Foster Kittens Update

It has been touch and go, up and down this week with the foster kittens. Barbie and Kenny are doing great. Barbie is very sociable, affectionate and purrs like crazy when I cuddle her. Kenny is still a bit frightened but will let me cuddle him without laying his ears back now. Krissy, the third kitten in the litter, has turned the corner I believe. She weighed a mere 13.4 ounces when I picked her up on Monday. Barbie and Kenny were 1 pound 2 ounces and 1 pound 3 ounces so they weighed almost half again as much as Krissy did. Krissy went up to 13.8 ounces, then back down to 13 ounces (she wanted to sleep instead of eat she was so weak) and this morning when I weighed her she weighs 14.4 ounces so she's gained a full ounce in 3 days, which is good.

Here are the three kittens: Barbie is in front, Kenny is back left and Krissy is back right.

Krissy is a blue-cream dilute tortoiseshell. Her main color is that blue/gray and she has patches of peachy/cream all over, which you can't see in this photo but I'll get better pics when she's gotten stronger and is looking a bit better. She's still a bit scraggly looking.

And then there is little Jellybean. She is at least 5 weeks old and she should be starting to eat solid foods. The canned KMR she has been drinking is fairly expensive and each little can only lasts two days so it is costing about $2/day to feed her! I found an all species powdered milk replacer at the feed store and decided to switch her over to it. I mixed 25% of the new formula with the KMR for a few days and then had to go to 50/50 because the KMR was almost gone and she refused to eat. She got diarrhea with a tinge of blood which means she wasn't absorbing the food anyway so we went and bought more cans of the KMR for her and she's still upset. I think she's hungry and the formula isn't filling her up so she's getting very frustrated. She's lost a couple of ounces but is still alert and active so I'm hoping she'll start eating the rice baby cereal, milk replacer, meat baby food gruel I've been making for the other kittens. Thank goodness we have these other kittens here now to help her learn how to eat and play and be a normal kitten!