Foster Kittens 2 update

Fostering a mother cat with four kittens has been quite a change of pace!  I had never owned more than one kitten at a time, and never had a cat with kittens, so this was a new experience!  Mama does most of the work for the kittens, she nurses them, keeps them in line, watches over them, and referee's when they squabble amongst themselves.  My job the first week was mainly to take care of mama so she could take care of the kittens.  The kittens stayed in the wire kennel for the most part the first week.  Mama would come out when she needed a break from them, but she was a little weak herself so she mainly rested, ate, nursed her babies, pottied, and stretched her legs before going back to do it all again.

After their first week with me, they went back to the shelter for a weigh in, vaccines, and another deworming.  All but one kitten was over one pound in weight so they were able to get their vaccines.  The female kitten was just under a pound so was not able to get her vaccines.  The shelter gave me some milk replacer to mix up and give to her with a syringe once a day as a supplemental feeding to try to get her caught up with her brothers.  Also, the kittens liked to go into the litter box and eat the litter, so I found a safe litter to use called Swheat Scoop Natural Wheat Litter. Funny how they don't seem as interested in eating it now that it isn't clay!

This last week showed some growth for the kittens.  All the boy kittens were drinking water from the dish, and eating wet and dry food.  You can see they really get their feet into their food!  :D

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Little kitten standing on his dry food while eating.  :)

The girl kitten is still nursing and not too interested in food at this point, even when I try to get her to taste some canned food.  They are all more adventuresome, and a few of them started to play with the toys that were in the room last week.

All the kittens, except for one of the boy kittens, started using the litter box!  This last week we worked on getting the girl kitten's weight up, and getting the last boy kitten litter box trained.  The boy kitten was pottying on one end of their bed instead of using the litterbox!  Since mama wasn't using the bed, only the kittens liked to use it, I switched it out for a smaller bed that just fit the kittens.  During the daytime when they were out running around, I picked up the bed, so they only had hard surfaces and the litter box.  That seemed to do the trick.  There have been no accidents so far!  Also, because there are now five of them using the litter box, I added a second litter box to the room the second week.

They went back for their checkups yesterday, and the girl kitten went from .95 lb to 1.5 lb so she was able to get her vaccines!  Her brothers are up to 1.8 lb so she's catching up.  I need to keep supplementing her with the milk replacer this week until I see that she's eating regular food so she doesn't get behind her brothers again.  They received another dose of deworming and they all got microchipped while they were there!  (ouch!) Poor babies.  They don't seem to be suffering from it.  They are quite active now. They have learned to play and are starting to climb a bit.  My husband cut some holes in a cardboard box for them so they're popping in and out of the holes and surprising each other.  Very cute!  A couple of them also like to sit on my feet.  :)

Mama has gained her strength back.  She is only nursing the girl kitten now and she gets a bit antsy at times, although she's actually pretty patient with them. They're crawling all over her and swatting her trying to get her to play with them.  Either she just lays there and takes it, or she meows and gets up and moves.  Or, if they don't get the message and crosses a line, she has taken them down and let them know she's still in charge and they are getting old enough to learn some manners.  ;)