A new foster story

Last Monday the shelter contacted me, if I'd be willing to foster 2 or 4 kittens that needed to be bottle-fed. They got brought in on Saturday, without a mum, and were estimated at only 2 weeks old. I think they tried to trap mum then as well, but it didn't work yet, so the shelter then had 4 teeny-tiny kittens to take care of. They went to one of the crisis foster homes, those take care of the cases that straight away need help, so the shelter has time to find a permanent foster home while the animals are in a safe place and taken care of. At that moment, the shelter had only one mom with kittens of a similar age in one of their foster homes, but adding all 4 would've been too much, so they'd try to add 2 to that litter of kittens on Monday evening. That same evening I heard that was a success, she accepted them pretty much straight away, so the weakest 2 had a good home.

Tuesday the person that still had the remaining 2, brought those 2 to me. She explained that they were strong enough to make sure you know it when they were hungry and when they had enough, but also told me that the male wasn't so great with the bottle yet, and a syringe could help, and she then explained some more. I'm glad she did that, it freshened up my memory of last year when I bottle-fed kittens for the first time (and those were 3.5weeks when I got them, which is a pretty big difference already!). We started feeding them, but that didn't go as smooth yet because the kittens seemed a bit restless, and we decided I'd continue after she had left. I took them to the couch and tried to feed them some more, which didn't work as well, and it didn't take long before they just fell asleep on my lap! I think all the new impressions and moving yet again, must've been really draining. So I figured that the little bit of rhythm that they had, would probably be a little off after the move, and that it would be best to follow their lead for that moment.

Here are some of the first pics on the couch, when they weren't interested in drinking. The male is the top one, you can tell them apart by the black spot on his chin and one of his front legs is more white than the female's legs. Their posture and personality is different as well, they have different sounds, and they feel different when I pick them up, so it's pretty easy to know who's who :)

Think this is the female drinking :)

Female

They're often searching for a nipple and search everywhere, so sad :(

Here's the male

Dewey has sniffed them, but just like with last year bottle-fed kittens, he barely shows interest. I assume that he'll find his usual role again when they get a bit bigger, I think he just really hasn't got a clue about these tinies!

I placed the kittens in the bench after they fell asleep. I knew it would be way too big for them, but with a few baskets nearby and a SnuggleSafe (heatpad), I figured they could at least rest while I'd grab them a box or some. Here's the male on the SnuggleSafe

The female preferred this spot

But she then went to join her brother, and then it quickly showed that the bench, even with a box, wouldn't work well for us at all. They got restless, and having a box in a cage felt a bit over the top, so I took one of my traveling cages instead. More on that next time :)