A SAD POST

Thank you all for the kind words.   We are doing OK but it has been rough.  This post will be sad.

So a week ago yesterday, we went out on the porch to feed Babygirl and found a litter of five newborn kittens.  New in the sense of just maybe an hour or two before.  You can read about that HERE if you missed it.

We brought them all in and tried to get them settled.  The kittens were small.  The first thing we did was weigh them.  They ranged from 68g to 74g.

According to the vet, the average weight of a healthy newborn kitten is 85-115g. They were tiny.

We put a heating pad, blankets and everything else to get them all comfortable.  Babygirl came in and would try to feed them but she was so distracted and/or they couldn't latch on as often as they should/could.

The vet said to bottle feed them and we did, every few hours, day and night.  They gained a little weight but not much.  Mama's milk wasn't helping either.

Then Sunday night we lost the littlest one.  We wrapped him a clean white washcloth so he would be warm and safe.  He was at peace.

We were very sad but thought he was the smallest of them all and we knew we had tried our best.  We had to focus on the others.

Then, suddenly, we lost another the next day.

And then we lost two more at the same time a couple of days later.  We woke up for their feeding and they were gone. To say we were devastated would be an understatement. 

We had been talking with the vet and he said based on their weight and size, they were most likely very premature, maybe as much as a week or two.

We showed them that picture of Babygirl from the Monday before and he said that would explain why she did not look pregnant and why she just suddenly gave birth on the concrete porch without any nesting set up.  She may not have even realized she was pregnant.  After some research, kittens this small have an extremely high mortality rate, even with round the clock care.  They told us they were underdeveloped and most likely their organs weren't fully formed and probably were not able to digest properly.

It was very sad.

We are sad for Babygirl but she seems to have not really missed them like we have.  She is her usual self.  Maybe she didn't really understand the sudden birth and have that connection, but we got lots of pictures for the memories in the years to come.  This is one of our favorites.  

There were five and we lost four.  We have one left...and he now has our full attention.

More on him in the next post.

He is getting us through the hard parts...