Newborn Kittens aka the Bird Kittens Week One

Описание: Full transcript:
I just started fostering newborn kittens!

I heard about them the day they were born, and visited them when they were one day old. I named the mother “Dove”. She’s a stray who gave birth in the backyard of a pensioner couple. She’s an excellent mother who stays very close to the kittens.

Felicity (live): So I want to call the stripy one “Turtle”, because she falls on her back and can’t get up. And because she was slow to come out too.

Pensioner: Yeah, she’s real bossy with the feeding.

Felicity: Yeah?

Pensioner: She tries to kick another kitten out so she can have it.

Felicity: [laughter]

Pensioner: It’s pretty funny.

Felicity: Yeah! They start fighting each other right away, don’t they?

Pensioner: Yeah. See? Look at her! Her, him?

Felicity: Who knows, at this age? It’s really hard to tell their gender.

Felicity (voiceover): Dove was so friendly she let me pick up her kittens, which is usually not recommended… but I think it’s okay in this case.

The day after that, I took them to my home and my quarantine room. Unfortunately, one of them had died during the night. This is very common for young kittens.

I keep the quarantine room at about thirty degrees at the moment, as per recommendations, so it’s very hot in there. I was concerned at what looked like panting, so I did some small supplementary feeds. I was also concerned about Dove, who didn’t eat or drink for the first day or so in the new environment.

The tabby is “Turtledove”. The smallest is “Sparrow”, and then there’s “Bluebird” (or “Bluey”) and Goose. I cut little patches of fur on Goose and Bluey. You can see there’s a patch missing on the kitten on the right—on their back—that’s Bluey. Goose has a little bit cut off his head, just behind the ears.

It’s important to be able to tell them apart, because I weigh them twice a day, to check that they’re gaining weight as they should. They gain about 10 grams a day. The weight is one of the easiest ways for a human to tell if something is wrong.

As you can see they’re very wobbly.

I think Sparrow is a girl, and Turtle and Bluebird are boys. Goose… I’m not sure. It could be either. Not that I’m sure about any of them!

Felicity (live): This is Turtle, the tabby.

Felicity’s daughter: Oh, cutey cute.

Felicity (voiceover): Turtle actually spat at me once, which is very developmentally impressive. He also grunts sometimes, when he feeds, for happiness.

I was trying to get some footage of them hissing, but they got used to my smell and stopped hissing. However, then their hearing developed so they’d hiss at the sound of the bathroom door opening. So let’s see… there’s a little bit of hissing coming up.

[Whispers] There it is!

This is Kookaburra, who’s from a previous litter. She is at least four months old—so, old enough to get pregnant herself—so of course I took her too. She’s quite scared but doing well.