It's not all fun and cuddles.

 I've just realised that I have completely forgot to update my blog (I'm blaming it on sleep depravation having done bottle feeds every 3 hours, including through the night, for the last 2 weeks) with the birth of Kenji's kittens! On Monday the 28th Kenji produced 4 kittens, goodness knows where she was hiding them as she certainly didn't look that big.  3 of the kittens were a good size but the 4th, the only boy, was absolutely tiny. Not only was he tiny but Kenji, being a 1st time mum, hadn't quite grasped the idea that you have to lie down to feed your babies and every time anyone went near her to check on how she was doing she would abandon her babies to come and say hello. The bigger kittens were strong enough to cope with this, but the tiddler very quickly fell behind. This caused Kenji to become confused about what to do with this crying baby and consequently she repeatedly pushed him out of the nest, something a mother would usually do if there is something wrong with the kitten. I decided to try and feed the kitten and thankfully he did take some formula, but still Kenji was not properly mothering him. I stayed up until the early hours (I was feeding one of Beetles kittens every 3 hours, more about that in a minute) but eventually decided that I would have to let nature run its course. I came down 3 hours later to find him cuddled in with his sisters with a full tummy!

For the 1st week I supplemented his feeds with a few bottle feeds, but he has now filled out/grown enough that I am not overly concerned about his chances so have withdrawn the extra feeds. He remains smaller than his siblings, but I expect him to catch them up once they are weaned onto solids in a few weeks time. The first picture shows him at a day old, the 2nd was taken today at 8 days old.

Here are a few pics of the litter . 

Beetle has proved to be an exceptional mother, but one of her kittens, a blue boy, stopped suckling from her a day after they were born. I tried so many time to get him to latch on but he just showed no interest, so I had to start bottle feeding him. Right from the start he never suckled from the bottle well, for the first 8/9 days he took the correct quantity of milk but he never showed any enthusiasm for it. Then he started to not take the milk in any sort of quantity, he should have been taking about 8-10mls per feed but I was lucky if I could get 3mls into him and he started to lose condition quickly, though he remained strong and bright. I had him checked by my vet who couldn't see anything obviously wrong with him. The only thing that was apparent was that he took a lot of air in when he fed and that was likely causing his reluctance to feed (whether this was caused by a congenital defect or not I will never know), though he remained settled and happy within the litter. On Monday morning he refused his feed completely, he was still feisty and gobby but in his emaciated condition it was clear that this was a one way journey he was on, so I made the decision to let him go to prevent further undue suffering. 

The rest of the litter are bloody gorgeous, all fat dumplings. The 4 boys are currently spoken for but her tabby/white girls are available.