Fading baby

The human here. I'm sorry, but I'm too exhausted to write for Tia today. I'm having to hand feed the baby that isn't gaining weight, as he lost again overnight when left with only one feed. This means he's being fed every two hours around the clock. I'm finding it very hard, and so is Tia who wails piteously every time I take him away for topping up. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up, but I know I'll go as long as I can. I just hope and pray that he doesn't have some hidden health defect that's preventing him from gaining. Keep praying, folks. I don't know when I'll write again. My priority for the next little while is these kittens, and next to that, I need sleep for myself whenever I manage to snatch some. I'll write every time I feel up to it, and will try and keep mom Trish up to date with what's going on with the little fading baby. Boy do I hope that what I'm doing is enough.






Thank you to all of you who stopped by and left comments, not just in these last few days, but over the last week as well. I'm sorry if I haven't commented back. I've tried with every one of you, but either you have word verification which i can't get past, or Blogger won't accept the comments for some reason. I'll keep trying whenever I have the energy. Know that I read every one of you though. thank you for being so supportive!

Are they really mine?

Friends, it's me back again, and boy am I tired. These babies really do take it out of you.






I can't tell you much about how they were born. I know, I know, I promised I'd remember and tell you, but the strange thing is, I can't. one minute the human was sitting talking to me on the floor. I wouldn't let her move a muscle. Every time she got up to try and organise things, I cried and cried for her till she had to sit back down with me again. Labour is scary. I knew I should be pushing, but I couldn't do it. I knew that something was wrong, but I couldn't tell anyone. I was terrified.





The human called the nice vet lady people who I don't like so much any more. She came to see me, and she had to check that I was dilating. Friends, do you know how they do that? They have to feel around inside your looloo! That's the polite term for it. The human tells me that's the word her family uses (they're weird) so that little kids won't come right out and talk about rude things in public.





Anyway, when the vet did this, I screamed my head off cuz I wasn't dilated and I can tell you something, it hurt. If it hadn't been the human's gentle, reassuring hands on my face, I'd have bit, but it's a mark of how far I've come that I only opened my mouth and screamed. When the human first got me, I'd have pulled no punches. Well, I wasn't dilated, and I was leaking out of my looloo too, and so they thought it best that I had something called a C Section. I don't know what this is, but when the vet lady people put me in a PTU and took me away, I was terrified! I was going with her, and my human wasn't coming! I can't tell you how scared that made me, but the vet lady people kept telling me it would be over quick and I'd be first on the list and wouldn't have to wait. First on what list?





When we got to the vet place, she took me into a room, out of the PTU and then... Well, then nothing. Blank. No memory. I came to a little later in a cage, and there were these three tiny little squeaking things beside me. I sniffed them. Smelled strange so I ignored them. I hurt. My yummy tummy was all sore, and even worse than that, they shaved all of my floof off! I was bald!





To cover the shame of that, I sat up so that only my floofy bits were on show. I started to clean the vet smell off of me, and then I felt something very, very strange. A small tugging was going on in my lower belly region, and you know, it felt uncomfortable and right all at the same time. I felt like I should lie down, so I did, but I don't know why. The tugging increased, and so did the squeaking from the moving things. Then a second gentle pulling started. In spite of myself, I felt my body relaxing. I looked down, and there were two of the little wrigglers, and they had their mouths around my nimples! That was what the tugging sensation was. I was too groggy to complain, so I just let them get on with it and wished that my human would come back and get me. I missed her so, so much.





She did eventually come back, and she took me home with her, but the white wrigglers came too. I wasn't too sure about this. They were kinda like mousies, and I know how upset my human was the last time there was a mousie in the house and I wouldn't kill it. I didn't want to kill these. I sorta liked them in a vague kind of way.





I was very gently placed in a soft bed when I got home. I was too tired to give thanks propperly, but I can do it now. Mom Trish sent the big, deep trays that my huan had lined with vetbed for me. Thank you, mom Trish! I watched in some fascination as the human very gently placed the wrigglers in with me, and made sure they were up against my yummy tummy. Strange. If they were mousies, she'd not have allowed them to get loose. But there seemed little danger of them running away. They didn't seem to be able to move propperly, and they all scrabbled at my yummy tummy as though searching for something.





"Those are your babies ,Tia," the human said some while later as she climbed into the pen with me where my bed was. She spent a lot of time cuddling my head, then fiddling around by my tummy. When she did, the tugging started again, and the squeaking stopped. She gave me a little mouse to cuddle under my chin, but I didn't know what to do with it, and anyway, it went wriggling back towards my tummy. I was just content to be home with the human.





Every time the little mousies squeaked, I felt an overwhelming urge to protect them. The only way I could think of to hide them was to lie on them, but this upset the human for some reason. She spent a lot of time soothing me, reassuring me that nobody wanted to take the little mousies away, and that I could keep them all to myself. Lots of times that day she reassured me, talked to me, cuddled me and told me that the tugging was ok and I needed to accept it. Eventually I felt calm enough to go to sleep with my head in the human's hand.





The human took us all to bed with her last night. She has another littler pen in there that she put us all into. I wasn't too bothered. I just wanted to sleep, but something about the mousies bothered me. I nudged one of them away from my yummy tummy and sniffed. It smelled like me now, and I didn't mind it as much . I gave it a friendly lick and it shrieked. I almost did too . I hadn't meant to hurt it! I stopped straight away, but when it stopped too, I decided to try again. The same thing happened, but now I knew I had to lick it all over. Maybe if I got rid of the last of the vet smell, the human would forget that the mousies came from the vets and I could keep them.





I washed all of my mousies all over from head to toe, but I didn't like it when yucky stuff came out of their back ends. I had to lick that all up cuz although it didn't smell like the vet, it didn't smell like me neither. I only washed them once, cuz I didn't want to have to do the cleaning chore again.





When the human looked in the pen this morning, she found me and three clean mousies. As she helped the biggest one to find a nimple to suck on, she told me again, "These are your babies, Tia". But I knew they weren't. My babies were stil inside me. I hadn't pushed them out. Still, if she was Ok with me adopting the mousies, then I was willing to give it a go.





For the next few hours, I pondered this strange phenomenon, but the more I looked at the mousies, the more I listened to them squeak, the more I wasn't sure. They sounded like kittens. now that they were clean, they even smelled like kittens. And there was the other fact that I couldn't feel my own kicking me any more. Could it be?





Friends, I'm still very confused about this all, but the human keeps telling me that yes, it could be, and in fact it is. She never lies to me, so I guess I'll have to believe her. She says the vet lady people cut a hole in my yummy tummy and took the babies out that way cuz I couldn't do it myself. Seems a bit weird to me though. I mean, they come out the same way they go in, or that's what my mummycat told me. But again I say that my human doesn't lie to me.





I have decided that they must be my babies, and I will adopt them and feed them. I have oodles of milk, but despite the fact that I have eight nimples, they all fight. If one is having a drink, the other two come and muscle in on them cuz they want some too. It's stupid cuz I have more than enough for three of them to have more than two each! But they all want the same one! The human says that she told you through Mom Trish that the girl mousie, ah, excuse me, kitten, was in a sack with pus in. Well, she's surviving superbly well and is gaining lotsa weight. She gained one and a half times normal daily weight yesterday, and is still vigorous today! The middle boy has gained loads too, but now your prayers are needed for the fattest mousie. he isn't gaining weight cuz he lets the others push him off the nimple too easily. He's a gentle little thing who seems to like snuggling and loving more than fighting, but he will need to fight if he's to survive. The human's friend expressed some of my milk for him yesterday so that he would get all my immunity, and she tube fed him this morning. The human will syringe him tonight with some extra milk if she feels that he hasn't gained again, but all day she's been fighting his battles, attaching him to a nimple and then keeping the others away for ten or fifteen minutes at a time so that he has a chance to get some mummy's milk instead of powdered stuff. We'll have to wait and see if it's enough though.





He got very cold today as well, so had to become what Mom Trish calls a booby baby. He got to cuddle down the human's top so that he could steal her heat and get warm enough to feed again. She says that they won't feed when they're cold, so it's really important. However, she's worried that all the handling is reducing my already fragile bond with the babies. I've been out of the nest three times today. Perhaps she's paranoid, cuz I usually go a few minutes after the babies start crying, but she says I'm either very relaxed and trusting, or not attached enough, as that is not normal behaviour. I do have a lot of cleaning to do though. I'm leaking icky stuff out my back end, and whenever I try to clean it in the pen, the babies scream at me cuz the milk bar has moved. I can't be dealing with it all the time. I have to have me time as well as baby time.





So, are there any of you that wouldn't mind babysitting for a bit? I could really do with the rest!





Now, I really must go off to the litter tray while these squealers are all asleep. Excuse me...