Kittens, Kittens, and More Kittens

The last few weeks I’ve been dealing with a kitten problem.

What I mean is that my downstairs neighbors rescued four stray kittens, only two or three weeks old at most, from a nearby yard where they had been crying out in hunger for several days. And then, only a few days later, my neighbors had to leave town for a family emergency, with no one to care for these recently rescued kittens.

Eileen

So I then had four stray kittens in my house.

Did you know that kittens that young cannot regulate their own body temperature? A space heater is needed to keep the room at a toasty 90 degrees and a heating pad warms the bottom of their carrier where they sleep. Did you know that kittens that young need to eat every three hours from a syringe filled with formula? Did you know that they are not yet able to pee on their own so they must be stimulated into doing so by their mother’s tongue, which in this case became my hand wrapped in a baby wipe?

Mr. Otter

I did not know any of these things before agreeing to take on what turned out to be a monumental act of service to those who we eventually referred to as Mr. Otter, Eileen, Cowboy, and Calypso, pictured throughout.

Calypso

We had them in our house for about ten days, during which we woke at 5am to feed, stimulate, and potentially bathe these tiny, feisty, pooping, and mewing kittens every three hours until last feeding at 2am. I began to feel like we had a newborn baby, or maybe two, in our home with the decrease in my sleeping hours and the increase in feces and milk stains present in my life. We watched as the kittens recovered their strength, strengthened their vision to recognize each other, learned to play with each other, to leap and to walk.

Cowboy

We were fairly certain we knew the mother of these kittens, a green-eyed stray we named Gomez who frequently lazed in our backyard and had lately been waltzing through with her nipples hanging low. We brought the hungry, crying kittens out to the yard to gauge her reaction. There was none, and so we jokingly referred to her as a deadbeat mother. But in all likelihood she was struggling to eat enough to sustain herself, much less enough for four kittens.

Then, several days later, I spotted Gomez in the back alley. I was astounded to see her surrounded six older, larger, healthy-looking kittens. To whom did the four kittens in our house belong? And how did we, in the space of a few weeks, now have 10 kittens around the property, between these newcomers and the rescued foursome?

This is what I mean when I say I have been dealing with a kitten problem. Thankfully, our neighbors have returned and resumed care of the foursome. We are working to sort out a trap-neuter-release situation for the cats getting frisky in our backyard. Mr. Otter, Eileen, Cowboy, and Calypso will be available for adoption through Stray Cat Alliance in the coming weeks.