A Mom Named Natalie

Look what I made!

It's been quite some time since I (or I should say my parents) have fostered a group of kittens. By quite some time, I mean about a month or so really, but that's a long time if you ask any foster parent. When I moved out of my parent's house I immediately took over my old room as a foster room, much to my mom's dismay (she wanted her sewing room back, but who can turn down kittens?). So when a skinny, runty little momma came in with five of the fattest babies I'd ever seen, I knew I had to jump on the chance to care for them.

Seriously, these kittens are FAT.

Since this is the first group I've taken since I started this blog, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to show everyone the steps of kitten hood. These pictures were actually taken over a week ago, and the kittens are now open-eyed and wobble crawling all around the carrier. In these pictures they are, in fact, five days old, which even one of our most experienced fosters couldn't believe. They weighed half a pound and had fat little heads. For comparison, most kittens come out with a birth weight of 2-4 oz. These guys were 8oz. five days in and are only getting bigger. I only wish I could bottle some of Natalie's milk because she must have some magic going on in there!

Smooch.

Natalie is a fantastic mom too. Many people don't realize that being a mother isn't always the most natural thing, especially the younger a cat is. Natalie is a young momma- just around a year if not under, and I've seen so many teenage moms ignore, smother, or downright attack their own babies. They don't know what to do, have no interest in being a mom, and are often careless with their babies. Natalie, however, feeds them diligently and one day when our big cat jumped in the room by mistake she ran out of that carrier so fast she scared the heck out of him. She went right into defense mode. It helped that Bacardi is a huge coward anyway though.

Mine!

Over the next eight weeks I will keep everyone posted on how the group is progressing, and hopefully have some wonderful adoption stories to share by the end!

Happy Tails!


Update on Aubie: Remember Aubie, the little orange tiger named for Auburn after they won the BCS championship? Well, the Huntsville newspaper in Alabama ran a story on our humble shelter and the woman who adopted him, who is not only from Alabama but is a major Ducks fan!! She's named him Oliver, thank goodness. Happy dance!

Once again, thank you Nancy for the awesome pictures of Natalie and her muffins.