Premie or miniature kitten?

I posted a couple of weeks ago about what I thought was a premature kitten I had in a litter of 7 I was fostering.The kittens are now 6 weeks old and walking,playing, eating normally for this stage. Goobs the little one has baffled me. She is walking, starting to play, opened her eyes at the same time, and has basically developed at the speed of the others. Her appetite is great ( I supplement b/c she gets pushed aside by the others/she also nurses from mom when the others are sleeping)is VERY strong, and is completely healthy. The only noticable differences being:

Thin fur
low weight- 144g/5oz in comparison to sibblings average- 575g/20oz
small size-1/4 the size of the others.

Any thoughts? Pictures of Goobs in comparison to her sibs can be found at
http://community.webshots.com/user/bierhousea

Thanks in advance

Angela

KC was very tiny for her age and has remained small since.. but not quite THAT small.. it almost seems like there has to be something medically wrong with that kitten.

The only thing that comes to mind at the moment for me is when I saw a puppy or kitten that had a problem with its digestive tract or something and had to have surgery to correct it. I can't for the life of me remember the details but it was on Animal Planet.. sorry. I almost want to say it was leaking some vital enzyme or critical fluid back into its system and not getting the benifit from it's food.. or enough blood sugar or something.. but I just can't remember it has been so long.

Has the kitten been to see a vet at all?

Has she been seen by a vet yet?

I took in a litter of 3 stray kittens this past July, 2 of the being almost 3 pounds ans the other one bieng less than 2. I took them to work and had them checked out, we determined they were about 12 weeks old. The smallest one it turns out had a grade 4 systolic heart murmer on the right side, my boss recomended and echocardiogram. Echo was given an ultrsound and found to have a septal defect in his heart and the right side of his heart was severly enlarged. To make a long story short I kept Echo and he passed away December 6th at almost 8 months old.

I understand what your saying. As being one of the lead volunteers at the rescue, they are well aware of it. This kitten has been thriving its just the size. It could be a congenital defect but their isn't a whole lot of money in rescue work and in terms of taking any drastic surgically measures its not an option. The best we can do is keep the kitten happy and as healthy as possible and if it encounters any major medical difficulties it will be taken to the vet then but up til now there has been no reason to. It's kind of a case like Echo, you do the best you can to have them live their life to the fullest and they do. It's all about quality of life.

While health reasons should always be ruled out first, there have been such cases before.

http://www.messybeast.com/dwarfcats.html

Here's a great article on forms of miniture cats. If you read the case studies, you'll notice that some litters are mixed, with normal and miniture cats coming from the same litter.