I just sent HaiTai (the kitten with the black dot on the nose)
to meet her new owner. To be honest, I was really not wanting to
give her up lol. However, since she was already promised to the new
owner by the people who discovered the kits, I still had to respect
their wishes. Meeting the new owner, though, subsided a lot of my
worries. She seemed very responsible and detailed, and asked a lot
of questions about how she should care for HaiTai. Seeing HaiTai go
to a responsible family eased my fears, I'm sure she'll be happy in
her new home; but parting was very bittersweet...it was like
sending my kid off to college lol. I felt like I raised this
adorable kit successfully, and I'm happy she'll have a happy home,
but inside the other part of my heart has these twinges of
heartache. I'll miss her.
The other thing I wanted to share is a problem a lot of cat+dog
owners will come across...I don't know why, but the dogs LOVE the
cat litter! Every time I see out of the corner of my eye Turtle or
Latte try to sneak past me and stick their head into the litter
box, I do a grmmmmph! noise and they guiltily scamper away. To
remedy this I decided to make a dog-proof litter box out of one of
those big plastic tubs you can get for like 7 USD...cut a hole on
the top that's just big enough for cats to get thru, and file down
any rough edges...(I ended up using and ruining a bread knife to
saw through the thick plastic lid lol). This way, the cats can jump
in and out of the box, but the dogs can't get their heads thru to
the goodies...
I've actually been so
exhausted and so sleep-deprived on the brink of lunacy that I was
planning to put off starting this blog till about 2 months later. I
got thinking though, that I still want to journal the experience
while everything is still fresh. It'd be a shame to have nothing to
look back on a few years later except a few food-stained t-shirts
and kitten scratch scars.
So about 3 weeks ago, I
hear news from our organization Animals Taiwan, that someone
found 3 baby kittens about 2-weeks old abandoned in a box on the
street corner. For anyone who's ever taken care of baby kittens,
let me tell you it's NOT easy. It's like having 3 crying infants at
home. So I completely understood how the discoverer was unable to
care for them herself. Thus begins the story of how I became a
kitten mommy...
So, at the estimated age of
2 weeks, Iwasbottle-feeding the babies
kitten milk formula with a baby animal bottle every 3 hours around the
clock. At every feeding, the babies drink with such panicked
urgency that it makes me nervous, feeling solely responsible for
such a tiny helpless creature’s life. It’s a lot to swallow in an
emergency overnight decision that I made so quickly. Someone needed
to take care of them. No one else could; I’d figure out a way to
make it work. After their bellies are full, they need to be burped,
gently, just like a baby. Since newborn/baby kittens are unable to
go to the bathroom by themselves, you have to do what the mommy cat
does. Well, not exactly…the mother cat will use her tongue to lick
the nether regions (yep, ALL of em) to stimulate the elimination
process. Wow, a mother’s love is like no other. I accomplished the
same with a gently moist baby wipe. After feeding and “diapering”
each kitten, I use baby wipe to clean each kitten with short
strokes to make it feel like the mother is cleaning it. This is
important to their hygiene, socialization, and well-being. The best
part of each feeding is that they fall asleep right away, and
that’s when they are at their cutest haha. I actually carried them
around in a baby sling with a hot-water bottle to warm them after
their feedings. This is because I found they slept better when I
held them, maybe it had to do with hearing my heartbeat like their
mom’s? So, carrying them around in a big sack hanging around my
chest and tummy, it was pointed out by a friend that I really do
look like a pregnant lady/mother, bc the way I started waddling
(it’s tough on the lower back to hold that weight in the front),
the way I had to awkwardly ease into my seat (for fear of waking
them), or the way I began leaving the house with total disregard
for my appearance (pajama pants, sweats, baggy food-stained
t-shirts, no makeup, unbrushed hair, the works…)
After each feeding,
especially the ones from 2am till 8am, I tried to sleep, but having
sleeping problems to begin with, by the time I finally
fell asleep again, I had to drag my butt out of bed for the next
feeding.
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