*Update* The kittens are doing better than I expected! They are the absolute cutest things ever, but they are a lot of work. They still require a bath each night and a sponge-bath after each feeding and when they poop. I haven't seen a flea on any of them since the second bath. I am bleaching everything they come in contact with to protect my family and older cats, and using the sanitary setting on my washer for their towels and bedding, in addition to adding a cup of bleach to the water. Three of the kittens are eating better than the fourth smaller one. He still eats more frequently, slower, and less than the others at one feeding, but he looks much healthier than he did. He is also harder to litter-box train: the others are going pretty regularly, but he still has an accident or two a day. I am ashamed to say how excited I was when they went to the litter box for the first time...I had to video a few seconds of it. My older cats are still distant, but improving. My 10-month-old cat is sniffing the kittens, and watching them play with each other from a distance. If they walk towards her she runs away, but she does not hiss at them at all. I think she is somewhat curios, and maybe thinking she might like to join them in play. My 1-year-old cat, Khloe, refuses to give in. She comes in to eat now that I moved her food out of the utility room where the kittens are, and she sometimes lets me rub her like I used to at night. Neither of my older cats are really lap cats; affection from them is solely at their discretion. The 10-month-old has been following me from room to room like a shadow for the last month, but doesn't need to be touching me in any way. I've gotten used to the routine and I miss that a little; I'm hoping she starts following me again soon.
Please make sure your older cats are up to date on their shots if they will be in close contact! I got two kittens from a rescue a few years ago. Even though they had had their shots, they were somehow still carrying calcivirus on their fur. It's a really dangerous disease for cats. Both my older cats caught it, and I spent $500 on the one that had such bad mouth ulcers that he couldn't eat or drink.
Thanks for reminding me of this virus, torinsmom. When I adopted Butterfinger last September, there was another kitten that buddied around with her, a beautiful tuxedo kitten we called "Cuddletux." Cuddletux was very friendly, unlike Butterfinger, so we started feeding her and intended to keep her. Khloe was very jealous, so luckily we gave Cuddletux her own bowls for food and water. She started getting sick within a week, and I put her outside on a Thursday evening to clean up where she had thrown up. I got my carrier down and put it together, and went outside to get her. We searched all night, and all the next day, and finally took our deck apart on Saturday morning to get her out. By then she was so dehydrated that the vet gave her a 50/50 chance for survival, and said a 24-hour IV drip may save her, but just as well may not. He gave her a shot of adrenalin, and she barely moved. His advice was to put her to sleep because she had diarrhea, roundworms, and the calicivirus. Treatment would have been in the hundreds of dollars with no guarantee. I still cry over that kitten and wonder if I made the right decision, but I had her put to sleep. Up to that point, I had owned ONE cat for 13 years that had passed away, and had recently decided to keep Khloe, the Russian Blue kitten that showed up hungry and wet on my deck a month after my cat had died. I felt I owed it to Khloe to put her health above my desire to save Cuddletux, but it was still a heartbreaking decision. When I got home and buried Cuddletux, I saw Butterfinger on my deck, obviously looking for her friend. I spent the rest of the weekend gaining her trust, and took her and Khloe to the vet Monday morning. Khloe had already been vaccinated for calicivirus, on the advice of the vet since she had been a stray, but was running a very slight temperature, so the doctor put her on a 5-day round of antibiotics as a preventive measure. Khloe was scheduled to be spayed soon so we wanted her well. Since Butterfinger was feral, he put her on antibiotics, too, and told me to bring her back in two weeks for the vaccination. He gave her worm medicine, and gave her another dose when I took her back 2 weeks later. Butterfinger also had earmites as well, so he gave her the first dose and sent the medicine home with me to finish. I took handouts about calicivirus to all my neighbors and found out that it had apparently claimed the lives of many pets as well as a great many of the feral cats. My nearest neighbors had moved in 3 weeks earlier, bringing 5 cats with them, so it's possible one of their cats introduced it to our neighborhood. It's also possible that the neighbors 5 houses away that never took care of their cats and allowed them to breed like bunnies were responsible. Regardless of where it came from, it is a highly contagious, deadly virus that I hope I never encounter again. Because of my experience with it in the past, I have been checking the mouths of the little kittens for ulcers and monitoring their eating to be sure there are no signs.
Hmmm.. I am surprised at your vets advice.
I was surprised that the vet would not do anything until they were 6 weeks old, too. However, I live in a rural area where a lot of people just don't spend a lot of time or money on smaller pets, and he is primarily a large-animal vet. But he was the only one that was available to talk to me immediately, and I do trust his advice. He is not my favorite, though. I use him for routine care for my cats(rabies shots and boosters)but I prefer another vet further away if I suspect a problem. The other vet is more of a "cat person" in my opinion, but he is a bit of a drive, and more expensive. I had them spay Butterfinger because I liked the individual attention they seemed to give her. The closer vet had spayed my first cat 13 years ago, and Khloe this past September and it just seemed "routine."
He did not go back to that vet for his shots or neutering. We found homes for 5 of the kittens and kept 3. We were able to trap the mother and have her spayed and vaccinated. She was too feral to be a family cat, so as soon as she recovered from her surgery and we opened the crate door she took off.
