This was originally posted on another blog on November 8, 2007, but I thought I should add it in here, because it is about the event that started me on my quest to manage the cats.
I was lost the instant I noticed the little pink nose and big blue eyes peering out of the gap in my back yard wood pile. Dropping my purse beside my car, I crept toward that gap and looked in. Kittens, 3 very young kittens, stared back at me. Without a thought I reached in and lifted the little guys out of their frosty roost. It was, after all, November, and they would freeze to death if left outdoors much longer.
Back indoors, with the babies safely ensconced in a dog crate, I tried to assess the situation. These were very young kittens – two, maybe three weeks old. Catching their mother was probably not going to happen. They would need fostering and then loving homes. There was no question of keeping them. I already had 2 dogs and a cat. I started making phone calls.
Darcy’s was not accepting kittens.
Quagga was not accepting kittens.
The Humane Society would take them, but they’d probably be put down.
The Winnipeg Pet Rescue Shelter does not answer the phone, and still hasn’t returned my calls.
I called a vet for advice and got an idea of what I would need to keep my foundlings alive:
- a large crate (check, they were already in one)
- a low litter box (check)
- kitten formula – this is a tough one. Kittens cannot simply drink cows milk. They can’t drink the cat milk (Whiskas Milk, to be product specific) sold by some pet supply stores, either. Like human babies, they must have a formula that approximates their mother’s milk.
- nursing bottles and nipples, or eye droppers
- a warm cozy bed for the little ones to curl up in (check)
Most of that list was easy. The formula, bottles and nipples, however, turned out to be rather difficult to find. The vet did not have any. The Humane Society did not have any. Pembina Vet had some, but they were on emergency hours and it was going to cost close to $100 for enough food to get the kittens through the weekend. Fortunately, Petland at Polo Park had some KMR formula, so I dashed over there to grab it and some nursing supplies.
If you’ve ever cared for a newborn child, you have some idea of what came next. Baby pees and poos, you clean it up, you feed baby, you clean up whatever mess baby made before you got there, you put baby back to sleep. In 2 hours you start all over again. Now, multiply that by three and add in an old female dog that thinks she is the kittens’ mother, an old male dog that thinks he’s the only baby in the world and objects to anything that might take attention away from him, and a four month old kitten that isn?t so sure she wants her younger cousins moving in.
I remember reading an article about a golden retreiver that became a foster mother to an abandoned kitten. Apparently this wonderful dog started lactating and was able to nurse the kitten until it was ready for weaning. Having never been pregnant, my female dog is not currently nursing kittens. She is, however, keeping a watchful eye on everything I do with them, and letting me know when she thinks I’m slipping up. If the little ones are out of their crate MommyDog follows them around to make sure they don’t go behind furniture, or fall down stairs. She picks them up and brings them back to her dog carpet, where she gives them very thorough, very wet, tongue baths. When they start crying she starts trying to open their crate so she can go to them.
The male dog, on the other hand, spends long periods of time glowering at the crate containing the kittens. The up side of this is that he is no longer even remotely interested in chasing the 4 month old kitten around the house. The down side is that he weighs over 100 pounds, and even playing with the kittens is out of the question. Judging by the look on his face as he stares into the crate, playing is not what he would like to do with them. He must be confined to another room every time the kittens are out of their crate.
The older kitten seems confused. She alternates between playing with the babies and hissing at them. She will probably come to accept them quite quickly, but for now it’s best to keep her out of the kitten crate.
That’s how we passed the weekend and Monday. On Tuesday, as I was heading out to my car, I found another kitten in the wood pile. Now there are 4.
I’ve been feeding my foundlings for close to a week now, and I’m starting to notice some danger signs. Things that make me worry about becoming that crazy cat lady:
- when I talk to the kittens I refer to myself as mommy
- I have given them names (Smokey, Misty, Mitten and Boots)
- I have made feeding spread sheets to keep track of who eats how much and when
- I have stopped minding the myriad tiny scratches on my hands
- I no longer notice the formula stains on my clothes
- ***I called the vet to make an appointment for checkups for the whole caboodle***
That last one has scary implications.
