A second kitten, and a whole new set of terror. (Slightly long, I'm so sorry)

Hey! I have an update on my babies, and it’s actually a really good one, although it doesn’t seem that way at first. Things got really, really bad before they got better – but they did get better. I had a night of hell and a morning that has, so far, made up for it.

I fed the babies at 1am. Brahm took about 5ml of formula, cuddled, and went to sleep. At 4am, I woke them up for their next feeding, Viktor first because he’s easier and faster. When I woke Brahm up, he was almost completely limp, lethargic, could barely open his eyes and he wouldn’t even chew on the bottle. The most I could do was alternate cuddling him and getting little drops on his tongue for him to swallow. I tried to convince myself that he was just exhausted from the miserable day he had – his mommy died, he was trapped in a hot car on a hot metal frame, hungry, constipated, milk switch, bad poop, screaming for hours and zero sleep. I decided to let him sleep for another half hour – which was miserable. He wouldn’t cuddle with Viktor, he’d wobble off to a corner and lay by himself and I’d read that was a bad sign. From four to six, I alternated between half hours of letting him sleep and ten minutes of trying to feed him – and I was having no luck and the panic was setting in. All I could think of was Fading Kitten Syndrome. I was convinced at this point he wasn’t going to make it until morning, and I was just praying that if he couldn’t make it, he’d go painlessly – and that was the worst feeling ever. I laid him down, intending to continue the same routine, praying that eventually he’d wake up hungry and when I picked him back up, he felt much too warm. I immediately thought fever – and got up to get my thermometers – which i keep in a bag with my medicine syringes (because by this point, I was dead set on force feeding) and I could not find the bag. I looked all over my house, and I could not find it, and that’s when the tears started – and they didn’t stop until I passed out. I have no experience with cat fevers, at all – I do, however, have experience with infant fevers – so I went into auto-pilot and did the exact same thing I’d do with an infant if I were stranded with no medicine. I took cool water (not cold, just slightly under room temp) and just kept alternating damping his paw pads, ears and forehead with cool water, and broke those up with periods with body heat inside my shirt (which I wouldn’t do with an infant, but i didn’t want to go from fever to chills – i was seriously improvising) AND IT WORKED. I didn’t think it would, but if there was a fever – I broke it. He was still lethargic, still limp, but his body felt normal temperature compared to Vik’s, and that was what I needed. I was determined to get food in this kitten if it killed me.

I grabbed a hot plate and a sauce pan of water to heat my formula, a cooler for the can of milk and bottle between drops and I locked my meathead out of my bedroom and I sat there on the floor for two hours straight, feeding him one tiny drop out of the bottle at a time all while he was tucked in the collar of my shirt. I’d stop every few minutes and stimulate him (he peed twice) or burp him or rub him down with a dry washcloth like a mommy tounge – but there was no change at all and I was devastated. About 8 am, I was so tired I almost dropped him – so finally, I had to put him back in his box. I had to sleep for a minute. I laid him down next to his brother and he dragged himself to the corner, and that’s the last thing I remember. I was 100% convinced I was going to wake up to a dead baby kit. I fell asleep curled against the stupid cat box.

And then at 10am, they woke me up. I just heard yowling and yipping and squeaking and I sat up in a panic – expecting the worst – to find two kittens standing up as much as their wobbly little legs would let them, rolling around with eachother, yipping and biting each others ears and paws and just climbing all over eachother and rolling and kicking. Playing. I opened a new can of formula, and I went for Brahm first (because I had fed V several times through the night), and it only took about two minutes for him to latch on with his mouth, wrap his hands around the bottle and when those little ears started wiggling… He drank 5ml in two drinks at 10am, and so did V. He peed without any fuss and then he just started cuddling. Rolling around in my hands, kneading my chin with his little claws, licking my face, rubbing his head against me.. And sqeaking with a nice, healthy voice. We cuddled for a bit, and I let him chew on my thumb (and for a kitten I thought was dead a few hours ago, he’s got a ferocious little bite. I know I’m not supposed to let him bite me. I know. But after the night he’d been through, he earned it). I put the sleepy kitties back in their box, and they woke up and told me they were hungry again at noon, and both took another 5ml like it was nothing. His breathing had even slowed down – so that when he’s laying up against V I can see them breathing in unison.

They’re both asleep right now, cuddled up against eachother. They wake up occasionally to nip at eachother, or cuddle and roll around or give eachother little kisses and they conk back out. But when they’re awake for those seconds and I reach down to pet them, they’re both wide eyed and alert and sweet, so for now I’m hopeful that the worst is over, but I’m definitely going to spend the day being hyper-vigilant.

Thank you guys. So much, you have no idea how much your responses (and the info I’ve found here) have meant to me. If my boys make it – it will be because of what I found here.

Also.. I did mange to get some super adorable pics of my little loves if anyone wants to see. =]

Thank you guys, for all of your kind words. <3 We had our first check-up this morning, and it appears that my kits (who may actually be a boy and a girl, according to the vet – Brahm might have to actually be Mina) are as healthy as can be expected. They are right on target weight for their age and growing like weeds, hitting the right milestones and being sweet as sugar. The vet was almost as smitten with them as I am, gotta love a vet who loves your animals. They do have worms (to be expected), and my vet said if I insisted, he’d worm them today – but since they had good appetites and are gaining weight steadily, that it’s his personal preference not to worm babies with human moms quite so early and add a potential strain to their systems if it doesn’t seem to be an immediate cause for concern. He said if weight plateaus for more than 48 hours to bring them in, or if anything else seems off and he’ll start them on wormer, barring that, he wants to do it as soon as about half of their food intake is solids.

And after that dramatic night, it’s been pretty uneventful: Eat, play, cuddle, sleep, repeat. I did have one panic moment where I got scared by REM sleep twitching of all things after a play session that went a little long, and instantly woke them up to suck a drop of karo off my fingertip (and as soon as they tasted it they no longer minded that I probably woke them up from a really good dream about they playing they just did), but I felt really REALLY silly afterward.

Kittyzee, I did buy goat’s milk and I’m going to give it a try as soon as the can of formula I’m on now is finished and I’ll let you know how they like it. And yes, I feel terrible about their tiny little mama – guilty too, actually. I was so focused on V that it didn’t occur to me to try to make her a nest. I mean, I have some cat-igloos out near the back of my property line that the queens usually drop their litters in so I can try to socialize the kits enough for TNR, but it looks like this queen either didn’t want to be near the other cats or was scared off somehow. Poor baby.

Pussygato, YES, lol, they are so precious when they pile up on each other constantly – and they wake up occasionally to wrestle, but they’re still wobbly, so it looks like they’re just hugging and rolling and it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

Katzenjammer, that’s exactly it, popular classic horror lit names. I was thinking either Mina or Lenore, but ended up settling with Mina just because I like Mimi as a nickname. 😀 I have tons of pictures of them I’ve snapped on my phone of cute little things they do in their sleep, mostly, but I’m going to try to get some more during the next playtime today and update the album if I don’t have my hands full of baby kittens, it seems they like to play with me as much as they like to play with each other – which is totally fine by me, I’ve never gotten to hold babies this young for longer than it takes for a quick eye wipe or the like, and I’m definitely enjoying the infant kitten phase.

Oh, I love Wilde, and that is the perfect name for such a beautiful silver boy! He is stunning, and I have a huge soft-spot for grey kitties, i think they’re my favorite. I wish I’d been more conscientious about choosing my other kids’ names. My meathead (he’s not fat, just a big, solid, thick-necked, beautiful tom) I found just barely older than these (maybe – he was so malnourished, it was hard to tell his age, but he went straight to solids with a teeny bit of KMR to mush it up) and I (foolishly) named him Mouse because of his teeny tiny scrawny little body and squeaky voice, completely ignoring the fact that his feet and ears made him look like Bigfoot and a fennec fox spawned a kitten (he was the oddest looking kit I’ve ever seen – I though he was gonna grow up to be the cat version of a chinese crested – he was probably the closest thing to an ugly kitten that’s ever existed). So, long story short, when he got tall and long enough to stalk like a mini-panther and dwarf small dogs, Mouse became Moose easily enough. And the most adorable part is, he still has the squeaky little kitten voice.