We’ve had our fourth foster cat for 3 months now, so it’s time to write out her journey to us.  “Nyx” is from a Georgia shelter, and at the time was extremely pregnant, ready to have her litter of kittens at any time.  We made a deal with the shelter that we’d meet them half way from our city and theirs, which the journey ended up being about an hour journey each way.  She was gregarious and friendly the entire trip home, and was adorably affectionate when we moved her into the foster room.  About 24 hours later though, she was severely congested and just over the entire experience, not wanting to move and struggling to breath.  About 24 hours into this incredibly rough sickness, her kittens decided they were ready, so they started coming out, but without very much import or effort on Nyx’s part, she generally just laid back and let it happen, ignoring the babies after they came out.  For those of your that have never seen kittens gettin’ born into the world before, there’s a certain amount of house cleaning that the mother needs to do, from removing the baby from their sack, to cutting the cord, to then eating the sack and cord to recover some calories.  In her case, she did none of this, so we had to lend a hand.  Five kittens were birthed right after each other with just a few minutes between, then a rest of about 15 minutes and a final sixth one arrived.  The babies weren’t getting enough milk from Nyx, so we had to split shifts of bottle feeding six babies for a couple weeks, but even with the bottle feeding, that sixth one never figured out how to latch properly and passed about a week later. 

Mind you, this entire week we were bottle feeding Nyx as well, as she wasn’t wanting to eat or drink, it was an incredibly exhausting and frustrating experience. It wasn’t until the day the kitten died that I actually saw Nyx eating on her own, I cried some ugly tears at the combination of her eating and her kitten passing, just too much in one combination.

After that though, the kittens started putting on weight very quickly, started walking around, and are at this very moment harassing everything they can get their kitten paws on.

The most surprising part of this entire round of foster cats is how our most recently adopted cats reacted to the entire situation from the other side of the foster door.  They never got to see the fosters until about a month after they were completely clear of their illnesses, but once that door opened our two boys were fascinated by the kittens.  Odo and Miles are only about a year old themselves, so maybe they have fond memories of that room or maybe they just wanted someone more energetic to play with, but they were happy to accept the four new arrivals to the house.

The two old ladies on the other hand, they’re still angry about the entire situation.