Update-o-rama

So, the the blog updates got a bit derailed there.. I'm being a bad MamaKitty and not getting lots of cool new pictures of the babies for everyone. I blame it on having one significantly rotten week last week (I know.. that's what everyone says. Trust me, mine was pretty bad.) Anyway.. lets see what I can do to get this thing back on track a little bit.

And boy, have a lot of things happened in the last week! I've become an official foster "parent" for the Orphan Kitten Project out of the vet school at the University of California, Davis. And on the heels of that, I picked up a little grey tabby fellow, who's about a week younger than the two bitties I already have. He's an adorable youngster with some lighter coloration around the eyes that I have always thought gives them the "old man" appearance.. and so his current name is Old Man.

He came to the Orphan Kitten Project at a bit over two weeks old, his mother had been a semi-feral kitty who disappeared, so the concerned folks who had been looking after mama and baby called up the OKP looking for someone to take care of the little guy. He stayed with one of the OKP student members until they were able to place him with me for fostering until he's old enough to be weaned and find his forever home. Right now, we're estimating him to be a sneeze over four weeks old, and we're running a little late, but we've started the transition from milk to solid food and so far that's going very well.

I've found that the best way to transition the bottle babies from milk or KMR (Kitten Milk Replacer) to solid food is to buy some Hill's a/d from work and start mixing it in with their bottle. The a/d food is high in protein and nutrients, and it's also very soft- it has been designed to be usable in cases where an animal needs to be syringe, or tube fed. Unlike many canned kitten foods which can still be quite chunky and clog up the bottles.

Right now we're still in the phase of mixing sludgies into the poor lil guy's bottle to get his digestive tract used to the idea that something a little more substantial than milk is soon going to be on it's way. After a few days of this, we'll start experimenting with solid foodies off of a plate.

The two older kittens are the black female and orange tabby male previously mentioned.. who are now five weeks old, and have finally gotten themselves dubbed with names. I have a young helper who has been coming to help me take care of the kittens in order to fill her volunteer services requirement for school. She has dubbed the little black "Mellow", and the orange tabby is now "Tiger".

For the last few days, they have been eating entirely solid food quite enthusiastically (if not at all neatly). And as a consequence, get nearly as much of the food ON them as IN them. Unfortunately for the bitties, this requires a slight bath (or at least wiping of the face and paws) before they get to have their playtime running around outside the Box o' Mews after each meal. The after meal bath is met with great protestations of murder, foul play, innocence, and the utterance of many feline bad words that I would be horrified to translate. But I keep telling them that as soon as they learn how to eat with their mouths instead of their foreheads, the baths will stop. At some point they'll learn to listen to their Mama.

Now that they're on the solid wet food, the last transition we have to make is on to the solid crunchies, and then they'll be off to other fosters until they get placed in forever homes of their own. I keep trying to delay the day, but it's creeping up on me slowly and surely.

The Daily Ins and Outs

Over the years, my friends are often commenting how much of a mom I am.. likely because it takes a mom to really get excited about the odd little things that babies do. This morning, for example, we had another momentous occasion in the Box o' Mews. We had our first potty in the litter pan! My poor little kittens likely had no idea why they were the recipients of so much extra loving and attentions, but they were still happy enough to receive them.

Sadly I did not get any pictures of this momentous occasion because I was a goober and didn't go get new batteries for my camera while I was out any time in the last couple of days. But I had to share anyway.

So now that our itty bitty instincts are starting to do their thing, we get to start moving on to the next big step in any baby kitty's life.. solid foods!

Bitty Kitty Moving Day

A momentous occasion in any bitty kitty's life is the move from the baby crate to the Box o' Mews (tm). The graduation of any bitty from infancy to toddler hood is cause for great celebration and festivities, and bitty kitties are no exception. At the age of three weeks, my two current bottle babies have become mobile enough to have earned themselves a graduation day. Fortunately for them, my older bottle babies have just been sent off in tearful farewell to their foster homes where they'll get to socialize and play with other bitty kitties until they find their very own forever homes, and the Box o' Mews has once again become available.

The Box o' Mews is a medium sized fabric portable and collapsible dog kennel that has zipper openings on the front and top for easy access, as well as mesh windows on either side for air flow. I picked it up on sale at Petsmart and it has made an excellent home for my little bitty toddlers as they start needing more space to move around, but are not yet ready to have free reign of the house.

As bitties start getting their feet under them, they become the masters of making messes, and the Box o' Mews can often become the location of a litter calamity if proper precautions (and towels) are not in place to prevent such a hazard. No kitten condo is ever fully complete without sufficient snugglies to curl up and sleep in.. which is why I have box upon box filled with micro fleece (or just other really soft) blankies perfect for snugglies. Fortunately, my landlord has been highly understanding of my increase in the amount of traffic this causes in the washing machine and dryer as a result of kitten bedding supplies.

Along with the graduation of bitties to the Box o' Mews comes the understanding from the bitties that they will start exploring the instinctive need to locate a litter box and begin the great transition to eating solid foods. So while they don't yet fully comprehend the purpose of the litter pan, one is made available so that they their little instincts can start kicking in, and making less work for their momma!

So once the Box has been made up sufficiently for it's new inhabitants, it's time for the bitties to check out their new romping grounds. The little black girl took one glance at the snugglie and went diving for some badly needed naptime (eating breakfast is hard work!), while her brother took a few more minutes to look around and investigate, before he went diving under the snugglie as well. Happy kitties!

A day in the life...

So this is an experiment in whether a geek-turned-vet tech has the gumption and enthusiasm to do regular ongoing reports in her self-induced khaotic kitty kraziness. We shall all see how well it does (or doesn't as the case may be) work out.

Working in a veterinary hospital puts all employees at high risk of ANP (Acquiring New Pets) Syndrome, a well documented and highly contagious condition. ANP strikes employees of all genders, nationalities and political leanings, with little apparent regard for social status or economic stability. My own case of ANP Syndrome is among one of the most deadly strains yet discovered... I am addicted to bottle babies.

Bottle babies (otherwise known as catticus infinti or caninicai infinitum) are very young puppies and kittens often no more than a day or two old that have been brought into the hospital by a variety of people who have acquired them and cannot or do not wish to care for them and are seeking others to do so. And I, the bleeding heart that I am, cannot bear to turn them away.

Kittens tend to outnumber puppies by a significant margin, but many of the bottle babies that are brought to us have been found after their mother has abandoned them, or has suffered medical complications that she did not survive. Feral dogs, not being nearly so abundant in the urban setting as feral cats, don't tend to produce so many offspring that can be casually picked up by a local Good Samaritans.

I currently have in my care two bottle baby kittens who are just three weeks old, a black female and an orange male. They are the two survivors of a litter of four who were brought into the hospital at a day old by a fellow who had found them in a bag that had been thrown out of a car in a mall parking lot. Since his dog had previously been cared for by our hospital, he brought them to us to receive care, and then they followed me home.