going and the top of his head landed in the bowl. He looked up and gave this pathetic cry as milk streamed down the sides of his head. I burst out laughing then picked him up and handed him to his mom who was more than willing to lick the kitten formula off him.
The hardest to wean was Shelby. She became quite attached to me and to her bottle and would scream at me until I gave it to her. I had to get the rest of the kittens drinking from the bowl before I could turn my attention to her. She protested the change in delivery method but eventually she, too, relented and mastered the bowl thing.
Despite the amount of work it turned into, this was a fun crew and I thoroughly enjoyed having them at home. Most of them, even Ember, were adopted quickly. Shelby turned out to be the difficult one to find a home for. First there's the fact that she is black and black cats often take longer to get adopted. The other problem was that they moved her from the kitten room at the shelter (a room dedicated to kittens under 6 months of age) to the main adult room too soon. They use to have a "Teen Canteen" for kittens that were 6-12 months of age but opted to merge the adult and teen room together. The poor thing was very stressed by all the adult cats and hid a lot. Plus she started over grooming and pulling out her hair. I spoke with the vet tech about getting her moved back into the kitten room or to one of the smaller community rooms where she wouldn't be so overwhelmed. Fortunately, before that happened, someone fell in love with her and adopted her. Still, she was at the shelter almost 6 months before she was adopted which meant she was about 9 months old at the time. That's unusual, even for a black kitten. She just had a hard time dealing with the stress of being at the shelter.