June 4, 1999 It's KITTENS !! They finally arrived, both litters. This is a perfect example of life-is-what-happens-after-you-make-plans. Our blue point girl, Peti was due anytime after Monday and, right on schedule, she began to act as if she wanted to go into labour on Monday night. She and I spent a restless night in the guest room waiting for labour to begin. By the morning she was still not in labour but was not eating and was clearly unhappy. Given all the signs we packed her up and took her to the vet. They did a c-section, removing a stillborn kitten and delivering 2 (probably girls). Mother and family came home to recover. The babies were nursing just fine. On Tuesday evening Tinkie, our seal point girl who was carrying our young stud, Sunny's, first litter began to go into labour at about 11 PM. By midnight she had one baby and by 1 AM another one. Then nothing happened. I gave up and went to bed at 3:30 AM even though I suspected that there were more kittens. When I got up at 8 AM Tinkie was fine with her two kittens but had some discharge on her backside. I noticed it but was still groggy and went downstairs to breakfast and to check on Peti. When I came back upstairs, low and behold, here was another kitten - almost 8 hours after it's last sibling was born !! That was the last kitten for Tinkie and she settled down to recover and raise her family. In the mean time Peti was struggling with her two kittens since her milk supply was not forthcoming at a good rate. By Thursday morning her kittens were "peeping" and sucking on their own feet - a sign that they were hungry. Because we have recently had this experience with another queen we knew the signs, so we put Peti's two kittens in with Tinkie and they had their first good meal. They were happy but Peti was not. She kept trying to get into the birthing box with Tinkie and the kittens and there just wasn't room. Normally our litters stay in the birthing box for the first couple of weeks or so but clearly this was not going to work in this case. I set up the larger cage which I use for older kittens and fitted the floor with the fuzzy fabric from the baby boxes to keep the kittens warm. Then I draped the sides to keep the cage dark and installed everyone. Finally there was room for all. Since then it has been quite sweet to watch Tinkie and Peti looking after the babies and each other. Peti knows she isn't doing all she did with her last litter so she cleans everyone, including Tinkie, and lets one or two kittens line up on her even though there isn't much milk available. When Tinkie goes out on break all the kittens line up on Peti and she is so proud of herself. This will be an interesting set of kittens to watch grow up with their commune life style. |