48 hours

Well just a little over 48 hours that these babes have been here. They have been doing really well. The boy who has yet to be named was so hard to feed, he would suck a bottle for all of 2 seconds and decide he was done...well thats not conducive to a kitten who needs to grow so I put him in my emoty bathtub last name and gave him a small bit of canned food with hos formula, he ATE, he ate well. Then I put Oleana in with him and she ate not as well as her brother but she still wants a bottle so I'm not to concerened. I woke up to a very stinky newborn box, yep they are using the bathroom on their own much of the time, this means that newborn boxes are no long suitable. I have a spare dog kennel that I used screening to shorten the wire spacing so neither can wander off. I loved them in with their heartbeat cat and added a small litterpan, in the past I have ad to show them what to do a few times but generally cats are probably the easiest animal to house train. They also have more room and now have a view of the room and people, pets around them so they are much more vocal than they were. This is good as it means they enjoy the company of people which will help them to find their furever home. I imagine these 2 will be with me for about 2.5-3 weeks more and then be off to another foster home where they will be raised with other cats and learn how to be cats. Bottle feeders typically do not get to learn normal cat bahaviour from mom and it is something they need so other cats can teac them. Weights for today B & w - 264G a gain of only 4g, but still a gain none the less Tabby - 290G a gain of 12G ...Fantastic.

They arrived.

My first 2 babies of this season arrived yesterday afternoon. A boy not named yet and girl "Oleana" not sure how to say it or even if I spelled it right but either way both babies are in good health and are aout 3 weeks old. I don't know their story in full as far as I can remember their mom was just being to rough with them so they needed to be saved from harm. Mammals usually make the best moms, I assume she was young and maybe not mature enough to be a mommy just yet. She won't have another chance as the rescue will spay her before she is up for adoption. They did really well through their first night, I expected them to be little menaces but it wasn't them waking me up, it was me waking them up for feeding etc. Today they have been fed about every 3 hrs and I gave them some wet food. Thankfully I remembered how messy learning to eat food kittens are and fed them in the bathtub, a super easy place to clean so them making a mess is not a ton of work. Olean weighed 260G which was gain increase of 14 G the wee lad weighed 290 neither a gain or loss from him. However it could be that the weights are off from yesterday because I used a different scale. I will know more tomorrow about their weights. We added a new family member just over 2 years ago, Phoebe is a hairless chinese crested and cute as heck. I introuduced her to them this morning, she loves them and wants to play with them, they are able to walk quite quickly so they have been following her around when they are out for feeds.She was super mad at me yesterday about them so I figured introducing them would make her less mad....I'm glad I did. I will post pics of them if I can ever get them to be still enough to actually get pics that are not blurry. I will be doing my best to update abot them daily. It may be just weight posts or might be a little longer. These last 6 weeks or so have been so hard, so emotional and stressful, but rescue gives me a purpose, it gives me happiness and joy...so much happiness. I feel like me again.

Whoa

It has been a VERY long time since I last posted. I have still beein doing rescue work but haven't actually had many rescues in the past years. My first year I bottlefed I think 80 something during that kitten season. Than life got busy and I haven't now for a few years, mainly because I wasn't able to dedicate the time that bottle feeders need. Its a lot of work, weighing, feeding, cleaning, supervising, vet visits etc etc. Recently my circumstances have changed and am so excited to be getting 4 bottle feeders about a week old tomorrow. I am very excited. I will be doing the blog thing again for these 4 babes daily so you can all follow their time with me and of course I will be posting a ton of pics.

Goodbyes suck

So I know I have totally sucked this summer with updates but after we got over the hump with toby, there really was nothing to say that you haven't already heard. Both babies left me on Sunday evening to go to a socialization home. Remember what I have said in the past about bottle fed babies, without a mom to teach them they will grow up without learning the social and important parts of a cats life, this makes adoptions hard, if not impossible. So anyway, they were picked up on Sunday evening. Tuesday only Toby was returned, poor we lad had the runs so bad his new foster mom spent an entire day washing floors, she was frustrated so she returned him. Josie was doing not to badly but she would not leave Toby's boy bits alone, she was constantly hanging off him, so they needed to be separated. Michelle kept Josie and brought Toby back to me so he could recover. he did quickly, by the time I returned home from my daughters baseball game Toby appeared to be fine. The next morning he WAS fine no more runs and no more issues...so we chalked up his diarreah issue to his sister stressing him out. He was ready to be returned Wednesday night, but they still needed to be separated and 24 hrs was not enough to break Josie of her addiction, so he went to another foster home. he is doing very well, has 2 other cats to play and romp with and appears to be a happy boy. I don't know what kittens I will have in the future but there will be NO new additions this week as my daughter and I are headed for a short vacation. I will return to blogging when I get more rescues.

it's been a REALLY Hard week

This week has been really hard, stressful and quite nerve racking. On Monday Toby started with some minor diarreah which is pretty common among bottle feeding newborns, but like with any newborn that suffers from this, it can cause dehyrdation really fast and within hrs can be fatal if you are not paying attention. I did everything in my power to make it stop, fed ground rice, kaopectate, diluting formula but nothing I did worked. For 2 days this continued and it wasn't terrible. But Wednesday things went south, both him and Josie had it, Toby with the worst of it, it was just fountaining out of him, it was so bad and such a mess. No sooner would I clean his papers and I would have to do it again. I took them to the vet who tested them for just about everything and came up with nothing, which was good news. She couldn't offer any suggestions other than to keep doing what I was doing and gave the usual lecture "Kittens sometimes just fail and die quickly, no matter what we do". Needless to say those were not the words I wanted to hear. She did say that maybe adding some canned food to their formula would help "thicken" them up some, I tried that it didn't work. By Thursday both babies had lost so much weight, I really felt like it was hopeless and thought for sure they would both pass. Friday morning they were still alive and still had the runs....as a last resort I decided to stop the kitten food, and remove the canned formula and give them just the powdered KMR....this I am happy to say has been successful and today they are eating beautifully and pooping so much better than they were. I actually started to see improvement by yesterday afternoon. I am SOOOOO relieved and my confidence has returned. This has been such a bad year and these 2 started out so healthy and did so well, that I felt they were just the 2 babies I needed to restore my faith in myself as a bottle feeder, when things started to crash so did the faith in myself and abilities. The crisis is far from over but for now it has decreased and both bubs remain stable, though very dirty from their ordeal and their tiny bums are so sore. There was no point in dunking them in water anymore to clean them, am gonna give them til Monday to restore some strength and recover a bit more, then I will bathe them and get them cleaned up. Normally I would start weaning at 3 weeks of age, by adding food to their formula and then from dishes a week later, but given this past week I am going to hold off on weaning them until they are more ready. I am just not feeling to relaxed about doing anything more to their gut as it heals. they will be taking probiotics for the next week or so and once they are "normal" kittens without any issues than and only then will I start weaning and I imagine that unless they protest I will go very slowly with it. So thats my update, no weights for today as I weigh at 4pm and you really don't wanna know how their weights were all week, as it would probably make you cry and feel as anxious as I do about it all.

They can see!

Ok so they can't really see quite yet, their eyes DID open yesterday morning, but the vision will remain a bit hazy for a couple of more days, they are also quite light sensitive so they are kept in the dark still for a another couple of days, probably Monday I will give them more light other then for feedings. With some vision there also comes lots more activity, they have just started interacting with each other, but like human babies their movements don't have a whole lot of purpose just yet. And of course with more activity comes the demand for more milk, yesterday they demanded to eat about every 90 mins, today they are back on their 3hrs schedule. They might go as little as 2.5hrs though. Their weights are coming along rather nicely and I am guessing that by 4 weeks they will have reached that magical 1lbs mark. Currently they are: Josie - 253G a jump from yesterdays 238 Toby - is 266 an increase from his 250 yesterday. So they are gaining weight and they are doing well.

growing up

I didn't post yesterday I got so busy and by the time i remembered I was to tired. I just had surgery on July 5th so I am trying to recover from that as well. In reality there was nothing new to post anyway other then weights, which were: Josie - went from 218 to 230g a gain of 12G Toby - went from 240 to 250 a gain of 10G I knew their gains would taper off now that they have fully functioning bowels, once that catches up to them their weight will increase hugely as before.