Glamour shots

 Hedy 

 Sunsweet 

 Marble 

 Slate 

Agate 

 Midnight 

Catching up with the kittens

My apologies for being behind my own self-imposed timelines. I like to do updates and glamour shots on Monday, but this week life got the best of me and I just wasn't up to it.

So, the kittens, they are doing well. They are starting to figure out the whole litter box thing.. Sorta.

There have been "accidents" in different locations in the room. Going in the nest is the first place they have been going so I have been doing a lot of laundry. Other soft spots are used, so the rug covered base of the cat tree I have was peed on as well as the soft fleece line of a cat condo I have. I've cleaned both and put down another litterbox in that side of the room, so *fingers crossed* things will get better. They are still very young for litterbox compliance so I'm just chalking this up to normal behavior, but that doesn't mean I don't wish it was already over.

I tried to start the weaning process and each kitten said "no thank you" when I offered them food. I knew it was early but I thought they were big enough and had enough teeth. I was just about to say they weren't ready when I looked down and saw Marble climb into the wet food and start eating. At this point, they are all eating some wet food and most of them are eating when I feed Hedy. Although I did have to take up the dry food. (actually, it is on the couch so Hedy can get to it)

The kittens also had visitors this weekend. My friends came up from Boston for a visit and for a little kitten therapy. I never know who gets more out of it, the people or the kittens. I am glad to have people come see them so they can get used to new people and new situations. I still wish I had a place to take them so they could get used to a new location, but such is life.

And we also had a major scare here on Saturday night. I was visiting with the kittens when I found Midnight not moving in the back of the nest. I thought she was peeing and so I picked her up and put her in the litterbox but that just ticked her off. She was MAD!! She stomped out of the box, wobbled over to the nest and froze. Her head was at a tilted angle and her legs were splayed at weird angles. It also appeared that she couldn't see me. If I came at her eye with my finger (aka the menace test) she didn't react at all. She also felt cold.  My heart stopped. My first thought was low blood sugar but I tested her blood glucose and she was actually quite high (268 - high but not troublingly so) which can happen during stress. She was mad at me when I tried to do anything to her and fought me which is a good sign. It seemed neurological. I contacted the rescue and asked what they wanted to do. We started antibiotics in case it was an infection that was causing a problem.

I got her on to her mom and she seemed to like being there but wasn't nursing. She started not being so mad when I handled her. It became obvious she could see. She stopped sitting all splayed and head tilted, so I went to bed. A few hours later I checked on her and received this "what on earth were you worried about look" and everything was just fine. It has been several days and she's still fine. I have to wonder if she didn't fall and hit her head and she was just stunned.

One of these days I'll be well rested.. ha ha ha

A new tree for the kitten room

And no, it isn't Raffe.. Before we left Maine, I ran into one of those sales on the morning programs and this one was selling stick on wall art. I had wanted something for my new kitten room, and they had a tree that was kinda cool so I bought it.

I didn't install it in the other house because we had plans to move the kitten room from where it was when we upgraded a few things. Since that didn't work out and we moved, I waited until we painted the kitten room which we did a few weeks ago.

I wasn't sure where I wanted to put it, because we are going to install a climbing wall in the room for the kittens, but it got to the point that it was bugging me that it wasn't up and since it is basically one great big post-it, I figured if we wanted to put the wall where I put the tree I could move it without too much difficulty.

I'm still looking for a pretty crystal chandelier for the room.. but I am afraid I'll be looking for one of those for years.

Um, Marble.. please do not go swimming without a flotation device

Yes, she was rescued.. Yes, I moved the water bowl. Hopefully to a location that this won't happen again.

Kitten Glamour shots

I try to take pretty photos of the kittens each weekend. Sometimes it is easier than others. This time Hedy kept getting all up in my camera because she wanted attention, but I must say I didn't do too bad.

Hedy's legs and Slate 

Midnight 

Slate 

Sunsweet (Slate in the background)

Marble 

Agate 

Hedy and Agate 

A Giraffe in Socks

Sunsweet has decided I'm a little weird

This might be the most ridiculous thing I have ever done - and that is saying a lot. As I told you on Monday we have some diarrhea going on with the kittens and I was worried about them getting poop all over Raffe since they were hanging out underneath him and that seemed to be the center of the poop storm.  I wrongly assumed that Hedy picked that corner for the heater and the fact that it was under Raffe was secondary. I moved Raffe to another corner and set them up with several heat sources and went to bed.

When I went down in the morning I found Hedy and all of the kittens under Raffe anyway.

So, it became pretty apparent that I needed to put Raffe back, but how to protect him from being contaminated.

My goal was to protect his feet. Using socks wouldn't necessarily do that as liquid diarrhea would be absorbed by the socks and then absorbed by the fur. I thought about using sandwich bags instead, but I wasn't thrilled with the idea of putting kittens so closed to a thin plastic bag, so I thought I would put the socks over the bag. When I went to the drawer where the bags are stored, I found these.

Goodie bags that I've had for years and two pairs of old socks I've had since high school (yes, I know.. shush, they have come in handy twice this month alone!)

And so that became...

And this is as good of a time as any to introduce you to Raffe 2.0

The original was abused pretty badly (as you can see) by years of kittens so I went online to find a used one that needed a new home and found one not too far away. He has been the one watching over Hedy, but for one last bit of precaution I brought out the original

Hedy wasn't too sure of this new Raffe at first

I can poop on this!

And on top of that, I cleaned the room. It took me nearly two hours to do a good scrub down as the kittens were pooping under the couch and I had kittens running everywhere. At one point I went to leave to get the socks and Marble scrambled after me (it was so freakin cute!). Hedy followed behind to see where she was going. I asked Hedy to put Marble back, and she looked at me, looked at Marble and then picked her up and carried her back to Raffe.

Teeny Tiny Teef Tuesday

I tried taking photos of all of the kittens, but they were too busy. These were the only two that came out clearly.  This is Agate and Slate respectively but they all have wee little bitty teeth. It is just so darn cute!

Kitten's first vet visit

I didn't photoshop Agate into this photo. 

If you are following my page on facebook, you'll know that Hedy has a way of looking at me that blames me for EVERYTHING.. The kittens started leaving the nest this weekend and she looks at me like it is my fault. They climb all over her nursing, she looks at me like it is my fault. She sits on the couch next to me and the kittens scream, and she looks at me like it is my fault.

As you know, Hedy has been battling fur loss since she got here. Stress and hormones do that, so she looks pretty sparse. She's also been losing weight on and off. She was under seven pounds when she arrived, dropped after she gave birth (obviously) and I got her up over seven pounds but diarrhea came and claimed those hard earned gains. It doesn't help that she is super picky about food and will only eat shredded foods. I tried probiotics and I tried digestive enzymes and things got a little better but not much. We ran a fecal and it turned out to be negative but it looked a lot like coccidia by that time since the kittens were starting with diarrhea as well, so we treated her for it.

Things got much better for everyone. More weight gain, no stool all over kitten behinds, the litter box for Hedy was better. But then we stopped gaining and Marble and Sunsweet both started feeling thin and a bit dehydrated. I was supplementing them with milk and it helped, but as time passed it was pretty obvious that more needed to be done. I reached out to the rescue to see if they wanted to treat for coccidia again but they decided a vet visit was in order. Once that decision was made it became very apparent the kittens had diarrhea again.  This is what they gave me overnight.

I called the vet and brought them in. Being a Monday they squeezed me in and it took almost two hours to get everything taken care of. they tested the stool and still don't see coccidia so that is seeming less like the culprit (but I don't consider the really negative until I have three negative tests, because I've had it pop up on the third test before)

The stool test showed that there was a bacterial imbalance so we were given some probiotics and some medication to try to balance that out. Is that the cause of this? It certainly could be. I really hope that this takes care of it because.. sick kittens.

As you can see in the first photo, she blamed me for the vet visit, I totally take that responsibility Hedy, this one is completely on me.

I'm also giving the littlest kittens fluids and I am ready to give Hedy some too.

Caption contest winners!

Earlier this week I asked you to caption this photo.. I had a lot of great suggestions. Some on Facebook were WAY too long to make a Lolcat, but they were still awesome.

Here are my two favorites. The first was by Rene from a comment on the original post.

And here is my favorite one from Rachael on Facebook.

Agate the kitten says she is cuter than the Unicorn

I said I AM CUTER!! 

And I'm stronger too!

Kittens or Unicorns?

So, which one is cuter? The kitten or the unicorn?

Unicorn or Midnight?

Unicorn or Sunsweet?

Unicorn or Slate?

Unicorn or Marble?

Unicorn or Agate?

Caption me

I seriously could not stop laughing at this photo. I wanted to come up with a clever meme, but my brain wouldn't comply.. Give me your best captions and I'll meme this boy later this week. 

Monday Morning update with #hedyandthelamarrs

Things are going along with the kittens. Can you believe it has been two weeks since they were born?? We treated the diarrhea and the kittens cleared right up and started putting on weight. I am a little concerned about Hedy as she is not putting on weight like I would like. It is very hard to do so nursing five kittens!

The kittens are extremely advanced for their age. They are sitting up and walking like three-week kittens, if not a little older. As sad as I am to see them grow up so fast (I love that rolly poly prewalking stage and wished it had lasted more than five minutes) it will be good to get them on solid food and start litter box training them. Generally, that starts at week four or five and is done by week six, but who knows with this bunch.

I know you care about the kittens, but I bet you are totally waiting for the kitten photos.. WIthout further ado...

Sunsweet 

Agate
Her ears are still huge

Marble 

Slate 

Midnight

Midnight is a little poser! Once the camera clicked she turned right to it, it was adorable! I hope she keeps it up because I'm guessing she is going to be a stunner. She freaked me out the other day. I thought she had a little white fluff on her rear claw. Turns out she has one white toe!