Well, last night’s guess that Katie was due imminently turned out to be correct. When we half-woke briefly at 3:20am, she was still moving around the room without kittens. When Richard was stroking Katie in his sleep just after 4am, and encountered a tiny leg, we were suddenly very much awake, and there was Katie on the bed next to us, with three tiny babies. We were just in time to watch the fourth, and final, kitten arriving at 4:12am.
Katie coped perfectly, doing everything including cutting the cords and cleaning up the placentas. We moved her initially onto a clean area of the covers, with a series of clean towels, changing them over regularly as she got herself and the kittens cleaned up.
There were two at 90g, one at 92g and one at 97g. From the looks of which are the driest, I’m guessing they were produced in that order; sensible girl! I’ve had a quick check, and I think there is possibly three girls and a boy, but I’ve never even seen kittens at that age before, so it’s pretty much complete guess-work and is therefore probably totally wrong!
There’s one that is obviously a black silver shaded (I think the first-born), and one that I suspect might be a black silver ticked tabby. The other two are much darker, so I’m wondering if they might be black smokes, although they do have quite strong tabby-type face markings, so may be black ticked tabbies. I know smokes have facial markings, but I’m not sure how strong they usually are at this stage.
I have painted the babies’ toenails to make sure we can keep track of which is which when we’re weighing them. The first kitten to arrive was ‘purple-toes’ (the one that I think is a black silver ticked tabby), followed by ‘red-toes’ (the black silver shaded), followed by ‘orange-toes’ and lastly by ‘blue-toes’.
We’ve now got Katie and the babies tucked in to her basket in the kitten pen, and she has wolfed down two tins of Applause and a pouch of wet food, plus a whole bowl of water. She seems delighted to actually be able to reach to clean every part of her body again! Thankfully she’s taking great care of them all, and all four are latched on and suckling well.
Already, there is one who is obviously going to be a wee minx (red toes) – before Katie had even finished giving birth, this kitten was trundling off up the bed. She (I think it’s a girl!) is totally blind, deaf, and helpless, yet off she went. Once we returned her to her mum’s side, she set off round the side of Katie, then she went over the top of her, then she buried underneath and set off on the other side, and so it goes on. Eventually she gets bored, though, and then they all settle down to eat.
