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Jelly-Belly lapped at some water this morning. It was the first sign of him being interested in something besides Mama for his nutritional needs. I've been feeding him with a syringe every 6 hours or so. He laps at the dull end of the syringe, chews it a bit. I know he must be pretending it's like Mom, only it must feel odd to him. With the teeth he has, I'm glad to feed him. Mama would really be feeling some pain if he tried to nurse. Thankfully, she seems to just stay by herself. It makes me sad to not see the kittens hanging all over her, as they once did, but it's part of the process and the babies must learn to live on their own.

I've had some news about Mama's placement. She will be living with one of her rescuers! I can't imagine this cat living with anyone, but the surprise for Mom is that two of her offspring from a previous litter are also waiting for her to arrive! I wonder if they'll know each other? I certainly hope so. It will make Mama's adjustment to her new home a lot easier.

I wish she could stay here. I have the room, but it would be a nightmare. Her new home is going to be small quarters, which makes her new family even more wonderful, in my eyes! To take in a tough kitty like Mama is no easy thing to do. I hope it goes great for everyone.

Just a few more days and Mama will be gone. I better get off my butt and take some more photos. First, though, I gotta clean the room out again. Those kittens are creating a stink! Yikes!

Okay. Happy and Elmo are eating canned cat food! They LOVE it! I've given them a few different ones to try out, so I suspect I will be enjoying the pungent aroma of kitten poop any time now. I already found some on the floor. Lovely!I'm have quite the time of it trying to keep the room clean. Seems like an endless, hopeless chore.

...and mom still hates my guts!

Then there's "Mama's Boy-Jelly-Belly." He will not eat, lap up, taste, anything. He's driving me insane. I got some advice about getting food into him and I already force fed him some KMR. This afternoon I let him out of his crate, only to find he was covered with food chunks-hadn't eaten and ran to Mom to get fed. Thankfully, Mom would not comply, either. Good for you nasty-Mom!

Jelly STILL won't eat anything. How long can a 7 week old kitten go before they DIE? Okay. I need to calm down. Last night I did let Jelly out for an hour and I'm sure he went to Mom's Milk Bar and had something because when I went to check on him, he burped. A sure sign of a full belly.

I locked him up all last night and only let him out for a few minutes this morning while I pulled together the three different meal choices for both Jelly and another set for his siblings. They have grain-free dry, KMR and a blend of canned food plus chicken baby food.

Ugh. Now Jelly is covered with cat litter, too! I had to give him a bath. He was ok about it, but he was much filthier than Elmo. When I finished bathing him, I tried to get him dried off, but he was still damp when I returned him to the crate.

It took all of two seconds for Jelly to get dirty again, then he climbed up the interior wall of the crate, trying to get out. He fell into the litter pan and coated himself even worse. It kills me to hear him cry and see him struggle to free himself. He's the only one who hasn't eaten. His sister, Happy, did great. I saw her eating "grown up" food! I know Elmo will eat both KMR and baby food, so it's up to Jelly to get to it and eat something.

It's been four hours since I locked the kittens up in their dog crate. I'm not sure if it's worse on them or me. I went into their room to check on them at 12:30pm and in the two plus hours they'd been in their crate, they already made a huge mess. The small water dish was empty and coated with clay cat litter, the baby food dish had litter in it, too and little Elmo had litter stuck to his tail, paws and belly. At least I saw the KMR was all gone and it looked as though it had been eaten. A good sign.

Sorry I've been absent from my regular posts. Between working long hours and getting nasty bursitis in my shoulder from being on the...err...computer too much, I've had to take a break. I still need to take it easy, but I'll try to get to posting more often.

Ugh! The kittens are almost seven weeks old and they STILL won't eat any food! All they want is feral-mama-milk, so I face having to separate them from Mom. I can't figure out how to best do this and I feel guilty even thinking about it. The only thing I can do, since Mom won't let me near her, is to lock the kittens up in the dog crate with food and a litter pan and just wait a day or so, 'til they get the idea. I'm sure this will make their Mom furious. I've never had kittens who weren't already weaned and this is harder than I thought. At least little Elmo does eat some of the KMR and being the smallest, he needs it the most. Actually, I stand corrected. Since he started eating a few days ago, he's now a bit larger than his sister, Happy. Their big brother, Jelly-Belly is creeping ever closer to two pounds already!

The kittens are now able to run and jump up on the bed, climb almost anything, and their eyes are starting to loose the topaz blue color. They seem to be turning a mossy green now, but it's tough to say what color they'll end up being. Jelly looks so cute here. He's a big baby!

Little Jelly-Belly has learned how to climb today. He can get up on the bed in the foster room, but getting down is another story.Hopefully, he'll figure it out. I can't keep watching him. I get so nervous he's going to hurt himself, but yes, I know he has to learn! Go Jelly!

His sister, Happy, already figured the climbing stuff out a few days ago! She's a smarty pants, that one.

And Elmo continues to explore his world on the ground, for now. He's here(see below) with his Mama.

I wish Mama would stop hissing at me, btw!

Jelly-Belly purred when I held him today!
Another milestone, with many more to come.
Yay!

After a crazy 48 hours, it looks like Nora is doing better!

Nora's blood test came back completely normal. No sign of elevated white blood cells, so no infection-yet. Also, since her regular Dr. (Dr. Larry) could see her, he brought up a good point-that she often has a high temperature when she is stressed out. She was STRESSED being in the car (doing a weird mix of meow and growl while I drove) and being at the Vet. Her temps were 103.9, 103.7, 103.5 and 104. Her paw pads were sweating, her ears HOT, she panted a bit.

That said, Nora got sub-Q fluids, just in case her fever wasn't stress related and she's on Baytril for a bit. She was also put on a wicked non-steroidal pain killer, that until recently was only approved for use in Dogs. It's called Metacam and I can only give it to Nora for 4 days, that's it. I need to read about this medication. It must be rather intense! It seems to have helped because shortly after she got her "loading" dose, she was ambling about much better.

Yesterday Nora seemed afraid or unable to walk over the side of her cat bed to get her breakfast. I didn't realize anything was terribly wrong until I got home from work last night. I found Nora on the floor, rocking, unable to stand. I tried to coax her with food and she was able to sort-of stand, but her right front leg was off the ground, her paw curved back towards her body. She quickly laid back down.

I looked at the time. It was almost 7pm. In a panic, I thought it was Monday and my Vet was only open to 5pm, but I called anyway. Thankfully, it wasn't Monday, DUH!, and they were open 'til 7pm. I told dear-Jessica, the Vet Tech, what was going on and she said to bring Nora in right away.

Nora is not a tiny cat. I got her to lose about 3 pounds so far, but she still weighs 21 pounds. The only cat carrier within arms length, was a small one with a towel in it, so I pulled the towel and managed to get her inside the carrier, trying not to hurt her further.