I’m having kittens about having kittens
Today I assisted a cat through her first birth. I want to remember every detail, so here goes.
(Warning: There is a tiny amount of blood shown in some photos, and if you look very closely you might see an umbilical cord stump.)
A few weeks ago someone reached out to me on FaceBook. She has two young Ragdoll cats, a bonded brother and sister, and had a surprise pregnancy. Was it safe for the mum to deliver her brother’s baby?
The answer is, “Definitely”. Some breeders deliberately breed relatives when looking for certain traits. It makes the babies more likely to have certain genetic diseases, but it’s perfectly safe for the mum.
We talked a lot, and ultimately I am looking after both adult Ragdolls (hereafter called ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’) until the kittens are weaned. Papa is there to make Mama feel as relaxed as possible, not least because they only moved to my house a week and a half ago.
The owner is devoted to her cats. They are healthy and vaccinated and will return to her when the kittens are weaned. I’ll hold on to the kittens until they’re all adopted. Two of the owner’s friends already want to adopt a kitten each.
We took the cats to Cooinda Vet in Marulan (much cheaper than Canberra even though it’s an hour and a half drive each way) to get Papa desexed and Mama checked. The ultrasound showed “at least two” babies due within two weeks.
The owner doesn’t want photos of Mama and Papa online, but it’s fine for me to share kitten photos. Ragdolls are one of the bigger breeds of cats. They are very fluffy with a white or cream body and dark points (like a Siamese). They have amazing blue eyes, and are famously chill, often relaxing utterly (like a rag doll) when picked up. Here is a Ragdoll photo from one of my interactive books:
Papa is extremely friendly and will quickly approach new people (or cats). He is a LOT like Jack Black, one of my foster kittens (pictured below). They’re already starting to play together. Mama is also quite used to Jack. (Zipper is grudgingly tolerant and then goes outside to get away. Zoom is terrified, having never met a cat bigger than herself. Jodie is terrified but bravely challenging herself to get a little closer to them each time they are allowed in the same space.)
Anyway!
I set up three possible nesting boxes for Mama, but one is definitely superior. Apart from anything else, it’s set up inside a large mesh carrier (the kind for a small dog) which means in an emergency I could just zip it up and take the whole family to the vet.
Sometimes Mama would go in there, wash herself a little, and then wander out. Unsurprisingly, both she and Papa spent a lot of their first few days hidden behind a table. Change is scary. But honestly they both emerged relatively quickly, and were both snuggly with me, including purring and rolling over for belly rubs. My other family members have all patted Papa many times, and the kids have each patted Mama.
On 20 October (Monday) I noticed Mama was producing milk, confirming the vet’s estimate of her due date. I felt the kittens kick a couple of times during the week, and noticed that she liked to burrow into the nest (which is sort of bad because I’d carefully layered it including waterproof layers, layers for warmth for the newborns, and layers that could easily be removed if they got blood on them).
On Tuesday I saw her stomach twitch, which was either kitten movement or pre-labor contractions.
On Wednesday, she and Papa were grooming each other (another pre-labor sign). At 8pm, she had burrowed into the nest and was sitting on the plastic carrier base with my carefully-arranged covers over her. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like it might be time for The Kittening at last. Here are most of the messages I sent to my friend, including the times I sent them (and the typos):
So I went to bed about 2am and slept until 7am, when I needed to get up and get my human kids ready for school. I bought more food and litter (and a toy for Jack’s BFF Jodie), came home and slept until 1pm. Of course I fed the various cats, scooped litter, and checked on Mama again. She had dug out an entire layer of the nesting box, rearranged the rest, and was chilling out elsewhere. I left the heater on and the AC off.
At 1pm I found her in the nesting box (under the nice blankets) again, and I went and had my lunch. I did some much-needed cleaning (Mama likes to throw a solid cup of litter out of the box overnight, which would normally be a pre-labor sign but apparently she does that all the time). I heard two meows around 2pm and wondered if it was really proper pre-labor this time.
At 2:20pm I went back into the cat room. Papa was acting strangely and I heard another meow. Where was Mama?
She was hiding behind the table again, but coming out since I was there. Then I heard another meow… and realised it wasn’t Mama. Or Papa. It was coming from behind the table.
Papa and I raced to investigate. I don’t know which one of us knocked over the conveniently over-sized water bowl but it went all over us and the rug.
I frantically-but-extremely-carefully tossed everything piled up on the table onto the couch, and then saw the tiny damp BABY CAT behind the table on the bare, low-quality carpet.
EEP!
The rule is to always let the Mama give birth in the place of her choosing.
But.
There was a scattering of litter on the floor, and it’s not a warm place at all. And she liked the nesting box, didn’t she? Just not the way I arranged it?
I knew it wouldn’t be long until the next baby arrived, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it getting born on the floor. Who knows where that floor has been?
So I gently put Mama in the nesting box (on top of the covers even) and the baby next to her. I was so scrambled I didn’t even wear gloves, but I noticed Mama wasn’t fussed at all. She just lay comfortably on her side and washed her baby. And purred, especially when I patted her.
Now that the first baby was out, she didn’t feel the need to hide (and maybe it helped that I was there to protect her from danger? I dunno—some cats hate having humans there, and others love it. Mama was very clearly in the “love it” camp).
After all this time, I wasn’t ready! I needed to change the stinky litter! I needed warm water and clean rags! Where was my notepad? Did I need anything from the birthing kit? What about picking up the kids from school? And was the first baby kitten okay? I’d dimmed the lights and now I couldn’t SEE!!
Another baby came out, just like in the videos I watched to prepare for this birth. Mama seemed very comfortable and pleased with herself. Kittens are born 10-60 minutes apart, so after watching to see it was breathing I raced out to toss the litter, grab various things, and sort out the human kids. And to message the owner to tell her it was all happening. She was literally having an ultrasound at the time. Here’s a kitten next to Mama’s front paws.
And then I settled in for the rest of the birthing process. Clearly, Mama had read the instructions that tell birthing cats to lick off the amniotic sac so their kittens can breathe, and to chew through the cord and eat each placenta when it arrives. So I wouldn’t need the scissors, alcohol wipes, or unflavoured dental floss (to cut the cord), and I wouldn’t need to break open the amniotic sac or clear the kittens’ airways.
They were very wet despite getting a few good licks from Mama. I turned a second heater on, checking the two thermometers I’d placed in the room and sweating buckets myself from the heat. The owner asked if she should/could come over. Given that Mama was purring every time I patted her, I said an emphatic yet.
Another kitten came out. Excellent! Three kittens!
Papa approached with fascinated caution, sniffing the air and watching the magical cats that had appeared through some kind of hidden doorway that he had somehow never discovered. HOW DID THOSE THINGS GET IN HERE?!? He didn’t hiss or growl, but he backed away to watch from a safe distance. Some father cats will literally kill newborn kittens, but clearly that’s not his vibe. I’ll still supervise him a lot.
The owner arrived, making a big fuss over both adult cats and generally squeeing like a first-time grandmother should. And then suddenly Mama’s stomach started visibly pulsing as if she was going to throw up.
I knew what that meant by now, and said, “She’s having another one!”
She enough, moments later there was a fourth kitten! She washed it off and then lay down to wait for the placenta, which she ate like the rest. The kittens were trying to feed, and they were SO BAD at it. I mean sure, they’re blind and mostly deaf at this stage, and too weak to stand, but they kept sucking on Mama’s paws or her fur. More than once I tried to point one in the right direction. If anything that made it worse because they’d immediately hare off somewhere else. Still, I remembered a vivid story I was told when I was pregnant about the strong drive to nurse after birth (in humans) and I mostly just watched them flail about. It was probably building up their muscles or something useful like that.
Four kittens! Fantastic!
I made the owner go away because she’s pregnant herself and that room is HOT since kittens can;t thermoregulate. Plus of course I wanted them to myself. And to turn on a second heater because they were still wet.
At 4:18 I wrote to my animal welfare person.
At 6pm it was clear there were no more kittens (probably for the best!) and I decided it was time to weigh them. The problem with Ragdolls is that they all look extremely similar, especially at birth when they’re generally pure white. So I hatched a plan to lay them out on a towel and take a photo (to catch large-scale physical differences), then take a photo of each face as I weighed them, in case their faces look different in some particular way.
As soon as I moved the kittens they began meowing with the same force and volume that had been demonstrated to me when the first one had meowed so loud I’d heard it from the other end of the house and thought it was Mama. They also grabbed hold of the ground with their claws and began to crawl hard in the direction they thought was probably towards Mama.
Mama leapt into action immediately, grabbing one in her mouth and putting it back in the nesting box before I could start weighing them. Papa came up too, wondering what on earth was going on.
They’re like living dandelion seeds: soft and white and moving in a totally erratic way. I weighed one, swapped it for the one that had been rescued, and weighed that one—as Mama grabbed a third one. It was chaos! But I’m pretty sure I weighed all four in the end: 92g (Litten), 108g (Shinx), 120g (Luxray), and 128g (Zera).
Tim (my son) and I have been discussing names, and the theme for this litter is “Cat Pokemon”. So! The one on the left, the runt, is Litten. The middle top kitten has a tiny bit of colour, so it is Luxray (the Pokemon creature has black fur… this kitten will have a black face, tail, and paws when he grows a little). The one below Luxray is … Zeraora? Something like that. It’s the biggest. And on the right is Shinx.
Zera:
As you can tell, I once again broke the first rule of neonatal kitten fostering – I didn’t wear gloves. I had gloves ready to go but when I realised the first kitten was on the bare carpet and hastily moved them to the nesting box, I was too frantic to remember gloves until I’d already moved them. Mama didn’t seem fussed at all, so I figure that means I don’t have to wear gloves.
Sidebar: I really hate gloves. To me wearing gloves is as uncomfortable as picking up poo with my bare hands—clearly this is an Autism thing because it’s not super rational. I still do wear gloves when I need to (I took them on and off constantly when I worked in an Early Learning Centre), but in the moment I forgot.
I will need to consult my animal welfare person about whether it really is too late to bother wearing gloves. In all honesty, it also feels wrong to me to handle a newborn with plastic, especially when they need warmth so much. I suspect that kittens who were held skin-to-skin as neonates are probably more relaxed with humans than those who weren’t handled. But I also think only the owner and I should use our bare hands, because Mama already has our smell on her from much patting.
Cats co-parent with friends in the wild (even big cats have been known to sometimes dump their babies on a trusted human!) and I feel like mixing scents is part of that. But the #1 reason to wear gloves is so the mum doesn’t reject the babies. Which is why I’ve said here that if you’re not willing to feed the kittens every two hours, and stimulate their bowels every time, then you should wear gloves.
Anyway, here’s Litten, the runt:
Newborn kittens should weigh 50-150g, so that’s not a bad starting position. Like almost all runts of my acquaintance, Litten has an incredibly loud, piercing meow that she/he deploys without hesitation. I think she/he was born first. The smallest is always most at risk, so I’ll be watching Litten closely.
This is Luxray, aka “the brown one”. Hopefully they darken up soon because that hint of brown is essential for me to tell them apart (and to therefore know if one isn’t gaining weight properly).
And that means this one is Shinx. It looks like I’m strangling them but I’m just holding their head steady.
So that was 6pm. I popped in and out to make human dinner, and then pick up another heater, and then eat my own dinner. I was a bit worried about the kittens’ ability to nurse. They just didn’t seem able to get it, and I was unable to help. Maybe what they needed was some peace.
So, once dinner was all done I went back hoping to see some amazing nursing action. Papa and Mama both raced to meet me (or to make a bid for freedom) at the door. I was surprised as I expected Mama to stay in the nesting box unless she needed food, water, or litter.
By then my animal welfare person had asked some follow-up questions and advised that newborn kittens could get dehydrated very quickly. It was very clear that the babies had a pattern of rooting around for food and generally failing—sucking at fur, mum’s paws, each other, and one even sucked on their own foot—then going to sleep. If you’ve ever had a human baby, you know that feeding can tire them out before they’ve had enough. I wasn’t sure any of these kittens were getting any milk at all. Much like humans, cats sometimes don’t produce enough milk even IF the baby is doing everything right.
So.
I prepared some Womberoo cat milk (the best stuff in Australia for newborns) and syringe-fed each of the four babies. They all got the idea really quickly and gobbled it down… which was good, because Mama was concerned as I stole her babies again (which is good and healthy behaviour on her part). She approached and sniffed at the babies as I fed them. Then she basically went
…and started licking the spilled milk off their faces with more than maternal enthusiasm.
Once I’d fed the kids, I poured the leftovers into a dish for Mama, and she lapped it up with alacrity. That was my cue to put out dinner for her and Papa, which she ate immediately. Great.
It was clear from the enthusiasm and focus of the kittens that they were very hungry, so… I’ve been syringe-feeding them all night. 9pm, 11pm, 1am, 3am, 5am. It’s nearly 6am now and I’ll be feeding them again in an hour.
At least two have managed to latch beautifully since then, but I don’t think Litten has managed it even once. Poor little mite.
So the next few days are going to be rough for me.
When my first human baby was born, I got so tired I started losing touch with reality. At once stage I thought I was a baby. Another day, I briefly thought I was cleaning Lizzie’s face because she was a lawyer with an important court date. None of these incidents lasted more than a few seconds, but they’re obviously super dangerous. How am I going to go feeding kittens every two hours for probably at least three days? Well, it won’t be pretty. But for now I’m doing everything right: taking my meds; washing cat dishes ready for the morning, writing down things I need to remember; solving problems and being responsible. Hopefully nature works things out real soon, whether this feeding issue is caused by unco kittens or a lack of milk flow or both. I’m certainly proving my usefulness to the owner! Litten would probably have died by now without the supplemental feeds.
Wish me luck.
Did you think that was all of the night’s drama? Because it wasn’t.
At 1am I went into the room, deploying fancy footwork to avoid letting Papa out… and Mama wasn’t there.
Two kittens lay in the nesting box, completely alone. I carefully turned back some layers to try to find the other two, but they were nowhere to be seen. They weren’t in the other two nesting boxes either, or in Mama’s hidden corner behind the table.
I was mystified and starting to panic when I heard a meow that led me to the other side of the room. There, in a big plastic tub of soft toys, under a giant unicorn, was Mama Ragdoll looking very pleased with herself—and two of her four kittens.
Why there? Did she still need to burrow and the unicorn was her only option? Was there too much light on the nesting box? Was the nesting box area too hot for her elaborately furry self?
And WHY did she leave two kittens behind? Was it because the abandoned kittens were too bad at nursing and she decided to let them die so the other two had a better shot at life? Did she just forget about them? Did she want a change of bedding?
I cast aside the enormous unicorn (seriously, it’s bigger than a medium sized dog), carried the toy tub back over next to the nesting box, and hastily changed the bedding before moving Mama and the favoured pair of kittens back into the nesting box. Mama immediately got out and headed back for the bucket, but I tipped out the toys and she gave up.
I did the feed, patted Mama a lot, chucked the soft toys in the wash and disinfected the bucket. I also cut patches of fur from Shinx and Zera so I could reliably (ish) tell them all apart at last.
Mama seemed content again at 3am and 5am.
Best of all, when I weighed the kittens at 5am all four had gained weight. Weight is the best way to tell if a kitten is thriving, scraping by, or in danger of expiring. I THINK these lovely babies are going to make it.
Here’s my GoFundMe page, if you’d like to help!
Felicity Banks 
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