We cage the kittens! We lock them up!

We need to give a HUGE shout-out to Robin of Divine Madman coffee. Not only does she roast the best coffee in town (go visit her on Sunday at the Hillcrest farmer's market), but she also rescues animals. When we picked up our coffee, she politely asked about the kittens. We whined to her about how we needed a cage and were about to spend $100+ on a large dog kennel. She rescued US by loaning us the lovely wire kennel pictured below. It will be sent to Baja once our little lovelies have gone off to college.

The kittens are pretty happy in their new home. There's plenty of room for them to run around and their litter box fits inside. Now if they would just use it!

Jason used his THUMBS to help open the latch and escaped


Exploring their new home


Kitty is happy that they are locked up. The living room is safe again!

Sucking butt has consequences.

Kittens are charming and tidy.

I came home from my class at 9 p.m. to find this in the new cage.

We Enter a World of Cute (Week 3)

Kittens look really weird while their eyes are in the process of opening. Not really cute at all. Kinda like aliens. But, when they do finally open all the way, hold onto your hats and glasses, because they are the cutest ride in the wilderness. All of their eyes opened this week. This is a decidedly goopy process. At first we thought they all had an infection, but I think it's just a little crusty the first few days. We even canceled a vet appointment when they looked better.

Still a little weird looking there, Gandalf



Oh yes, he's very cute. Except for when his eye is all infected and swollen and gross. Pobrecito. Of course it wasn't until Friday evening that it started to look really bad. And on Sunday (before Memorial Day) it oozed pus when we wiped it with a damp cotton ball. It's absolutely impossible for it to happen when our vet (the incomparable Kensington Veterinary Hospital if you're in San Diego) was open. So we went to the VCA Emergency animal hospital in Mission Valley. DUMB! They were very nice and all, but it took 3 hours and almost $100 to get a tube of opthalmic antibiotic ointment. Seriously the most expensive tube of neosporin I've ever bought. And the veterinarian asked me if chlamydia was viral or bacterial. So help me god, I am never going back unless my cat is choking to death or ate poison or SOMETHING.

Monkey eats prior to eye infection


He's coming right at you!


Ursula ponders the meaning of life


Gandalf eats while Orange sucks a finger


Ears still haven't popped up


Spot's Roman profile


Ursula rests after a brutal climb up the hand towel.


The tan one closes eyes in eating ecstasy

Cognitive Dissonance (Week 2)

Okay, why did we save these kittens? They are very helpless and getting cuter by the day, but there is no lack of kittens in the world. Why would we take these kittens who are at an obvious disadvantage and try to save them? It's really dumb.

So super helpless



Having said that, there's no going back now. They're getting stronger, pulling themselves up and around with their front legs. Their eyes are starting to open and it looks pretty creepy, to be honest.

Lorri, my stepmom, with a half-eyes-opened Tan kitten. David bonds with his grand-kitten, Black.



Amber also came over to visit the little monsters. Here she demonstrates proper feeding technique, with jelly bracelet accent.

Amber feeds Orange 1


The most irritating development of week 2 was their ability to escape from the laundry basket.

Jailbreak- Spot goes AWOL.


The first day of week 2 included a trip to the vet because their little anuses were so swollen and raw that there was blood on the cotton ball after pooping. The diarrhea was watery, but the right color. The vet looked at a stool sample with the microscope and proclaimed no parasitic issues, so we went home with antibiotic butt ointment for frequent application. It definitely helped.

A healthy steaming pile of kitten excrement

Getting Acquainted (Week 1)

After we visited the vet and found out that only 2-3 are likely to survive, we decided not to name them and call them by color:

• Gray (101g)
• Black (97g)
  
• Tortie (85g He turns out not to be tortoiseshell after all, but the name sticks.)
• Orange 1 (117g)
• Orange 2 (122g) Called Spot after the identifying Sharpie mark on his head from the vet.)
• Tan (99g)

We are so sleep deprived. At school, I keep losing my train of thought. We are feeding them every 3 hours, and it takes almost an hour to pee and feed them all, which means that we only sleep for 2 hours at a time. They eat so little that we carefully mark the bottle level with a Sharpie and measure the change in volume in mm with a ruler. Otherwise we can't tell if they've eaten enough.

Gray drinks at 6 days old


I swear I am never having children! They are super cute, but I don't know how long we can keep this up.

It's lovely when they are asleep


We are hallucinating kittens in our sleep. I turned on the pot to boil water and fell back asleep, nearly burning the house down. The crazy thing is that I must have heard it in my sleep and turned it off without waking up. We have a smoke detector now. :) I have my big test this coming Saturday and I am not studying nearly enough. Had I known how exhausting it would be, I don't know if we would have signed up for the job.

See the Spot!


Tortie is showing his face and Black is at the bottom of the pile


On the very first day, our friends Bobby and Sarah came to visit them. The next day Eve and Mike stopped by. They were popular right from the beginning. Except for Kitty. He remains cautious and quite annoyed at their crying. When we are peeing and pooping them, they tend to cry loudly, which distresses Kitty who jumps up on the counter and cries too. In the midst of this insane cacophony, we are half asleep, wishing we were wholly asleep.

Kitty observes his nemeses


This video was taken on Tuesday night, 5 days old.



They don't move around much. They are blind and deaf. And yet they are adorable. Go figure.
Evidence of cuteness


We are 6 for 6. No mortality yet. Which is good- I'm too tired for death.

And so it begins.. (Day 1)

This is the story of how we became parents to six little balls of fluff.

When I went to bed Thursday night, I thought I heard mewing. It was very quiet and I assumed the neighbors had kittens. I awoke on Friday to more mewing- persistent, plaintive cries. Jason went off to work, but I took the day off of work to study for 2 credentialing exams. These tests will allow me to be a NCLB compliant teacher of high school physics and earth science. I graduated from college 10 years ago, and my physics is a little rusty. I needed peace and quiet to study, but the little buggers wouldn't shut up!

The mewing continued all day, with few breaks. I left for lunch and when I came back, they were still crying. I studied for a bit and finally couldn't take it anymore. What were the neighbors doing to those poor kittens? I set out in search of the crying litter.

Much to my surprise, I found them underneath our house in the dirt with no mama. They looked so tiny! It was very dark and hard to see, but I knew I could reach them if I needed to. We already have an adopted stray named Kitty, but we are sure they aren't his kittens because he's a neutered male. There are LOTS of strays in our neighborhood, but we hadn't noticed any that looked pregnant. And Kitty defends his territory, so cats that come through don't tend to stay long. So, we don't know who the queen is.

The kittens were underneath the house right where my desk sits, so I opened the curtain to watch for the queen to return. I waited. And waited. I called our veterinarian and asked for advice. Marjorie calmed me down (I can never thank her enough!) and we basically decided something happened to the queen. The kittens had been alone at least 10 hours. We were pretty sure she wasn't coming back. And we knew they wouldn't survive the night without help.

I called Jason at work. I was pretty freaked out. I knew that my choice was either to let them die or make them my problem. And I knew that if I touched them, they would become my problem. Even though I clearly understand that animals die in nature and that it is natural and normal, I just couldn't stand it. A stronger person may have been able to drown them quickly an humanely, but I am apparently a wuss.

Jason came home right away. We put a blanket in a plastic drawer and pulled them out of the dirt. They were filthy. They stank. They still had their umbilical cords attached. And the placenta was still attached to the black one. They were so tiny. And cold.

Here's the first picture. Note the placenta in the upper left corner of the photo.


So we wrapped them up and took them off to the vet. They gave us KMR (kitten formula), 2 bottles and trained us on the proper feeding and elimination procedures. Kittens cannot control their own urination and defecation until they are about 3 weeks old. Normally the queen licks the genitals of the infants and consumes their waste. Since we are now playing the role of mother it is our job. Fortunately we don't have to lick them, a moist cotton ball does the trick. And it needs to be done every time they eat, which is every 3-4 hours during the first week! See the post "Week 1 Kitten Care" for details.

It's safe to say that Kitty is skeptical of his new siblings!