5 is the new 4

From Susan’s Best Friends Network Blog, The Cat Garden.

5 kittens, not 4, and just under 3 weeks. What a difference a week makes. The difference between a good night’s sleep, and 5 or 6 hours. The difference between a litter box and a tissue box. Thankfully our vet has offered to keep them for the first stressful days, when the kittens are deciding whether or not to adapt to their new circumstances. Our vet’s wife can be very persuasive, a kitten whisperer, if I ever met one. We had an interview with our local newspaper, who wanted to do a story about us crazy cat loving foreigners. After some wrangling from our Japanese supporter (from the local animal control office), it will now hopefully be a story about the urgent need for pets to be spayed and neutered, and our ability to help with trapping, neutering and returning ferals. Finished around 8:30pm, shopped for kitten food til around 9:00pm, when the vet returned my desperate call about newly abandoned kittens. Said we could stop by–what a guy, given it’s his night off. While we were there, another person stopped by with a kitten that needed to stay at the clinic, as well. The two kids that came along with the other kitten, helped name our new kittens. The names are “Ruru, Nana, Boochi, Poochi, and Kiki.” If you think these sound odd, the kittens barely escaped being named after vegetables, the vet’s idea, in order to help him remember which group of park kittens they came from! Anyway, a relief to know they are all tucked away in their warm incubator, with the best of care. And, a good thing we got a decent night’s sleep, since we woke up to find a sick Momo and 2 sick kittens. Probably a result of the coccidium, which the mothers and kittens keep passing back and forth. As all were vomiting, it made it hard to get their medicine in them. We syringed some chicken and fish broth in their mouths to keep them hydrated, medicated them, and hoped for the best. Happy to see them all slightly improved, on return from my classes. Went out with Takako to see if we could trap the wiley cats living near her house, but no luck. This weekend is the lowcost clinic in Kyoto, so I’m hoping she has some luck on her own tomorrow. Finally, passed out little bamboo leaf fronds to the kitten cages for the first time. They had a ball batting them around the cages and pouncing on them–the room was really rocking! One more round of cage checking/feeding/hydrating and then finally off to bed.