During the first day of motherhood, Poppy seemed torn between being a kitten and assuming the role of a mother. She was still running to greet me, asking for cuddles, trying to get me to play with her, and then suddenly scurrying back to her babies. Until one moment I actually got to witness the beginning of her transformation: the babies were in the box and Poppy was eating near the box, throwing quick glances at the crying kitties now and again. Suddenly, out of the blue, as she looked at me, an involuntary, threatening growl arose from the depths of her body. Of course, she was growling at the potential threat to her offspring! After that, for a little while she still kept running to me, trying to be my 'baby', but again those ominous grumbles would sound from deep within her, telling her to be cautious, to keep her guard up. Nature was taking over from nurture right in front of my eyes, instincts were kicking in when absolutely needed. This was awe-inspiring, and quite humbling, to be honest.
So, meet Poppy's babies:
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| TIGER LILY |
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| GLEESON |
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| GEORGE |
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| PIPPA |
And their first 10 days in this big, scary world:
Day 1
Poppy's very confused by the situation and keeps bringing the babies to me - probably thinking that since I'm her 'mother' I must be theirs, too😉. So the babies hold on to me for dear life, screaming, while I try to tell Poppy that they really are hers and I simply don't have what they need right now.
Day 2
Things are getting a little more settled now. Poppy still sits on the kitties now and again, and when they cry, she looks at me as if to say, Hey, what can you do? 😄
I notice that Poppy is bleeding a little from her vagina. We decide to monitor the situation.
Day 3
Poppy now seems pretty happy to spend time with the kittens instead of me. It's OK, I won't take it personally;)
Day 4
Things seem to have found their grooves now - there's a rhythm to their behaviour. E.g. when Poppy goes to eat, the babies, if they aren't together, start clambering towards each other to form a united bundle while mommy is away. There's a little panic when I lift the babies out of their 'bed' to change the bedding - Poppy seems to get confused again as to whose babies are they, anyway?
Day 5
There's definite rhythm and calmness in the air in the kitten room now. Changing the bedding went smoothly, Poppy seemed to have reached the conclusion that my role in all this is just this - keeping the babies' bed clean and her fed. And it's fine by me - as I had decided to keep out of nature's way as much as possible and let things develop at their own pace.
Day 7
Poppy's bleeding seems to have stopped now.
Day 10
Poppy's spending less and less time with the babies. She keeps to their vicinity, but isn't always in the cubbyhole with them. It's possible that it's just too small for them, as the kittens are growing rather rapidly. Day 10 also gave us a few pairs of open eyes! Gleeson the ginger nut is yet to open his, and I'm not sure about one of the black babies, it happened in the dark of the evening, so I couldn't see properly. But I did see four little kitten eyes for certain!
I had set 4 weeks as a guide for us, thinking if we make it there without any major complications or illnesses, we're doing fine. And we made it!
Weeks 4-6 are times of rapid development for the kittens, it seems. It's the time when they're so eager to move around and explore. And play, play, play! And it seems, it's also the time of the first true appearances of their very own personalities. Yes, by week 6 I'd say they had pretty much all turned into themselves, so to speak. It was quite amazing to witness nature and nurture exerting their influence on the kittens, with nature still having the last say, kinda. Even though they all got exactly the same amount of attention from me and their mother, they developed into unquestionably unique beings.
This is also the time when they can begin the weaning process. Of course, as their teeth are developing and the canines and then premolars start appearing, they more than likely start hurting their mother as their suckling is accompanied by biting and chewing. (If you bottle feed a kitten with emergent premolars, you'll quickly notice that the nipple of the bottle gets chewed through rather effectively rather fast:) So, the mother is more than happy to let the babies begin eating other stuff than what she can produce with her body. And necessity can be a great facilitator of speedy weaning, I noticed. The big boys Gleeson and George always made their way to the biggest teats, leaving the little girls to fight over the smaller vessels. But Pippa quite quickly figured out that she can simply go and eat with her mommy, who was now being given mother and baby cat meat mousse a couple of times a day (so that babies would find it palatable should they find their way to it). And with that Pippa showed us that 'the fittest' in the old 'survival of the fittest' means 'the most adaptable', just as Darwin had suggested.
Oh yes, I almost forgot - this is also the time of 'potty training' for the kittens. Well, of course, there's not a whole lot of training going on actually, as instincts pretty much guide them exactly where they need to go. At around week 3, I set up a tiny and cute pink, shallow litter tray near the cubbyhole for the kittens for when they're ready. Their mother's two big litter trays were in the opposite corner of the kitten room. When kittens are born, their mother stimulates and consumes their excretions for the first 3 weeks or so. And after that, it's time to do it in the big cat style! Well, they may need a little help at first. Once the little pink tray was in its place, the kittens slowly started making their way to it. To play in it, mostly. And that's important - to let them play in it, to familiarise themselves with it. But of course after a while they must start using it for some serious business😉 So I took the biggest boy in the group, Gleeson, placed him in the tray and, using a damp cotton pad, stimulated his backside until he did a number 1 in the tray. I then did the same with Pippa. And, frankly, that was it. After those smells were in there (at this stage there's no smell in their urine for a human to distinguish, really, but it's definitely there for their superior olfaction), they all got the idea in no time. Of course, there were little accidents along the way, but all in all it was a doddle. Naturally, all this time they were witnessing their mother doing her business in the big trays at the other end of the room. And after using their lovely pink tray for only a couple of days, they were all trying and succeeding at different levels to climb into their mommy's colossal (and very high, from the babies' perspective) trays. As you can imagine, this brought some serious hilarity into our lives😄 So I guess it's safe to say that the mother doesn't teach her kittens how to use the litter tray - the kittens learn by observation. Which means that a well-socialized mother cat is a great role model in this, and in many other things, of course.
By week 7 the kittens weighed between 640 and 740 grams, with Lily being the lightest and Gleeson the heaviest. And since they were 7 weeks old now, I decided to worm them for the first time. That's actually why I wanted to weigh them - to figure out how much of the poison we could give them. The day after we had administered the drug, George's stools became very soft. I thought this was his reaction to the drugs, maybe he had worms and now they're being purged. Or something along these lines. The next day two of his siblings started producing wet faeces. Again I thought, perhaps they all had worms. But also, since that was the day their mother left, I thought that this sudden and rather significant change to their environment could've caused the upset bellies in the others. (Well, actually, their mother leaving at this stage doesn't really affect them that much - she's pretty much done her job with them, and they don't share our mother concept which emphasizes emotional attachment, so it's a lot easier for them to see their primary caregiver leave.)
Yes, Poppy finally got spayed and went to her adoring forever home, where she joined one of our former special kittens, who's all grown up now (and as gorgeous as ever!). It is deeply soul-stirring to see people return to adopt their second or third pets from an animal rescue charity! And I cannot put into words how happy I was and am for Poppy after all she'd been through - she really hit the forever home jackpot!
But back to her babies - on day 3 of the soft stool stage, I noticed that George's poo looked more like a pool of green snot than a brown puddle. Well, hello, you old so-and-so! I immediately decided to collect a few samples and get them tested for Giardia. I wasn't really expecting the tests to come back negative, as I'd seen this kind of poo before with Morty, our first giardiasis patient. Now, because Poppy's babies hadn't been outdoors or met any other cats, they had become infected by their mother (who had been asymptomatic, as is often the case with older kittens and adult cats, so we had no way of knowing to expect it). Well, you learn something new every day, I guess😏
So, to celebrate their 8th week in this world, Poppy's babies were on Metronidazole once a day for 6 days. Some celebration.
Yes, because giardiasis is extremely contagious, all members of the litter/household need to be treated. And yes, most of us are not born drug-takers, and cats' attitude towards drugs is the stuff of legend for many people. So - more often than not, for us mere mortals, who have not had years of training or practice, medicating them is a case of trial and error at first. Which means that now and again a couple of pills will end up wasted. Since these kittens' tablets had to be cut in small pieces (owing to the babies' own smallness), the first day I tried to mix it in their food, and the second day I tried to administer the tiny pills straight into their mouths with my fingers. Well, all that taught me was that they all foam as a response to that bitter medication. George, who needed the drug the most, seemed to foam at the mere sight of the pill! Anyway, by day three I had decided to order a few extra tablets and resort to my trusty pill-popping gadget. And it worked, mostly. I placed the pill in the popper and then carefully covered its tip and the pill with wet food gravy, to mask the smell and taste of the drug. And like I said, it did work, as usual. And for the first 3 days of the full doses it took me a half an hour to drug the kittens, with 15 minutes spent on the first three and then 15 minutes on Gleeson. There's always one😉 However, we found our groove with Gleeson, too, and the second half of our drug days went quite swimmingly.
Anyway, a very long story short - after 3 tests with what seemed like never-ending periods of waiting in between (with giardiasis, you need to wait about 2 weeks after the treatment before you can get the stool samples tested again), all the kittens were declared to be clear of the nasty Giardia! Which meant that they could finally go home! And they all went to lovely people who had very patiently waited for their new feline family members to arrive (about 3-4 weeks after our initial plans).
If I had to pick the most important or interesting thing I learnt with this set of kittens, it's probably how varied a litter of kittens can be, in terms of personalities. They all experienced exactly the same kind of nurture - no-one was treated any differently from the others by us, and their mother cared for them equally. But their natures were all totally unique, all just their own.
And this is how I would describe Poppy's babies:
GEORGE - he seemed a tad neuro-untypical, I often thought that maybe he'd been the one affected by his mother's heavy meds during pregnancy😉 But to be fair, apart from a little jumpiness, he was an all-rounder like his black twin sister. (He was also quite possibly my all-time favourite model - his eyes were simply astonishing!)
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