You have heard the expression that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. Well I propose that it also takes a village, or at least a group of well-meaning people, to raise a trio of abandoned 5 day old kittens. Living in the country it is not that unusual to have stray cats, although through perseverance and getting fed up with hearing me preach about spay and neuter we have a lot fewer of them around our area than we use to. Well about 3 weeks ago our neighbor called and asked if we could help out with a kitten that another neighbor, further down the road had found…probably the result of a feral cat or an unspayed neighbors cat. It was still cold out, and the kitten was abandoned, the mother not returning even after hours of waiting for her. Our neighbor had been taking the tiny bundle into work with her during the day, but it was becoming a distraction, and she had to find other arrangements. That is where my husband and I came in. The kitten was young enough that it of course was bottle fed, and had to be assisted in urinating and eliminating, since mom wasn’t around. We said to bring it over and show us what to do and we would do it very three hours during the day when Karin (our neighbor) was t work. By the time she, the box and her husband Mike arrived, the situation had become “complicated" as Mike explained it. The other neighbors found two more kittens, half frozen to death.
So now there were three and the journey began. The first one was pretty strong. The second one was doing ok. The third was the runt. Half frozen, found on the concrete garage floor. Could barely suck. So we got to work. Between all of us the kittens were fed, and assisted with their elimination functions every two-4 hours. For those of you not in the know, you simply wet your finger and gently (gently being the key word here) rub that area of their body, which immediately results in elimination. Usually. The mother cat stimulates this action by licking them, then eating the excrement to destroy the smell from predators (too much information?). We however used the sink and paper towels for our purposes. Within a short period of time the bowel movements start coming on their own, but the urination stimulation still needs to be done to make sure all systems are go.
Bottle feeding is tricky. Trying to save abandoned babies is tricky. You need th
e formula sold at pet specialty stores and the special bottles. Be warned going into this process, the fatality rate for formula/bottle fed babies (whether they are kittens, puppies, rabbits, squirrels or whatever) is almost 50%. So much can go wrong. Body temperature control, aspiration on the milk (never, ever squeeze the bottle), physical deformities (such as cleft palates) etc…can all prove fatal to the ever so tiny body.
Expect the worst, try your best and pray for these tiniest of creatures. During the first couple of weeks there isn’t much more you can do. We were lucky in that we had our daughter Jaime a vet tech and her vet clinic for advice, but that is how our journey began.
Please check back over the next few days for the rest of the story. I think you will cry with us, as well as smile. You will learn something and you will see the world through the tiny eyes of kittens that think that humans and pit bulls are their parents.
Thanks for reading! keepsake16@yahoo.com
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