Warning: Litterbox-type talk in this section! Skip to the next section for the cute pics and non-gross talk about the babies!
In yesterday’s comments, sourpuss asked:
Not to be gross, but how is it that the pink mat in the box is still so clean? Don’t the babies have accidents?
The babies don’t have accidents because for the first 3 – 4 weeks of their life, their lucky mama gets to take care of their urine and feces. She does this by stimulating them to poop and/ or pee by licking their back ends, and then she ingests the results.
I know, right? Mama cats do NOT get paid enough!
When we have bottle babies, I have to stimulate the kittens to pee and poop by using a wet wipe or a piece of paper towel, not my tongue (thank god). Also, said poop and pee goes into the trash.
I bet Emmy wishes she had a stack of paper towels and opposable thumbs!
That aspect of watching a mother cat take care of her babies is, well, I feel sorry for Emmy because I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but at the same time, the look on her face afterward is hilarious. It’s a cross between “I’m going to throw up” and “So, this is my life. Fantastic.”
When the kittens are around 3 weeks old, I’ll put small litter boxes that they can climb into in the corners of the room and fill them with clay litter (as opposed to scoopable litter; kittens will often eat a little of the litter at first, and scoopable can cause blockages, or so I’ve heard) and they tend to get the picture pretty quickly.
So that’s why the pink pad has stayed so clean! But scroll on down for more info about the pink pad.
Fred put the pink pad in the box under the kittens and Emmy last Thursday (I think?), and it’s stayed relatively clean, but yesterday Fred noticed that she’d tracked litter into the box, so we decided that it was time to do a change. I just don’t like the idea of babies rolling around in litter, even though it wasn’t that much, and I’m sure they’d have been fine.
So Fred took the babies out of the box and carefully placed each of them in a basket. Emmy was less than thrilled by this, but wasn’t willing to come out of the box while we were both in there, so he gently scruffed her, pulled her out of the box, quickly replaced the pink pad with a clean one, and then put her back in the box and put the babies back in with her.
All told, it took less than a minute – possibly even less than 30 seconds – and the first time Fred went into the room after that, Emmy hissed at him, then let him rub her belly.
Look at Razzie, there in the front, with her little stumpy tail!
Everyone’s eyes are slowly opening, but the only one with completely open eyes at this point is Razzie, who is also the calmest when being held. And along those lines, big baby Logie was the last of the four to start opening her eyes, and is a great big drama queen from the moment you pick her up.
Emmy loves da babies.
They sure do seem to be spending a lot of time climbing up on top of her to snooze. And she doesn’t seem to mind one little bit.
Emmy needs some lotion for her toes, don’t you think?
Alice Mo has decided to hibernate ’til June or so, thank you.
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Previously
2011: Bless his heart. (That’s Southern Speak for “What an idiot.”)
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: So I got up and got me some kittens.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.