Momma cats

This is my second time fostering a momma cat with kittens. The first time, it was Alice. She was a stray who was about 5 weeks pregnant when I took her in. It was hard to see poor Alice, this beautiful cat, going through so much for these babies and then being repeatedly passed over for adoption in favor of smaller, cuter, younger cats. First she was abandoned when pregnant in the frigid Baltimore winter (it was 16 degrees on the day she gave birth, February 5, 2007). Then she gave all of her strength to nourish the 7 lives growing inside her. She labored hard for several hours before the C-section was performed. She came out of surgery shaven, spayed, and sedated. Her bare belly dragged on the ground; the skin was so stretched from carrying 7 kittens. Her face was drawn and pathetically skinny. Her ribs and spine showed through her fur. Her belly felt like lots of warm golf balls as she developed mastitis. She was a shell of her former (and fortunately future) self. In four months we had not one application on her. I felt so sad for her. When it was time to move across the country, I had to decide if I’d find another foster for her or just adopt her myself. It was a tough decision, because 3 cats is a lot (we already had 2), but she had already settled into our family such that I decided to keep her forever. I don’t regret it a bit.

Now I have another momma cat. Jill. She’s unremarkable to look at. In person, she is affectionate; she climbs into my lap, head butts my hands for attention, purrs SO loud, rolls around, and is generally a love (I secretly want to keep her). She’s the kind who will do a “headstand” for attention: she pushes her head into your hand so hard that she ends up with her head on the floor and her butt in the air. I think she’s beautiful and unique; she has white legs but one black “thumb,” she has unusually large eyes, and her black parts have a brown tinge to them. She has perfect teeth which tells me that she’s probably a youngin’; maybe two years old. Of course, she has a rash on her chin and her back half that has caused hair loss and scabbing, and her belly is fat and saggy. She’s also an adult, which is yet another strike against her. But I would fill myself with mom cats if I could. Too often, they get pregnant when they never should have been, and their babies are adopted while they themselves are euthanized in shelters. No one wants adult cats. These mom cats go through so much and instead of being cared for and loved for it, they are instead abandoned by their “owners.”

The moral of the story, I suppose, is that all cats have love to give. The ugliest ones might just be the most loving. It’s not Alice’s fault that she’s kind of ugly and generally unremarkable. It’s not Jill’s fault that she grew up and got pregnant. But because of the faults of their “owners,” Alice was left outside and would have died in childbirth, and Jill was left to become a kitten factory with a painful rash all over her body. There are beautiful cats out there in unfortunate circumstances, and in choosing a cat to adopt, I think it helps to be compassionate and to understand that the cute kittens will get adopted…the other ones may not be so lucky.

They're growing up

Yesterday evening I spent lots of time with the kittens and Jill. We have determined that there is indeed a runt and a giant in the litter. The runt is the little guy with the black head and the symmetrical white markings on his face; he has been nicknamed Skunk. He just finished opening his eyes yesterday, when he was 11 days old (the first of the group, Lily, started opening her eyes at 4 days old; the rest of the kittens had their eyes fully open by 9 days). The Goliath of the bunch is the white boy with the black tail, nicknamed Spot. He is just gigantic! His all-white body really stands out when he’s in the pile with the rest of his littermates.

Jill is still doing well. She has white feet and lots of white on her, and she looked pretty dirty when she first moved in. But a week of being indoors has done her well, as her fur has turned white again from yellow, and she’s slowly getting shinier. I noticed that she sheds a lot, and I don’t know if that’s a Jill thing, or if it’s just a function of her not having been brushed or petted in quite a while. She continues to hiss at startling sounds, but she doesn’t seem to mean it, it’s just a reflex. I’ll be petting her and she’ll be purring LOUD, and then a kid outside will yell and she’ll hiss and then continue purring. I’m hoping this behavior settles down soon, because I’d hate for the babies to pick up on it.

We will be doing a big cleaning of her area this evening and will take some new pictures of the little ones. They’re getting big for sure!

Three boys and two girls

So I've finally determined the genders of all of Jill's babies. That's not always easy on teeny kittens, so it took a week for me to decide. Here they are (with their names, based on their appearances):

Lily (for lily-white): female, all white. It appears she has a little bit of black coloring on her ears, but they are so little and it is so faint that I can't really tell yet.

Blaze (for the blaze of white on her face): female, black and white.

Skunk boy (for the symmetrical white markings on his black face): male, black and white.

Spot: male, all white with black tail and two black spots on his head (as well as some weird black spots on his back legs)

Smudge: male, crazy mixture of black and white, with a black "smudge" across his nose. This guy totally looks like a cow with his unusual spotted markings.

BIG steps for Jill today!

Jill is officially tame. This morning I woke up and went out to check on her. She was nursing her babies, as always. I slowly and calmly handled each one for a few minutes, partly to get them used to people and partly to gauge Jill's reaction. Those little ones have some pipes! They all mewed a lot in my hands, but Jill was OK with it. As I was putting one of the kittens back, my hand touched Jill's head by accident. I won't lie...I've been afraid of touching her. I've been concerned about being bitten, and haven't wanted to tempt her.

But...it was like magic. My hand touched her head and...she pushed into it. So I pet her head more and more, from her chin to her cheeks to the back of her neck. I was amazed. She would actually sniff my hands and then head butt them, asking for attention. I was thrilled. I spent hours sitting with her, talking to her, scratching her head. She likes hard scratches to the back of the neck. I soon found out why.

She flinched when I stroked beyond the back of her neck. Her skin felt hard and swollen. After a few minutes, she stood up to eat some tasty tuna out of my hand. First, let me just repeat that. The cat that was hissing, growling, spitting, and swiping at us 5 days ago is now eating out of my hand. Anyway, when she stood up (the first time I've seen her do that), I realized that she was missing patches of fur. Her skin was scabby, scaly, and red on her back and the backs of her legs. I immediately called a vet who said it sounded like flea allergy dermatitis. Ideally she would get flea treatment and steroid shots, but considering she's just started settling in here, moving her to go to the vet isn't a good idea. So she's going to have to get some flea treatment, but the treatment of her skin will have to wait. Poor sweetie; she's groomed her fur off, and the skin looks like it hurts. She looks so haggard, not unlike Alice did after giving birth (though Alice looked haggard because her belly was shaven and sutured and her bare skin sagged to the floor because she carried 7 kittens).

My heart totally goes out to this poor cat. The fact that she is tame indicates that I am not the first person who's ever pet her. I just wonder what happened, why someone didn't spay her, didn't keep her inside, didn't take her with them. Why do people think that cats will just "get by" if they leave them outside on their own? Constant heat cycles, pregnancy, nursing, foraging for food, caring for litter after litter, and having a painful full-body rash...that's no way to go through life. Studies have shown that cats that live outdoors with no supervision (meaning not feral cats in colonies that are fed, altered, and vaccinated) have lifespans that average just 2 years.

Stray mother cats break my heart. I'm so glad I'm able to help in my small way. I'm so glad this deserving momma cat, who has given so much of herself when she never should have had to, will have a healthy, happy, long future.

At home for 58 hours

So Jill has been comfy at home for 58 hours, having been trapped Tuesday morning at about midnight. She is still uneasy with noise and quick movements, but we've been spending as much time with her as possible in order to make her comfortable with people. I like to sit outside her crate and read to her out loud. It gets her used to people voices, particularly mine. She lets us scoop her litter box as well as put food in her crate. We still haven't attempted to touch her. It's too soon, as dictated by her behavior, and I don't want to freak her out by moving more quickly than she's comfortable with.

This morning we discovered that Jill did some redecorating. She moved her nesting box forward in the crate and moved the litter box to the other side. It was kind of surprising to see her in the front of the crate this morning! It was nice though...she knows that's where we hang out, so maybe she's coming around a tiny bit? I spent part of lunchtime sitting with her and reading to her, as well as an hour in the evening. I'm still hopeful for her!