Wonky Screamy Drama Kitten (and Friends)
After raising two newborn litters (pictured below) with friendly mothers, I felt it was time to get into raising the kittens of non-friendly mothers.
There’s a huge need for foster carers generally, but most foster carers can’t deal with pregnancy, birth, or possibly raising the kittens without the mum’s assistance. Fair enough! It’s a lot. Nature has designed cats to have lots and lots of kittens specifically so the weaker kittens die and only the strong survive. So there’s always a risk of dead kittens, plus a risk of very weak, high-maintenance kittens.
Female cats can get pregnant as young as four months of age (to immediate family members), and then continue to get pregnant several times a year for the rest of their lives. It’s not fun to be an unhomed cat. PLUS most cats over six months of age can never be socialised into becoming house cats.
The solution is Trap-Neuter-Release. It is the most humane way to reduce the cat population. It’s also practical, as wild cats are… well, wild. They need to be free—ideally with fewer unwanted pregnancies, fewer dead kittens, less hunger, less disease, and fewer festering injuries. A single human can keep an eye on a local colony and notice when one of them needs human intervention.
The down side of Trap-Neuter-Release is that it’s all expense and no cuddles. The exception is when there are kittens involved. They can be socialised very easily, especially around six to twelve weeks of age, and are easy to rehome too.
So I came up with a plan: to foster at least two pregnant anti-human cats and raise their kittens, then return the adult cats (desexed, vaccinated and chipped) to their home colony. Obviously I’d take care of all the kittens’ vet work too, and find appropriate homes for them.
The last time I fostered a full family, the young mum didn’t produce enough milk at first, which meant I needed to feed the kittens every two hours 24/7 for a while. That very much inspired my aim to have at least two mother cats at once. In the wild, they support each other, including babysitting and nursing. Obviously any lactating cat will be a better foster mum than me, no matter how experienced or knowledgeable I am becoming.
Hopefully, I’d end up with a feline day care centre. At least, that was the dream.
Hey look! Two pregnant anti-human cats!
The first queen (all mother cats are called queens, just as all male cats are toms) is Miranda. Two people feed her home colony but only one is allowed to pat her.
The second cat is Spare Parts, and no human has ever been allowed to touch her. She is fond of her carer human in a very introverted way—they sit a metre or two apart in the evenings, in silence, not touching. #Goals. Spare Parts also hates all cats, although there’s one male cat that she tolerates sometimes (a fabulous moron that the colony’s carer calls “Crackhead”).
I have a cat house now—a portable room in our driveway that I’m renting for $165/week—and that’s where Miranda and Spare Parts have been living for the last six weeks or so.
It’s beautiful and I love it. There’s AC, windows, power, lights, etc. There’s even a water port that can connect to an outside hose, although I haven’t hooked it up to a sink yet (so I’m still carrying water back and forth from the main house each day).
Back in May, my husband and I made a deal that I could spend half my income on cat fostering. At the time I was barely able to do a single half-day shift per week. I expected that if I worked more, I would be in incredible pain. But I was so miserable without cat fostering that it seemed worth it.
I am now working over twenty hours per week (on a good week), and I’m in LESS pain than before. Long story short, joy is good for me.
Anyway.
On 20th September, Miranda gave birth. She’s barely an adult herself and it was her first litter.
Reader, she was shook.
Through a baby monitor (acquired so I could monitor the births without stressing the queens) I saw Miranda walking around in the cat house with a kitten hanging out of her. Poor Miranda was freaking out at having a kitten appear unexpectedly, and was NOT interested in dealing with it.
I threw a pet-safe heating pad into the microwave (the cat room was already heated, but the floor is much colder than anywhere else), holding the baby monitor in one hand so I could keep watching Miranda and the baby. There were several nesting boxes set up for Miranda to choose from, so naturally she had her baby on the vinyl floor. Then she retreated into one of the boxes. After a moment, she stuck out her head and grabbed the kitten, bringing it into the box with her.
When I reached the room, the baby still had its umbilical cord and placenta attached. Miranda was crouched on the other side of the nesting box (literally an upturned cardboard box with no floor), pointedly keeping her chest pressed to the vinyl so even if the kitten got close it couldn’t nurse. She was staring in horror at the child, who was mewing for milk and warmth.
I put the baby kitten on the pet-safe heating pad and backed away, giving Miranda a chance to accept it. After a little while with no movement from Miranda, I cut the umbilical cord myself (with unwaxed dental floss and sterilised scissors), threw away the placenta, and placed the kitten as close to Miranda’s milk bar as I could without touching her.
Then I backed away, doing my best to pretend I wasn’t watching. Miranda lay down on her side and the kitten began to nurse. Phew! Mama Miranda immediately relaxed and started to purr. I went back into the main house and kept watching on the baby monitor as she had three more kittens. With those kittens she was just fine motherhood-wise: licking them out of the birthing sac, chewing through the umbilical cord, and so on.
Here they are:
Antonio, the firstborn, is white with a black ‘hat’ (named after the villain from “The Tempest”). He’s male.
Prospero is white with a grey hat (named after Antonio’s exiled brother from “The Tempest”, father of the beautiful Miranda). Also male.
Stephano, black and white, is named after Prospero’s drunken butler, the comic relief. She is female, though the character is male.
Ariel is named after a genderfluid spirit creature. He is a male tabby.
Miranda was so taken over by happy hormones that she very suddenly became friendly towards me. Positively cuddly, in fact! It’s been brilliant. I’ve been able to examine her and groom her very easily more or less as much as she needs. Plus I get to pat that glorious fur.
She still often has hilarious, “What do you mean I’m now a single mother to quadruplets?” facial expressions though.
Here’s another very early photo of the babies.
Miranda is a pretty good mum. She’s not someone who stays in the nest all the time, but she’s usually nearby. I managed to swap out the cardboard box for a better (and warmer) nesting box pretty quickly.
I knew there was a chance Spare Parts would freak out and attack the kittens, so I watched everything closely on the monitor. After about two days, she cautiously approached the nesting box (while Miranda wasn’t there), sniffed at the kittens, and then… literally backed away in disgust.
Spare Parts has had many litters, but clearly she was NOT interested in providing babysitting for this lot! Oh well.
It was about that time when it became clear things were not going well for little Ariel, the tabby runt. Despite Miranda’s attention he was losing weight, and quickly. Miranda was clearly providing plenty of milk for the others, so something was wrong with the child. But in every other way Ariel seemed perfectly healthy. He had no obvious abnormalities; he responded to stimuli just like other kittens, and he had the same priorities as everyone else: mostly cuddling and sleeping, but he was alert and interested in the world when he was awake. And he would scream in fury if I picked him up, which is healthy. I started giving him supplemental milk, and after a few days he began to gain weight at last. He quickly got used to me, which is also healthy.
As a bonus, I could see Spare Parts watching me feed and care for baby Ariel. Cogs were visibly turning in her mind.
Then, at eight days old, Ariel got sick. It was an incredibly minor bout of diarrhoea, but he was already so weak that it threw him right to death’s door. Until then he’d been a screaming ball of demands and/or affection; now he barely had the strength to meow. I was terrified I’d fed him poorly and accidentally got milk into his lungs, but fortunately for me that wasn’t the case.
The emergency vet checked a few things, and agreed that something was very wrong with him (before he got the diarrhoea) but that testing him would stress out his body too much to be worth it. So Ariel and I went home. He was sick again on the way home, and as a result grew even weaker. He could barely raise his head for several hours. It was several scary days before he had enough energy to get through a whole feed without falling deeply asleep.
When he started his usual routine of screamy meows at mealtime (all cats believe that humans prepare cat food purely to torment them, apparently) it was SUCH a relief. A few days later I became increasingly certain that he has swimmer syndrome ie his legs are so weak he just kind of wriggles across the floor rather than using his legs (which makes him look like he’s swimming). That was actually great news. Most kittens with swimmer syndrome make a full recovery! I made a new vet appointment right away.
Meanwhile, Spare Parts SUDDENLY became obsessed with Miranda’s kittens, staying in the nesting box more than Miranda herself. Sure enough, sudden overwhelming maternal instinct is a major sign that a cat is in pre-labor. I watched her obsessively for the next thirty-plus hours, and barely slept. Then I went to work for three hours, and naturally Spare Parts had her kittens while I was away. Did she do it on purpose? I can pretty much guarantee she did, even if it wasn’t a conscious thing. Cats’ labor will pause if there is a predator nearby. I dunno how she knew I was watching her on the monitor. Actually, my car is parked directly in front of the cat house, and she would have seen me leave. That probably triggered true labor as she knew I’d be gone for a while! Naturally a pro like her had no birthing issues whatsoever, especially since she had only two perfect babies.
Miranda’s kittens were a day shy of being two weeks old at the time.
Meet Bumper (left) and Sprocket. Sprocket is tabby and white, like Ariel, but he is much darker, and is a spotted tabby (especially his belly!) I’m told he looks exactly like Crackhead, so it seems we know where to apply for child support.
Both kittens are healthy. More than healthy; they are FIERCE! Many kittens will fight over access to their mum’s milk bar, but they won’t fight just for fun until they’re several weeks old. Not so Bumper and Sprocket! They were tussling together literally within hours of being born.
Sprocket especially is a wild child. Within 24 hours she’d climbed the side of the nesting box (and fallen into a litter box, where she got stuck), wandered right out of the nesting box, and more.
I worked hard to keep most of Miranda’s brood away from Spare Parts so the little ones (including Ariel) would get the best milk bar access. Spare Parts was good to all three of them, but absolutely furious with me. Mainly because I exist, which is highly offensive as far as Spare Parts is concerned. If she could set all living things on fire, I’m sure she would.
Having said that, she has absolutely no issues with me handling the kittens, which is great! I’ve even snuck in some pats using the “Patting the kittens, then patting the kittens closest to Spare Parts, then patting Spare Parts” method, which she has tolerated. All anti-human foster cats go through a conflicted phase when they’re instincts tell them to hate humans but their body enjoys pats. They usually get over the instincts. Chances are slender for Spare Parts, but I’m trying. She’s smacked me (and drawn blood) a few times, when I moved too quickly or got too close.
At the time of writing I’m about to give her some drugs to make her effectively stoned ready for a vet appointment in two hours (the vet gave me the drugs to calm her before her first vaccination). I’m very excited to interact with the stoned version of Spare Parts, who I met once before when she had her ultrasound. Time for LOTS of pats! Can I make progress with her in this brief window of permissiveness? Will she punish me for my presumption? We’ll see.
After a couple of days I let Spare Parts run the entire baby show, although I tried to have two nesting boxes occupied at the same time. Instead, my attempt to gently encourage the mums to feed their respective litters made Spare Parts leave her own kittens behind to steal Antonio and Prospero! It was hilarious, and disturbing, and ultimately quite tragic. Miranda was clearly not willing to challenge Spare Parts, even when she wanted to go to her kittens. And Spare Parts was very obviously choosing the biggest, healthiest kittens to focus on… because so many of her kittens have died in the past.
The best part of that weird transition time is that Spare Parts showed a preference for Ariel over her own kids. Which sounds horrible of course, but it means that Ariel is probably going to live. Cats are basically superheroes, with senses and knowledge we humans can’t even imagine. They often know a kitten is doomed to die, long before the most attentive human carers know anything is wrong. But Spare Parts clearly thinks Ariel is going to live.
So do I. He’s so curious, and so loud, and so affectionate. Surely he’s going to live, right?
I haven’t slept for more than 2.5 hours at a time since September thanks to all the supplemental feeds for little Ariel. But I’m sure I’m still totally mentally with it and logical. *nods vigorously*
Technically, I know Ariel could still die at virtually any moment, possibly with little or no warning as that’s just how it is with little kittens. But I still can’t help believing he’s going to be okay. When he was a week old, he started purring for me. He likes me better than either of the queens (not surprisingly, since I’m the one feeding him) and will leave them to flail and wriggle his way towards me when I enter the cat room.
Spare Parts and Miranda sorted out their balance and are now co-parenting beautifully. I’m not 100% sure but I THINK Ariel was able to feed from Spare Parts a little (Spare Parts is more patient than Miranda, and doesn’t have a veritable forest of luxuriant fur to struggle through). Everyone is gaining weight, so clearly they’re all getting enough milk. And although Spare Parts hates everyone in the world, she loves the kittens… and she loves Miranda. I see them on the baby monitor grooming each other like a pair of middle-aged lesbians who left their husbands to be together, and are finally happy. Spare Parts is almost always in the nest; Miranda pops in and out. I’ve seen them take turns, but usually they hang out together.
Miranda definitely still cares for her kittens, as well as the two extras. She feeds and washes everyone.
To cats, kittens are a form of wealth ie more is always better (except that most cats can’t count beyond “more than one” so they often forget about some of the kittens if they’re not within sight or hearing range).
Poignantly, both Bumper and Sprocket were bigger than Ariel from their very first day of life, and they’ve continued to gain weight faster than Ariel. But the newbies are still in his general weight class, which could be extremely handy as Ariel is definitely NOT in the same weight class as his siblings. And they’re all starting to play now, which is adorable and tentative and hilarious… but could be hazardous for Ariel. He’s already gotten frantically annoyed at least twice after being accidentally pinned underneath one of them.
Also? It’s been extremely funny and adorable to see Sprocket, with his eyes still closed (!!) fighting Prospero. And both of them loving it! Bumper also favours Prospero as an opponent. As of two days ago, Prospero weighs half a kilo! He is a big boy.
Ariel’s vet appointment rolled around at last, and the vet confirmed he has swimmer syndrome, as well as confirming what I’d learned online: almost all kittens with swimmer syndrome make a full recovery after a few weeks of intensive physio, as long as they start at around three weeks of age. Ariel was younger than that, and we’d also done a teensy bit of physio at home already. On the down side, the vet said swimmer syndrome didn’t fully explain why he was so incredibly tiny, and there are probably other medical issues at play.
But we can’t do anything about that just yet, so let’s leave that thought in a nice sealed box under the stairs for a while.
It’s been a week of physio now, and I can tell that it’s working. It’s basically bicycling Ariel’s legs for five minutes, four times a day. It often involves hysterical screaming—not because it hurts him, but because he doesn’t like me holding his paws.
Ariel is, in a word, spoiled. May he grow up into a giant screamy spooiled brat.
Bumper and Sprocket’s eyes are open now, and they’re cheerfully exploring outside the nest, and indulging in play-fights with all comers. The whole half-dozen pack of kittens is adorable. All Miranda’s litter are exploring too. It freaks her out quite a bit, which is also normal for a first-time mum.
Ariel’s come so far already that sometimes I feel like he’s virtually all grown up. Then I look in his tiny eyes and remember just how small and vulnerable he is. His siblings are pretty typical (albeit extra fluffy) 3.5 week-old kittens. Ariel is often more like a two week-old in size, energy, and development. (He’s fluffy too, by the way.)
All six kittens like to practise fighting by lying on their backs and flailing at the air. It’s incredibly cute.
Ariel plays with me now too—in fact if I can get him playing, he’ll often purr through physio instead of screaming. He is a ‘belly cat’, by which I mean he loves to show his belly (including while sleeping) and he adores belly rubs.
Almost as much as he enjoys screaming.
Keep screaming, little man. As long as you’re screaming, I know you’re still breathing.
Tomorrow, 17 October, Ariel and his siblings will be four weeks old. Every day he lives makes his long-term survival more likely.
Join the GoFundMe crowd here; a bunch of people cheering for Ariel and helping to offset the cost of raising these two little families.
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