Hi everyone,
I have been lurking around this fantastic forum for around the last 5 weeks, and it has to be said the advice you all give is amazing, life saving in so many cases! I'm sure there are many like me who have never posted or even joined the site who have been helped immensely by reading the advice given on posts.
I took in an 18 month old cat last year, and was led to believe she was neutered, silly of me to not get it confirmed but hey hindsight is a wonderful thing! When her nipples started pinking up and the weight went on her it didn't take me long to realise she was pregnant, I also managed to narrow the dates down to when the conception happened as I can remember having a conversation with some visitors we had that Jessy had 'made friends' with a boy cat, and was shouting for him when she went out. ( Yes yes I know I should have clicked on that she was actually in heat :/ ) So I trawled the net finding every bit of info I possibly could to help her pregnancy and birth go without a hitch, and here I ended up on this site, saved it as a bookmark and never looked anywhere else!
On Wednesday 8th July I knew she had started her labour, she lost some plug and would not let me out of her sight, if I moved she moved and she was no less than a meter away from me the whole time. At around 4pm we were both on the sofa and she started pushing, the first kitten took an age to be pushed out, around 50 mins! Panic had started to set in but eventually a huge grey kitten came out breech, followed by another huge grey one also breech! She went straight into the role of Mummy cleaning and sorting them both 2 more breech kittens came out, smaller black ones again she was fantastic and lastly a little tiny black kitten was born, this one wasn't breech but by this point Mummy was exhausted and I had to break the kittens sack and cut the cord.I got all the kittens weighed and marked with sharpie pens under the armpit (fantastic idea I got from here!)
The next 9 days went brilliantly, she couldn't have been a better Mum, she was happy for me to be near the kittens and the moment she heard a sound out of them she was straight over to check on them. All were gaining weight at a really good rate, 10 grams plus every day, she was the perfect text book Mum and the kittens all doubled their birth weight on target.
Then everything changed On Friday 17th July I was in my kitchen with my dog, Jessy came into the kitchen from the room her and the kittens had ( we had a safety gate up so dog & kids couldn't get in but Jessy could come and go if she wanted) Completely out of the blue Jessy attacked the dog and then me, this had never ever happened before Jessy and our dog were the best of friends, when coming out of her kitten room the first thing Jessy would do would be rub herself all over the dog, they adored each other. Attacking me and drawing blood was also completely out of charachter for a cat that had always been a total softy. After her attacks she ran out of the open back door.
That was 5 days ago and we haven't seen her since As you can imagine we are all devastated. The next morning I was sure she would be at the door shouting at us to let her in, but nothing. We have tried everything possible to find her, called everywhere, looked everywhere, been out shouting her at all hours of day and night and not a hint of her being around. We are completely clueless as to why or where she has gone. My gut says something bad has happened. She was never fussed about being outside, she would never really go further than some bushes behind my garden. I dont ever remember a time that I shouted out the back for her and she didn't appear within a minute, even the time I now realise she was in heat she still stayed close by.
Is there conditions that can affect cats after giving birth? I believe she was in pain when she attacked that night, and I think she has took herself off because she was hurting or was scared. I haven't given up hope she will be back but my gut instinct is telling me that she wouldn't have left her babies this long if she had any option.
Thanks to all my reading on this site I was able to step up in to kitten mum role quickly and without too much panic! The kittens have been an absolute dream to look after, they are getting Royal Canin baby cat formula and drinking from 5ml syringes, the first feed was a bit of a faff but now I just need to put the syringe tip in their mouths and the clever little things just suck so hard the plunger moves down it self!! We had 3 days with no poo but some drops of oil in the milk sorted that out, boy did it sort it out haha when they finally went they all passed around 5 inches off poo haha, took me totally by surprise!! The kittens are now 13 days old and I am feeding them every 3 hours.
This post has got much bigger than I intended, so sorry for going on! I am going to add the kittens weight below I would love if one of you experts would reassure me that we are doing ok! I think we are, these babies have no food issues, if anything I worry that they are being over fed! I will add their birth weight, weight when Mum left and weight from tonight.
Grey Boy - 112gm (birth) 256gm (mum left) 301gm (today
Grey Girl- 103gm (birth) 252gm (mum left) 291gm (today)
Black boy- 103gm (birth) 233gm(mum left) 266gm (today)
Black big girl- 96gm(birth) 233gm (mum left) 284gm (today)
Little Black girl - 85gm (birth) 215 (mum left) 258gm (today)
I truly am sorry for this post being so huge, I guess I just wanted to give you all the back story to how I came about being Mum to 5 babies! I have seen on some other posts how much milk the kittens should be having but can never seem to be able to work it out for myself, lack of sleep is affecting my head I think now! Its actually worse than having a newborn this!
I have been lurking around this fantastic forum for around the last 5 weeks, and it has to be said the advice you all give is amazing, life saving in so many cases! I'm sure there are many like me who have never posted or even joined the site who have been helped immensely by reading the advice given on posts.
I took in an 18 month old cat last year, and was led to believe she was neutered, silly of me to not get it confirmed but hey hindsight is a wonderful thing! When her nipples started pinking up and the weight went on her it didn't take me long to realise she was pregnant, I also managed to narrow the dates down to when the conception happened as I can remember having a conversation with some visitors we had that Jessy had 'made friends' with a boy cat, and was shouting for him when she went out. ( Yes yes I know I should have clicked on that she was actually in heat :/ ) So I trawled the net finding every bit of info I possibly could to help her pregnancy and birth go without a hitch, and here I ended up on this site, saved it as a bookmark and never looked anywhere else!
On Wednesday 8th July I knew she had started her labour, she lost some plug and would not let me out of her sight, if I moved she moved and she was no less than a meter away from me the whole time. At around 4pm we were both on the sofa and she started pushing, the first kitten took an age to be pushed out, around 50 mins! Panic had started to set in but eventually a huge grey kitten came out breech, followed by another huge grey one also breech! She went straight into the role of Mummy cleaning and sorting them both 2 more breech kittens came out, smaller black ones again she was fantastic and lastly a little tiny black kitten was born, this one wasn't breech but by this point Mummy was exhausted and I had to break the kittens sack and cut the cord.I got all the kittens weighed and marked with sharpie pens under the armpit (fantastic idea I got from here!)
The next 9 days went brilliantly, she couldn't have been a better Mum, she was happy for me to be near the kittens and the moment she heard a sound out of them she was straight over to check on them. All were gaining weight at a really good rate, 10 grams plus every day, she was the perfect text book Mum and the kittens all doubled their birth weight on target.
Then everything changed On Friday 17th July I was in my kitchen with my dog, Jessy came into the kitchen from the room her and the kittens had ( we had a safety gate up so dog & kids couldn't get in but Jessy could come and go if she wanted) Completely out of the blue Jessy attacked the dog and then me, this had never ever happened before Jessy and our dog were the best of friends, when coming out of her kitten room the first thing Jessy would do would be rub herself all over the dog, they adored each other. Attacking me and drawing blood was also completely out of charachter for a cat that had always been a total softy. After her attacks she ran out of the open back door.
That was 5 days ago and we haven't seen her since As you can imagine we are all devastated. The next morning I was sure she would be at the door shouting at us to let her in, but nothing. We have tried everything possible to find her, called everywhere, looked everywhere, been out shouting her at all hours of day and night and not a hint of her being around. We are completely clueless as to why or where she has gone. My gut says something bad has happened. She was never fussed about being outside, she would never really go further than some bushes behind my garden. I dont ever remember a time that I shouted out the back for her and she didn't appear within a minute, even the time I now realise she was in heat she still stayed close by.
Is there conditions that can affect cats after giving birth? I believe she was in pain when she attacked that night, and I think she has took herself off because she was hurting or was scared. I haven't given up hope she will be back but my gut instinct is telling me that she wouldn't have left her babies this long if she had any option.
Thanks to all my reading on this site I was able to step up in to kitten mum role quickly and without too much panic! The kittens have been an absolute dream to look after, they are getting Royal Canin baby cat formula and drinking from 5ml syringes, the first feed was a bit of a faff but now I just need to put the syringe tip in their mouths and the clever little things just suck so hard the plunger moves down it self!! We had 3 days with no poo but some drops of oil in the milk sorted that out, boy did it sort it out haha when they finally went they all passed around 5 inches off poo haha, took me totally by surprise!! The kittens are now 13 days old and I am feeding them every 3 hours.
This post has got much bigger than I intended, so sorry for going on! I am going to add the kittens weight below I would love if one of you experts would reassure me that we are doing ok! I think we are, these babies have no food issues, if anything I worry that they are being over fed! I will add their birth weight, weight when Mum left and weight from tonight.
Grey Boy - 112gm (birth) 256gm (mum left) 301gm (today
Grey Girl- 103gm (birth) 252gm (mum left) 291gm (today)
Black boy- 103gm (birth) 233gm(mum left) 266gm (today)
Black big girl- 96gm(birth) 233gm (mum left) 284gm (today)
Little Black girl - 85gm (birth) 215 (mum left) 258gm (today)
I truly am sorry for this post being so huge, I guess I just wanted to give you all the back story to how I came about being Mum to 5 babies! I have seen on some other posts how much milk the kittens should be having but can never seem to be able to work it out for myself, lack of sleep is affecting my head I think now! Its actually worse than having a newborn this!