Taking Care of Kittens

You remember those kitties I showed you a picture of last week? Well, there are two litters. While Patrick's cousin is away visiting family, she asked my sister to take care of the kittens, make sure there wasn't any goop in their eyes since they can get infected really easily.

My sister was taking care of them and then when we went on Sunday morning to look at them, some of them from the first litter were sick. Their eyes were stuck shut and swollen and they were sneezing a little bit. There were three of them. The next morning when my sister went to check them again, there were now only two, and they had gotten out of the barn into where we had a cow and calf staying. Bad news!

My sister said they had gotten weak and would barely move. She got their mom and tried to bring her over to the kittens, but she swatted them away. This could mean two things: the kittens have distemper and she didn't want to claim them, or the mom was pregnant again. We don't know which, but I am calling the vet today to find out what I should do.

Meanwhile, my sister thought the best course of action would be to take the kittens home, feed them, and let them live in a laundry basket full of old blankets. When I came home yesterday we mixed up some of the kitten food and fed it to them through an old eye drop bottle. I got a close up, and you can see how sick they are in their eyes:

The one on the right we thought was blind because he didn't react to any movement. But after we fed him, his eyes started to focus a little more. I just think their eyes haven't had time to develop correctly.

Here Danielle is feeding it out of the eye dropper bottle. Smoke was infatuated with the kittens and wouldn't leave them alone. Even when we put them back in the laundry basket and covered them up, he sat there staring at the basket the whole time. 

They got a little more adventurous after we fed them. It seemed like they had no energy at all before we fed them, but started moving around a lot more after they got some formula in their little bellies.

We'll be keeping them in the house for awhile to see how they do. I'll do some updates in a couple days for you guys!