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Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Good bottle baby pics!
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 They’re all contenders in the bottle-feeding Olympics. |
 Managed to get an okay picture of Most-Orange from underneath. |
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 Kenku, freshly groomed by Gnar, showing off his bat-ears. |
 Kenku, tired after a long day of being adorable. |
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Wednesday, August 17, 2016
August 17
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 Sphinx knows what’s good for him—he sleeps with one eye open. |
 No comment… |
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 Kenku and Sphinx test the limit of Squish’s tolerance. |
 Daily bottle baby pic! They’re doing great! |
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Tuesday, August 16, 2016
The stork visited me
I must be crazy.
Once more, the humane society couldn’t find anyone willing to take a group of bottle babies. So… I took them, obviously.
They are 10 days old now, and they’re huge. They're all over 6 ounces. They are a little strange looking, in my opinion, like they might have a little wild cat in them somewhere. They spent the first few days of their lives with their mom, who is feral, and who is currently at the humane society. The foster department described her as “fractious, to be charitable,” and were concerned for the kittens’ safety in that situation. So, their largeness might be at least partly caused by having the diet they were meant to have for the early part of their lives.
I try not to name them until they’re three weeks old, though at this point that seems arbitrary, what with Goblin’s 6-week demise; but from the first moment I picked them up I was like, “okay, so that one’s named Creamsicle.”
The older ones are all doing well. Owlbear is big and fat and huge, but the other two are still very small, especially for their age. They will certainly have to stay with me until they’re a bit older than 8 weeks. (Boo hoo, sob, etc.)
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Friday, August 12, 2016
“They’re not out of the woods till they’re eight weeks old—and even then, we’re cautious.”
Last Thursday, the 4th, I went into the kitten room to find Sphinx laying in the bed while the other three were out running around, begging for food, and generally being kittenish.
Sphinx had been resisting eating from a food bowl, insisting (at five weeks of age) to be fed from a bottle. Branden and I spent some time on the evening of the 3rd showing him and Kenku how it was done. I suspected that Kenku had already been eating from the bowls, at least a little, though he, too, clearly preferred the bottle.
Well, either way, they both appeared to understand. All four kittens were energetic and appeared happy, so we went to bed that night with no worries for anyone.
Then, on the 4th, Sphinx appeared to be on death’s door.
He was absolutely unenergetic; he allowed me to lay him on my kitchen counter while I prepared his food, and he didn’t move an inch. He wiggled all four feet and occasionally mewed, but he was holding his head at weird angles. I was absolutely freaked out.
I wrapped him in a heating pad and fed him some gruel, then took his temperature. According to the thermometer, he was 99.8°, which is on the low side of normal. I had to bring all four in for vaccines that day, so I packed up the other three in the carrier and put Sphinx on a washcloth on a cutting board, worried that he might have had some kind of injury.
When we got there, they rushed him back into the loving arms of the veterinary clinic, and I feared the worst. He was many degrees colder now, around 95°, which is dangerous. They put him on fluids and into an incubator. He did brighten up, and some number of hours later, they gave him a dollop of Karo syrup. He started eating on his own, so they called me up and said I could come get him.
I was ecstatic. These stories rarely have happy endings. I went and got him and brought him home, snuggled him on a heating pad for the rest of the evening, and went out to get a no-auto-off heating pad for their bed that night. He was low-energy in the morning, so I gave him a little drip of honey (concentrated sugar, like Karo syrup, just to give him a jolt of energy to sustain him until he got some real food into his system, and he perked up. I kept him in my lap on a heating pad for several hours, and he got more and more listless over the day, so I decided to take him back in. I warmed up a Ace-brand hot pack, gave him a shot of honey, and took him to the vet.
Of course, by the time we got there, he was acting normal again. The vet (the same one who had seen him the day before) said he was looking really good, but if I was worried I could give him .07cc of amoxicillin morning and night for 7 days.
Well, since then, Sphinx has recovered. He is eating on his own, full of energy. This morning was his last dose of medicine. So, happy ending there.
But… yesterday morning, I found Goblin on the floor in exactly the same condition that Sphinx had been in one week before.
While I was definitely worried for him, I was also old-hat to this situation. The vet hadn’t given Sphinx any medicine, just warmth, fluids, and sugar. I could do that too, right?
Of course right. I made a Goblin burrito in a heating pad, gave him some gruel and water and Pedialyte, and then a little later some honey. He was way too cold, 95°. I kept him well-wrapped and well-fed, and he perked up more and more throughout the day. By bedtime, he was running across the room to greet me, and I was confident that the danger had passed.
This morning, we found that he had passed away in the night. The heating pad I bought was adjustable auto-off, and I had forgotten to set it to always-on when I’d returned it to the cat bed the day before.
It’s hard to not feel guilty. Incredibly hard. I was feeling like such a badass the day before, and he likely died because of an easily-avoided fuckup. So.
Goblin, I love you, I miss you, and I hope to catch you the next time around.
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 Best-of: Goblin edition. |
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Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Monday, August 8, 2016
August 8
 I’ve heard pocket flaps can be vicious. Thank you for defending us all, Owlbear. |
 There’s something very artsy about this shot. |
 Fingers for dinner! |
 Kenku’s best horse impression. |
 “You! Stop right there—we were snuggling!” |
 Cats sleep in the strangest places… |
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