Borrowed Babies

I saw a series of shows on TV recently called “Baby Borrowers.” The show is a social experiment. The producers give teenaged couples (18ish years old) a few days in which they must care for infants, toddlers, preteens, teenagers, and elderly people. Some of the teens came into the experiment thinking that child-rearing would be easy. Some wanted children right away and saw no reason to wait. Some just wanted to prove that they were grown-ups.

Even if you never intend to have kids, I think that this is worth watching. I truly believe that many high-school kids who think that having a baby is the answer to their problems will rethink their positions on having children. I’ve never wanted kids myself – I think of them as screaming poop machines – and I got a lot out of it. There are life lessons about relationships, cooperation, creative problem solving… seriously good stuff to be gotten from this show.

All of my babies are borrowed. In most cases, my kittens are orphaned. Even when the kittens have a mom, she generally needs my help raising her babies. The babies tend to be these amazingly wonderful creatures that I feel lucky to have gotten to know, even for a short time. There are so many wonderful things about fostering kittens. Above all though, this stuff is work.

A typical day goes like this:

1. I get up in the morning. I don’t really feel like doing much other than reading my newspaper comics and drinking my tea, but I know there are babies depending on me so I warm up their bottles while trying to attend to only my most pressing needs.
2. I go into the kitten room and see who needs feeding. The bottle babies are all screaming and want my attention at once. I listen to several minutes of hungry, crying kittens while I am feeding one of them who isn’t cooperating.
3. The bottle-babies still haven’t settled down yet because they still need to go to the bathroom. I get out the baby-wipes and rub their genitals until they they are able to relieve themselves. If I am lucky, no one has diarrhea, but that isn’t the norm.
4. I grab the towels that are covered in various forms of kitten excrement and toss them into the laundry. I also grab the heat disk so that the babies have something to keep them warm (kittens cannot thermoregulate themselves until they are several weeks old).
5. While I am waiting for the disk to warm in the microwave, I wash my hands. I grab clean towels and a can of food for the bigger kittens.
6. When the disc is warm I return to the kitten room and remake the beds. At this point I can put the bottle-babies away for their morning sleep.
7. I move on to kittens who need to be helped to eat. This is a messy process, so I make sure I am wearing my scrubs or an apron. It helps to be wearing pants (as opposed to a nightgown or shorts) so that my legs don’t take a beating from kitten claws.
8. I put the wet food on a plate and grab a baby spoon. I attempt to insert said spoon into a struggling kitten’s mouth. The kitten does not want food – she wants a bottle. Too bad. I have to be the meanie here.
9. After about 20 minutes of trying, the weaning kitten catches on. She hates having to feed herself and deeply resents me for denying her the bottle.
10. I bring out the baby wipes again and scrub the kitten because she is covered in food. There are food-prints on my clothes, on the floor. The kitten has food on her entire underside. All of this needs to be cleaned.
11. I let the weaning kitten run off to do her own thing while I look for the broom and dustpan. She and the other kittens have kicked tons of litter out of the box AGAIN, so I have to sweep it up.
12. I find a puddle of vomit or diarrhea on the floor. I check all the kittens to be sure no one is obviously sick. I clean up the puddle.
13. I handle any kittens who just need attention. I snuggle the fearful kittens. I play with the kittens who need exercise. I remind them to eat because they need to get big.
14. I finally get to eat breakfast. It’s been about an hour and a half on a good day. My stomach has learned not to anticipate an immediate breakfast by now.
15. Repeat steps 1-13 every 6-8 hours if the bottle babies are at least 3 weeks old. If they are smaller, prepare to do this every 4-6 hours. If they are newborns, give up all hope. You have just become a slave.
16. If anyone is sick, remember to add the medications (and the ensuing battle) to the schedule.

I have to put the needs of tiny little people above my own. I forsake sleep, food and recreation. I have my heart broken when a foster kitten doesn’t have the decency to survive. And the icing on the cake – I have to give them all away just when it gets easier. Why would anyone do this? I can give you 133 reasons why. Their names are Abbey, Nebula, Orion, Cupcake, Cream Puff, Wisteria, Margo, Caterpillar, Sundae….

A good trade

I went in to the shelter yesterday and offered Blaze to one of the other foster parents. She is going to take it home and try it on. So, she may have gotten a nice gift.

I also got something nice.

This is Wisteria. She barely looks like a kitten at all – more like a burrowing animal. Her fur is so unusual and soft! It was love at first sight! I officially have a crush on a second kitten this year (I sure do move on fast, don’t I?).

Wisteria is pure cute. She is the quietest kitten I have ever had. I mean, I haven’t heard a peep out of her except when she is dreaming (and she’s an active dreamer – you should see her twitch). She sleeps more than I remember other kittens sleeping. She even sleeps through the night. I know it’s sacrilegious to say this, but I wish she would make a little more noise. It’s just that it makes me worry that something is wrong when she isn’t asking to be fed.

Wisteria isn’t so good with the bottle either. I waited 8 hours after her first feeding at the shelter to even try since she wasn’t calling for food – she was just sleeping. She rejected the bottle, and I’m talking full-on temper tantrum. She turned her head away, pushed my hands out of the way – she wasn’t having any of it. Finally, I got her to take milk from a syringe. I tried again today with the same result. I tried offering her a bowl of KMR mixed with a tiny bit of wet food. I know Nebby seemed small when I got him. He, too, rejected the bottle. But he was just a little bigger than Wisteria. His teeth were out just a little more than hers. She’ll be ready for weaning very soon, but I don’t think she’s really ready now. Just as I suspected, when I offered her the plate of mush, she dropped her face in it and made no attempt to eat. It was a conundrum. In a last ditch effort, I tried the bottle again. I squeezed it gently to get the milk on her tongue (she keeps her mouth open when I have the bottle in it, so I can easily see what is going in). All of a sudden, she started to suckle. She didn’t get much, but I’ll take it. I have a feeling it’ll be like this for the next few feedings at least.

For now, I’m going to aim for her to just maintain her weight and stay hydrated. I’m sure that it can’t be easy for her to lose her mother and have to learn to drink from a bottle all in one day. All I can do is wait. Just like with the sweater. I’m starting to detect a theme.

Why I’ve been absent

This week has been incredibly busy. My father came here to San Francisco from Manila, Arkansas, so I’ve been showing him around. I’ve been bottle feeding the Star Kittens. Nebula needed to be weaned. The Constellations developed a mysterious skin condition that caused some fur loss, but it seems not to be ringworm. As you can imagine, I have been really busy. I’m lucky if I get time to sleep, let alone blog or even knit. Just a few more days…

First, the kittens. Leo and Argo went to the shelter today to get neutered. I’ve put in a call to the couple who was interested in some of them, so I hope they can get adopted soon. I get to keep them at home until that happens. However, with our trip to Vancouver coming up soon, I fear they may be spending a few days in the shelter before they get a home.

Lyra and Orion are really close to being ready – maybe a week away, maybe a few days. I’m in no hurry to see them go, but I do want them to get a permanent home. What a conflict!

I got several more great pictures of Nebula recently. I think the one next to Wesley is particularly neat – they are such different shades of gray. I keep thinking of Nebby as a little Wesley, but he really is quite different (except for that totally loveable part).

The Stars are growing well. Merak has almost doubled in size in this past week. Mizar has a little problem where every time he eats, the milk comes back out of his nose. I checked inside his mouth – he doesn’t have a cleft palate. I tried every trick in the book to slow him down, figuring this was a behavioral problem. It scares me because if he gets the milk in his lungs, he can catch pneumonia and die. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen. As for the big news, on Tuesday Alcor opened his eyes! The other two have their eyes half opened at this moment. I will get a picture at their next feeding. I learned very quickly that one should never disturb a sleeping kitten, and right now, they are out cold.

I got a few nice pictures while out with my father this week. I love the sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf:

And Muir Woods is such a tranquil place to spend a few hours.

I should be able to post more next week, but I can make no promises while I am in Canada. I will take lots of pictures though, so you’ll hear about it somehow!