Day 37
Quiet morning, all feeding and litter refreshing actions went as planned. Wim played with the kittens while Mitsy was eating and checked to see if they wanted to eat, but got no takers. I went down 2 hours later to open the windows and smelled poop. I looked in the litter box and there was quite a heap of litter pellets there. I decided to just scoop it out, rather than refreshing the box again.
I was not sure what it was. I thought maybe kitten pee or kitten poop? It could be, now that their gastro-intestinal system is starting up. The wet food was emptied out, so I added some with fish for Mitsy, that went down fast as well. This morning we did not give her fish. It will have to remain a treat: it does not have enough nutrients by itself. We actually started giving it to her a while ago when she ate mostly kibble. We did not want her milk to dry up too fast and wanted to get her back on wet food as well. Well, that certainly worked. Wim said that she looked a bit disappointed this morning, when there was no fish. He mixed in some of the Purina that Suzi gets and then madame started to eat… What do you mean, the Queen is spoiled? Ya think!?
When she was eating I petted her back again. She always looks over her shoulder when I do that, it is something so unfamiliar to her. By now I am prepared for that and even though I am ready to pull back if she were to try and bite (which she has never tried) I left my hand there when she looked and repeated the pet. Just lightly. Success! I would love for her to head-butt me, but for now that is reserved for the kittens when we come out to feed.
I played with the kittens a little bit and took some pictures. I moved a lot of the toys into the Nest: not many kittens use that space and it becomes a bit crammed in the Ensuite because of all the play mouses and other toys. Might as well have them play in the Basement Nest. I then returned to my morning coffee. However, not before I checked out what I scooped out of the litter box. It turned out to be a heap of extremely stinky poop. Much more liquid than normal so I became curious who deposited it. When I checked the cat cam it turned out to be Mitsy!
Last night I chatted with my rescue contact at Ninth Life Cat Rescue Ontario about the kitten food and she said it would be fine to have just kibble at night for Mitsy; that would help firm up her poop if it got too soft. So I think that’s a good idea that we will go with. We gave her the new kitten/mother mousse yesterday and though she loved it as much as the kittens, it might be a bit too rich for her as the main food source. So we will keep mixing the rich food with the regular Purina cans and some fresh fish for variety.