Saturday, May 14, 2005

Return of the prodigal

Well not exactly. Just as I finished that last post, hoping fondly that the seventh new kitten was in a comfortable new home, I heard loud mewing from the front of the house, by the dustbins. I wondered if the mother cat had in fact returned so I went outside... and found the noisy ginger kitten, standing by their original nest, looking very lost and lonely. Meanwhile all the other six were trying to climb the fence between the front and back gardens!

So I took the ginger kitten to join his siblings, and they greeted him very joyfully, rubbing around each other and generally sounding much happier. Now they've all crawled inside the neighbour's box, and - from the general lack of mewing - seem to have gone to sleep.

Our cats are a bit confused by all this but so far haven't gone near the kittens, which is just as well. Tessie, our youngest, can be quite vicious with cats she sees as intruders.

4 comments:

Lora said...

Well, if they're climbing out of the boxes that well they may be older than they at first seemed. They may just not be hungry. I don't think it's irresponsible to feed them, but I won't overly fret about it. I'd just try giving them moistened cat food and see if they'll eat it.

Relocating their nest was a smart idea. Since they're mewing so much you might want to trythe hot water bottle and clock to comfort them. Good Luck!

Sue said...

It's quite warm here at present, even overnight it's about 16-20C, and they do sleep all huddled together so we're not too worried about the warmth. They seem to have gone to sleep now, not much more we can do at present (it's 10pm and dark). Must now write another post, I think.

Lora said...

You think they're only three weeks old! That's incredibly young. The lady from the Humane society said that under 4 weeks old and they should be bottle feed. I didn't mention that earlier because the sounded older. That severely lowers their chances of survival and adjustment, I see why you were questioning your interventions.

Sue said...

Well they survived the first night (actually the second as I think their mother must have been killed on Friday morning so they went without food for 24 hours) and we did raise our very first cat from about a week old - his eyes weren't even open when we found him. Feral cats are quite tough, and yes they're now being bottle-fed. If they survive tonight - and I'm more hopeful they will - then I'll get some proper kitten formula milk tomorrow morning.