Hello Darkness My Old Friend
I read an interesting article yesterday, about sleep deprivation. The long and short of it being that you don't recover from it. Humans, that is. I couldn't say about cats. Either way, it's a serious design flaw given that babies need feeding every few hours. Maybe that explains "mum brain".
So, I'm going to get mum brain!
Kitten mum brain.
People won't notice the difference.
The plan was that Mr Jones would catch mum cat, so that she and her kittens could come here for a couple of nights before being moved on to another rescue.
Snag!
Usually, the best way to catch a feral mum is to put the kittens in the end of the trap. She goes in to get them and sets the trap off. Voila, mum and babies.
A problem occurs however, when you don't set the trap yourself, and forget to explain to the client that:-
a) the kittens need to be in a receptacle of some kind, and
b) the trap needs to be on flat solid ground.
Mr Jones set the trap on an uneven pile of straw, so every time the kittens moved they set the trap off. It was so badly set that mum cat managed to move three of the kittens back to the nest.
Yes, I know this is my fault. I am by no means criticising Mr Jones.
He let me know before I went to collect them, that he'd not caught mum, so we went equipped with ferret gloves, catch poles, and a net. Did we catch her? Well, yes. Is she a sneaky feral clever cat that somehow got out of the net? Annoyingly, also yes.
The six kittens came home with me, and hopefully mum will be caught in the next day or so.
Mum cat has been doing a phenomenal job with them. I've never handled kittens so robust before. They're like little hench body builders. Except one, who is either a runt or has a different daddy to the others.
They were covered in fleas, and two feel a little chesty. Two are solid black, the others being black and white. I had trouble sexing them, so our Animal Care Manager popped in to have a look; 3 girls, 3 boys, she thinks.
They need feeding roughly every 2 hours. They're supposed to have over 5ml of formula at this age. All I could get into them for the first couple of feeds was 0.5ml. We're now up to 2ml per feed. I keep checking they're hydrated, as it's really worrying me, but hopefully I'll continue to increase how much they take per feed.
The problem is that they're 12 days old. They have their eyes open now. They know I'm not mum. They know that the rubber teet isn't what they're used to. And they know that formula isn't as tasty as mummy's milk.
Every time I've hand reared kittens I've wished that someone would invent a soft toy through which you poke the syringe or bottle, so that kittens can nuzzle up to it as if it were mum, and suckle as if it were a nipple. It could be left in the nest between feeds so that it smells right to them.
But without such an item I'm left trying to sweet talk these tiny headstrong babies, who seem to be stronger than me, into accepting what probably feels much like a banana, into their mouths.
At the moment, two of them have started suckling a little bit. The others are on one drop at a time until they figure it out. And I'm on 90 minute naps until these guys go to their fosterer. Wish me luck.
