Cats

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From Hughesd

My old site had a blow-by-blow account of the birth of our cats' kittens in February 2005. Since a lot of the stuff on there was of the "this is it as it happens" variety, I've decided to crop it down to a manageable level on this new site.

Background

Saffy (left) and Patsy in Nov 2004

Our cats weren't that long out of kittenhood themselves, and were rather young to be bearing kittens. They managed to get themselves pregnant on their very first outing in the garden - we have a lot of cats in our area. As a result I was kind of worried about their ability to give birth to and care for the kittens.

I spoke to vets on the subject and they all said the same thing. Motherhood is an instinctive thing for cats, and they easily adapt to the birth process. Caring for the kittens is sometimes tiring for them though, and they need plenty of food and loads of love during the process.

Anyway - this allayed my fears, and we all waited for the delivery. I woke up for work on Monday 14th Feb (Valentines day...) to be welcomed by my stepdaughter announcing that 'there be kittens!!!'. We ran down to the living room, and there was Patsy, just cleaning up the mess from the two kittens that were crawling round her belly!

We watched the rest of the process, which Patsy was kind enough to allow us to see, and everything was fine. She shot five kittens out in just over 45 mins. A grey one, a ginger one, a tortoiseshell one, a ginger one then another tortoiseshell one! No problems at all! Once done, she curled up with them and went to sleep for a couple of hours. I got told at work that she had delivered another one, but this was just some miscounting by my stepdaughter Amy...never mind!

The following few days were just filled with making sure that everyone was OK...there were a couple of scares, like when Patsy's sister Saffy decided to join them all in the box, but she only tried that once (apart from when she was about to have her kittens..that's a different story though) and when Patsy decided to take the kittens upstairs for a little while...she got one up to Amy's room before Anne noticed and found it - Amy picked up the towel it was on and carried it back downstairs, finding Patsy at the foot of the stairs with the grey kitten in her mouth, about to do the same thing to that one!

On the night of Thursday 17th Feb, Saffy began a long period of mewling...this, we thought, was her starting. She stopped about an hour later and lay down to sleep, so we covered the sofas with towels and went to bed. In the morning of the 18th, we awoke to find Saffy mewling outside Amy's room door and she wouldn't stop... We took her downstairs again, and noticed there were visible contractions across her tummy. She unfortunately decided she was going to have her kittens in the same place as Patsy, so climbed into the box with her and the kittens! We had to take her out and try and get her into the box we had prepared for her, but she kept jumping out and going straight back to Patsy. We phoned the vet for advice, and she said that they would have to be separated until the birth was over, so we took Saffy to our room and cleared a nice dark space out under the wardrobe. 10 minutes later, her waters broke: news to me, 'cos I didn't know that happened with cats too!!

Saffy's delivery was a little more strained than Patsy's...Saffy only had four kittens, and they were a bit bigger, so more effort was required. After her waters broke she yowled a lot with the contractions, obviously having a bit of a hard time... After about half an hour, she delivered a grey one (with a cute white stripe in the middle of its face), then a ginger one about 20 mins later. She had a then had a bit of a rest for a half hour or so before delivering two more grey ones about 15 mins apart!!!

Then she tucked them into herself for milk, put her arm over them and fell soundly asleep!

I left them for work this morning in that state, and have had a few updates from my fiancee...they are still fine, and Saffy is still knackered. Patsy has been up to investigate a few times, but keeps trying to get in beside them.

So. Nine healthy, cute kittens. They will be rehomed after the requisite eight weeks, despite both Anne's and my reluctance to part with them...we're both cat lovers... I've always wanted a ginger cat (BIG Garfield fan...) and now I'm going to have to part with three of them!!! Boo!