Flicker’s Lair Blog

All are learning and growing well, and have pretty much gotten the hang of the litter tray. We had another attempt at getting them to have their milk from a saucer rather than a bottle, but it just ended up with a lot of mess and frustrated kittens. They didn’t get the hang of lapping and just stuck their noses in and then started sneezing! We plan to try again, we are very keen to have them weaned, in part because of the extortionate cost of KMR and in part because them eating by themselves would be a lot easier than bottle feeding 5 times a day!

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Having fed a kitten you then need to take care of the other end. This means wiping with a moist (warm water) cotton ball (or similar) until they do their business. From my research, four weeks is a good time to introduce the kittens to a litter tray, and so we had started doing this. After wiping, once the kitten starts to go, we put it in the tray. Our little brown tabby is learning very quickly; today I had put him straight in the tray without any stimulation while I fed the next kitten and he peed all by himself. He then repeated the trick at the next two feedings. Let’s have a cheer for the very clever little guy!

We had our first bath! Just after we had our first dose of worming medicine!

The medicine required syringing yellow liquid into squirming kittens! Steve did a very good job of getting enough in each. We then had a bath in the sink with a little Epsom salts. Trying to contain squirmy damp kittens in a towel to make sure they get properly dry and so don’t get a chill is actually trickier than you would think.

Bath was then followed by a nap, with a selection of warmed wheat bags (like a hot water bottle) around the outside of their small cat carrier, to make sure they were toasty warm until they were fully dry.

Today was the first free appointment the vet had, so along we all went. As always from the moment we entered their room and they woke up, they cried, shouted and generally made a racket! Seriously you wouldn’t believe how much noise such little creatures can make.

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It was a pretty eventful weekend with all the visitors, of course everyone wanted to see the kittens. They didn’t really notice so long as they kept being fed. Fortunately with the help of my Dad and little sister we only had to take care of the late feeds. They have progressively gotten better at drinking from the bottle.

Just before there last feeding of the day it was time for a weigh in. We have all gained weight which is exactly what was wanted; the largest gained the least and the smallest gained the most!

We added a litter tray and the brown tabby with a little encouragement used it!

We had gone to bed worried about whether we had done the right thing, but woke to the answer to that question. Steve found their mum on our deck; sadly she had passed away in the night. There weren’t any obvious marks, but she did look very young and very thin. We felt very sad for her but took comfort in knowing we had done the right thing for her kittens.

My Dad and sister arrived for the weekend and were given a lesson on feeding kittens as we were still trying to get ready for the influx of people on Saturday.

We are hosting a family gathering on the weekend, so Steve had the day off for us to get organised. He was trying to get our grass under control when he ran over a log. He stopped the tractor to remove the log and in the quiet he heard crying.

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