Thursday, October 11, 2018

Meet the "ish" - the black fuzzy watermelon with racing stripes aka my new foster kitty



Yesterday I cruelly left you with this image.. Many of you were wondering if Michaela was back. Sorry to get your hopes up, this is not Michaela..


As you can see, this little lady is heavy with kittens


She came with the name Onyx but I am totally going to pick something out. I'm leaning towards Marcy at the moment, but I'm totally not set on it. Currently - as you might have heard in the video - I am calling her Waddles.  "Waddles" is super affectionate like Michaela. She does not like to sit still and have her photo taken that is for certain. She LOVES belly rubs and you can feel how engorged her mammary glands are so she feels a bit like a fuzzy watermelon with two large "racing stripe" bands running down her belly. I think she has more milk than Michaela did. I did get to feel the kittens moving in her belly which is always cool.


***

So why two? I have a strong desire to help right now, mostly to take myself out of my own mind where I just sit and lament that Jack is no longer with me. Darcy is coming around but she is still quite fearful and doesn't really want me involved.. there is no real helping involved with putting down food and water and scooping a box, so when NHKittens was looking for a foster home for this kitty because the people who were going to foster backed out, I offered my kitten room.

See, Darcy needs a smaller space to feel comfortable. This left the rest of the kitten room empty and it was just so sad. Darcy is currently in a cage in the bathroom. I felt the need to put her food and water in the cage so she wouldn't have to stress about leaving her kittens alone too long.


I am still working with her and each day we have more and more progress. Last night I even got her to purr! I was able to massage her belly a little which she liked.

I have been a little concerned because she hasn't been using the litter box consistently so I forced interaction to hold the kittens and to pick her up and make sure she didn't have a fever and that her abdomen wasn't having any problems. I even checked her gums to make sure she wasn't pale and everything checked out in my cursory totally untrained exam. She has quite a bit of flea dirt on her but I assumed that was left over from her previous situation.

I picked the babies up to examine them. They still feel heavy for their size, but I'm still less than impressed with their progress. I need to get a scale in that room so I can be a bit more precise in the assessment. I generally don't weigh kittens because I can usually easily feel them gaining weight from day to day, but I will if I'm in a situation like this. Anyway, as I was looking over the kittens I noticed three fleas running across the belly. So yes, this would explain the lackluster growth I've been noticing. So I treated Darcy again and took care of the kittens and *fingers crossed* in a day or two hopefully things will get back to the schedule of gains that I'm used to.

Right now and for two weeks they will be separated. From there we will see how it goes. Chances are they are going to want to just nurse their kittens for the first three to four weeks. If nothing happens and they are still with me, and they seem to be okay with meeting we might mix the litters and see what happens. I'm not a huge fan of this because you can never know what could come of it as not all disease shows up in two to three weeks. I know a lot of people who do it all the time and chances are that it will be fine, but there is a risk. But we'll see. Maybe someone will want to foster kittens and they'll take one of mine to 'spread the wealth"

14 comments:

  1. Oh boy, gonna have lots of kittens soon!

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  2. I was totally convinced you had adopted Michaela! Fostering another mom is nice though.

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  3. You are keeping yourself busy! I like the new girl and I am so glad she is not Michaela, because she needs to be done being mom. As these ladies will once they've taken care of their current kittens.

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  4. for right now, they are in a good place and safe - that is what matters. you can cross those other bridges when you get there if you need too...

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  5. As I said, you are a kitten fostering artist! In order to make art, you must have kittens! But also give yourself a break, to mourn and to comfort your resident cats; they've lost a friend too.

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  6. What a sweetie!

    Purrs xx
    Athena and Marie

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  7. You are going to have your hands full! But if anyone can handle it...you can.

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  8. This post today on Katzenworld reminded me so much of you all
    https://katzenworld.co.uk/2018/10/11/purrsday-poetry-new-poetry/

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  9. Wow, Waddles sure did look like Michaela. Bless you, Connie, for taking on 2 moms, one with kittens and one that is due soon. You are simply amazing.

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  10. You're doing such good work. Bless you.

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  11. Hope you don't get too exhausted.

    http://emmaandbuster.blogspot.com/2018/10/flashback-friday.html#comment-form

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  12. They both appear to be so young. I'm glad you have these new lives to care for. I know you'll do everything you can to help them.

    Eileen

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  13. You truly work miracles, Connie. I see it every time. What's up with the super tiny pregnant black cats?!?

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