2003-12-07 Toots and Xara's kittens

Dec 7, 2003

We have had a busy couple of weeks anticipating kittens and then with their actual arrival. Unfortunately all news is not good news. Toots had 3 kittens on the Saturday before Thanksgiving but all were born dead. Sad as it is, she also had a problem litter last year and has a history of having kittens that don't always make it so we have decided to retire her from the breeding program.

Xara was due on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving but on Monday she surprised us with a single baby. I knew she had more kittens inside but she didn't show any signs of going back into labor so on Tuesday we trundled off to the vet to see what could be done. We did manage to get her into labor but the next kitten in line was too big to get out on his own so we had to do a c-section and found that she had 4 further kittens. That was a total of 5!! We had additional problems when we brought them all home however as we had a blood incompatibility issue and had to hand feed all for the first 16 hours. We eventually lost 3 of these kittens for various reasons not all of which are clear but Xara seems to have fully taken over the raising of the remaining two kittens and they are hunkered down in their cozy box with their heating pad. One is blue and the other lilac. I'm not yet sure of the sexes yet but if either get red on their points we'll know they are girls as the dad is a cream point boy. I'd about bet that the blue is a boy. He's the larger and both his ears appear to be blue so that makes him a good bet. The other kitten is so pale that I can't tell yet what the color will be. Xara was also spayed at the time of the c-section so she will be ready to go to a new home when her children go.