Pet Foster Care

Pet Foster Kittens

Our first foster kittens of 2009 are the youngest we've ever had. Follow the adventures of our new young kitten fosters, Dani, Simone, Lambert and Ana from less than 1 oz to their weight goal of 2 lbs

Kitten Development Foster Kittens Week 2

Pet Fostering Kittens

Bottle baby kittens are just like human babies. Basically, they eat, sleep, and poop. Often this happens at the same time which makes for some fast moving and quick stepping. When kittens are this young, less than 1 week old, their eyes are closed shut, their ears are folded over, yet they remain extremely cute.

While they spend the majority of their time sleeping, they do wake up on a regular basis to be fed. Some kittens can be on a two hour feeding schedule, making it pretty rough to sleep through the night. Our recent foster kittens seem to be on a 3 to 4 hour rotation. So every 3 to 4 hours we warm up their bottles and prepare to feed the new litter of 4 kittens who have picked us to care for them!

Kitten Care - Day 1

The first night, they slept soundly from their 10:00 PM feeding until O'Dark-thirty. At 2:30 AM small voices were heard emanating from the kitten crate. Time for the last night "bottle-call." After lifting their blanket cover, the wonderful aroma of kitten poop wafted through the air, searing sleepy nostrils. This meant a thorough cleaning of their linens along with their bottle feeding. While feeding the kittens, one of them decided to multi-task and pooped while eating from the bottle. Normally this might be somewhat annoying, but at this time of the night I said, "oh, daddy's so proud of you!", to which my wife responded. "they grow up so fast, don't they!" At 2:53 AM this was hilarious, even as the warm kitten poop dribbled down my arm.

The following two days of kitten care activities can best be summed up from this string of emails.

Kitten Care - Day 2

"I woke them at 8:00 AM and fed them. There was a wee bit O'Poop in the domain, but nothing too serious. All is calm at the moment."
"Just spent the last hour with kitten duty. Apparently they learned to poop sequentially, so the clean-up process can take longer. Finally they are all sleeping."
"Looks like a 3 hour rotation today. They need to be cleaned, all of them are poop covered (now dry), but I'll wait until it's warmer this afternoon to wash them, and also need to wash their linens."
"Just finished cleaning poop, linens, and of course, the kittens. Looks like they think they need more food, AGAIN. Hoping they settle down for a few minutes, so I can do some work. They are really fussy today."
"Nope, pooping commences again - off to wipe down the squirming bodies." At least we know everything is working as it should!

Kitten Care - Day 3

Today's kitten schedule:

8:00-8:20 Feed and clean cage

8:30 clean linens and clean kittens

8:45-9:00 clean linens and kittens

9:00-11:00 Kittens sleeping

11:00-11:20 eat, poop, clean, poop, clean, poop, clean.

11:40 more poop, more cleaning

12:45 clean, poop, clean, eat, poop, clean, poop, clean

1:00 Kittens sleeping

1:05 Start 2nd load of kitten laundry today.

foster kittens week one, foster kittens week two, foster kittens week three, foster kittens week four