After days of setting humane traps in my yard in an attempt to recapture my missing pregnant foster cat, I was ready to give up. I had managed to capture 6 of the various neighborhood outdoor cats and scarily enough, one opossum. But on Thursday morning, I checked the trap in the front yard and there was my missing foster cat.
She appeared to still be pregnant, but I was not sure how to tell so I called the shelter. We decided that it was likely that she was still pregnant and that I should watch her. That night at around 10PM she went into labor and had her first kitten at 10:50PM!
Not only did I manage to be lucky enough to find her, I was lucky enough to get her inside to have her kittens! Throughout the course of the night she had six kittens. She was very tired after her days outside and going through labor when she was underweight. Because of this, after she delivered her third kitten, she stopped taking care of the cord cutting and other disgusting stuff.
After a late night (1AM) phone call to our wonderful always on call foster coordinator for some over the phone instructions on cutting an umbilical cord, I was able to help her safely deliver and get all six kittens settled in and nursing.
I have two orange tigers, one buff (lite orange), one brown tiger, one black and one orange and white kitten. Right now they are all happy, healthy and doing well. And thankfully so is Mom. She is a wonderful Mom. She is protective, but very tolerant of me handling the kittens to weigh them and check them over each day. This is an important thing to do to be sure the kittens are growing well and especially important with these little ones since she is a small underweight cat who is trying to feed six kittens. If they start not growing quickly enough, I will have to help her out by doing supplemental bottle feeding on the smaller kittens, but so far so good.
Here is the new family:
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