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- Apr 1, 2016
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A week ago today we took in our first pregnant mom through the Humane Society that I work with (I started our bottle baby program a year before and we have done moms and babies starting the day after they were born... but never one that was still pregnant), it was very clear that she was highly pregnant with what we guessed to be 5 kittens. She went into labor on Easter after having NO signs of labor until the true contractions and when those started she was sitting on my lap on the couch. We had the first baby in under 10 minutes from the first contraction and within an 70 minutes we had 5 kittens. However, she wasn't done yet, about 2 hours later three more babies had arrived. Mom did great and cleaned and fed all of the babies right off the bat. The entire litter was small in size but fully developed. I had a kitchen scale ready to weigh them immediately but for about the first 24 hours mom wouldn't let me take them away long enough to get a weight on them and would get very distressed if she heard them make a noise and they weren't in her "nest." That being said, I have been able to weigh them everyday since then and mom just watches me as I do it because she knows I will put them back immediately.
The one that I am very worried about was an extremely low birth weight little girl that we are calling Monarch (after the butterfly). On top of the low birth weight she is solid white in a litter of all different colors of tabbies (I will post the best picture I could get of the litter, which I took while mom ate her soft food and we were also changing the blankets). I was initially weighing them all in ounces but I switched yesterday to weighing her in grams to get a more accurate result. Tuesday she weighed 1.75 ounces, Wednesday she weighed 2 ounces, and yesterday she was up to "2.25" ounces (63 grams), so she is definitely putting on weight but is very small. I honestly have not expected her to live this long, but I want to help her fight because I know that she will have an up hill battle.
I have PetAg KMR and Karo that I can use but mom wants to nurse her and have her with her. Mom is on a Merrick grain free kitten food and is getting Weruva canned food and Fancy Feast Kitten cans several times a day which I am adding L-Lysine to (something that my shelter does for all of its cats/kittens).
What else can I do to help her? Obviously, I feel as though time with mom and litter mates is the best option for now but that she also needs to be closely monitored.
The whole litter at 2 days old.
Monarch next to her three brothers as mom was bringing them back into the nest
The one that I am very worried about was an extremely low birth weight little girl that we are calling Monarch (after the butterfly). On top of the low birth weight she is solid white in a litter of all different colors of tabbies (I will post the best picture I could get of the litter, which I took while mom ate her soft food and we were also changing the blankets). I was initially weighing them all in ounces but I switched yesterday to weighing her in grams to get a more accurate result. Tuesday she weighed 1.75 ounces, Wednesday she weighed 2 ounces, and yesterday she was up to "2.25" ounces (63 grams), so she is definitely putting on weight but is very small. I honestly have not expected her to live this long, but I want to help her fight because I know that she will have an up hill battle.
I have PetAg KMR and Karo that I can use but mom wants to nurse her and have her with her. Mom is on a Merrick grain free kitten food and is getting Weruva canned food and Fancy Feast Kitten cans several times a day which I am adding L-Lysine to (something that my shelter does for all of its cats/kittens).
What else can I do to help her? Obviously, I feel as though time with mom and litter mates is the best option for now but that she also needs to be closely monitored.
The whole litter at 2 days old.
Monarch next to her three brothers as mom was bringing them back into the nest