Me and Chris learned a few years ago that bottle-feeding orphaned kittens is a big pain in the ass. An extremely rewarding pain in the ass, but at the moment, far too much trouble and time than we were able to give. Not to mention Chris isn't particularly fond of fostering and I don't want to get him involved if I don't have to put the burden on him, but kittens need to be fed every 3-5 hours, depending on how old they are, and I work. So Chris would end up helping me feed them when I'm not home.
So on one of the lists that the NHS sent us was a mama cat and her litter of 5. Well technically, only 4 were hers. There was a single orphaned white kitten that was put with the litter closest to his age and that happened to be with Kay and her 4 kits, so we ended up with 5. The little white one's name was Ken and he was only a few days younger than the others (they were 17 days), but those few days make a big difference when you're doubling-to-tripling your size every week! Ken was having a harder time fighting off his older stepsiblings to get to the milk, so he stayed smaller than the others. But he was still growing and doing well so I helped him out a bit, but mostly let nature take its course.
Kittens are fun! Mama does most of the work, so I mostly take care of her, keep an eye on the kittens, and get to play! As horrible as it sounds, I kept them all in my bedroom closet. I put down a blanket and a towel to make a soft nest for them, I kept their kennel in the corner so they could hide, I put Mama's food and water on my small dresser where the kits couldn't get into it, and I put the litter box in my room with the other side of the closet door open so Mama could hop over stuff and get out, but the kittens couldn't follow. I would've moved them eventually, but for the time being it was a decent-sized place for 5 tiny kits. I kept the closet doors closed at night so Briar couldn't get it, and open during the day, blocked with the plastic bottom of Breeze's kennel so the kits couldn't get out.
It was a good arrangement. My only complaint was that Selene doesn't like other cats, so I had to keep my bedroom door closed 24-7 so the cats couldn't see each other. Which wasn't a problem except for at night; Selene likes to sleep with me and instead she was alone, which I felt bad about. But I tried leaving the door open, hoping Kay would stay near her kits and Selene would stay away from another loathed cat, but I ended up breaking up a hissing argument and kept the door closed after that.
At 3 weeks, I started trying to teach them to lap milk up from a bowl. And how you do that is dip your finger in the kitten formula and touch their nose. The point is to get them to lick their nose because there's something on it, and then hold your finger out for them to smell there's milk on that too. And then graduate to using a bowl instead of your finger. A few caught on pretty quick, the others were having trouble getting the hang of it. Ken didn't get it at all, but I gave him a bit of leadway because he was a little younger than the others.
It was around this time I picked Ken up to give me a bit of milk and noticed his eye was goopy. I cleaned it out with a warm wet washcloth and it looked fine. But the next day it was goopy again, and this time red and irritated. So I called up the NHS clinic and made an appointment to get him looked at. The doctor gave me a bottle of eyedrops and I gave it to him every 12 hours and it soon cleared up.
Little Ken was everybody's favorite. All my friends who came over to see them loved Ken and the friend I brought the kittens to (we stopped by her house on the way to get their first vaccines, and of course I couldn't leave them in the car!) loved Ken too. I think it's because he was the smallest and cutest, but also because his tiny white body stood out so much more than the other black/gray striped kits. But personally, I liked another little one best. Her name was Kibo. (Ken, Kibo, Khan... all of the kits began with Kay) I thought little Kibo was the cutest because she had a little white muzzle, white paws, and she was the only one to have a patch of brown on her otherwise-black/gray forehead. Plus I'm biased towards girls ;D I gave some serious thought to adopting her when she was old enough, the only things stopping me was us having too many pets as it is and Selene not liking other cats. But other than that, I fell in love with little Kibo.
They were supposed to get their vaccines when they're about 4 weeks old, so on their 4 week birthday, I took them to NHS to get weighed. They were too little, so I was told to bring them back Friday (it was Monday then) and see if they were big enough then. Well Friday didn't happen, but due to unfortunate events, I was forced to bring them back Saturday. I woke up Saturday morning and Ken had passed away. I was devastated. He was fine the night before, sleeping in a pile with the rest of the kittens. I've never lost a foster before, much less one barely a month old! I didn't know what else to do, so I brought poor little Ken back to NHS. I wasn't thinking very clearly at the time, mostly just bawling my eyes out, but after I gave them his cold little body, I decided to bring the rest of them too, just so they could be looked at real quick and they needed their vaccines anyway. So I went home, got the other little ones, and went back to NHS. They all weighed enough for their vaccines except for Kibo, the littlest after Ken, and since they measure by the smallest, none of them got their vaccines that day either. But the lady who weighed them said they seemed healthy enough, exploring and protesting their now-too-small kennel. She said poor Ken probably didn't get enough milk, or maybe he had a birth defect Mama knew about, so she gave her milk to the healthy kits. It would make sense, since he was the only one found in his original litter. If he had a birth defect, maybe his real mom abandoned him because of it. Kittens are lost all the time for unknown reasons. But Ken's passing was probably a one-time, unfortunate occurrence.
The next morning is when I found Kibo. The second kitten lost in 24 hours was both more and less painful. It was less painful because it wasn't as much of a surprise, more painful because she was my favorite. Less painful because I was already emotionally drained from losing Ken, but more painful because it wasn't just one kitten anymore. It was now two dead kittens, and now I was sure it was no coincidence. We were giving all of them back. Chris packed Kay and the remaining kits in their kennel and drove me back to NHS (Luckily I wasn't alone that day, I found little Ken on my own and didn't see Chris until later that night). I held poor little Kibo against my chest and cried the whole way. I just handed Kibo over to the same girl that helped me the day before and let Chris do the talking. He explained it was our second kitten lost in 24 hours and the whole litter had been exposed to whatever had killed those two. It couldn't have been coincidence, they had to be sick. Ken and Kibo were just the first to go because they were the littlest, but I was sure if I didn't do anything the entire litter would soon be gone. They put the litter in quarantine and we left.
This has little to do with the kittens, but I just want to acknowledge that I have the best friends ever. Chris especially. I was alone when I found Ken and Chris came home after I had already left for work. So when I got off at 2 in the morning, I woke him up, broke down yet again on his shoulder, and finally cried myself to sleep with him in his bed. And he was totally fine with it. So the next morning when I walked into his room holding a kitten and me trying to keep from crying, I didn't have to say a word; he knew immediately I'd lost another one. He sat me down on my bed and held me for a few minutes, then packed the others up. We silently agreed they had to go back to NHS, but we had different reasons for it. My reason was of course for the good of the kittens, and Chris was thinking that too, but he also wanted to give them back because he didn't want me losing a third. He knows how sensitive I can be when it comes to animals and he didn't want me to go through that yet again. When we left NHS, he drove me to Starbucks, bought me a drink, sat me down with my box of tissues, and immediately began making plans with other friends to keep my mind off of my two lost fosters. That's where Katie and Susannah make their guest appearances. Going to the dog park always cheers me up no matter what, so we made plans to meet Katie at the dog park and we spent a while there. Then we had lunch with Susannah for distraction #2. I wasn't crying anymore, I was tired of crying and emotionally drained. I certainly wasn't in a good mood, but the day was actually kinda fun considering how it began.
One last note. The day after I lost Kibo, we went back to NHS. Chris didn't think it was a good idea, because he knew I was too raw to take bad news well. Luckily we didn't get bad news - the rest of the litter were just fine. The doctor looked them over and they were perfectly healthy and happy, Mama too. So I guess it was just coincidence that the two passed so close together, it apparently wasn't anything contagious. The sad news is that when we got there, they were already fostered out to a new home, but I don't care much about that. I'd like to have them back, but as long as they're healthy, that's the most important thing :')
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| Ken is the white kitten on the left |
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| Kibo is the kitten on the right. I still think the brown spot on her forehead made her the cutest of the bunch |
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