Just a wee update for you.
Things went well for a few days and then I started to worry. A few of the kittens point blank refused to take any milk from me, no matter what the form of its presentation was.
We tried syringes, bottles, mixing it in with mush... zilch.
They were having meat mush, mind you, but wouldn't touch it with milk mixed in. I also realised they weren't actually nibbling, just sucking up gravy.
I did mash it fairly finely I thought but even so, they were just sucking up gravy and the lumps they were either leaving or sucking on them like ice cubes until they dissolved.
We tried different sorts of kitten food and they all had the same results.
We decided to take some radical action mid week when I discovered 2 of them had actually lost weight.
We split the litter and 2 in poorest condition went to our welfare lady Caroline.
The remaining 4, including the now famous Pale Face and Spike stayed with me.
The two Caroline took clearly benefited from the split and started eating very well. Caroline does have a midas touch with small kittens.
My 4 improved slightly, but only slightly.
Then on Thursday morning we had an emergency... during the night there had been an attack of sickness and diarrhoea and Pale Face was refusing her bottle and looking very dehydrated and looked like she was fainting.
We raced her to the vet where she was re hydrated, given antibiotics plus other meds to claim down her bowels. The vet thinks she may have had a small tummy bug. An hour later she was back home bombing around like a loony again.
I had tried every trick I could think of bar one... to actually blend the kitten meat with a hand blender and make a puree. This, at last, has done the trick and I'm happy with the amount they are eating now.
We've come to the conclusion that either they were around a week younger than we believed or that mum had not been able to give them adequate nutrition. They are slowly catching up now, we hope.
Pale Face continues to be a mummy's girl who loves her bot-bot. Spike looks like being semi long-haired and still needs daily baths due to her swimming in her food... when she's dried off and remains clean for 30 minutes, she's really pretty but is always having a bad hair day.
