Totally Demoralised

Wow, what a couple of days I've had!

I didn't write yesterday because I felt so demoralised that it would
have just been a total rant. While I want to give you the negatives of
kitten raising as well as all the cute, fluffy kitteny bits, I don't
think it's fair to subject you to my ranting for the sake of it, and
that's what it would have been.

Yesterday, I cleaned the pen loads of times yet again. In the end, I
took all of the inco pads out and just left 1 square of Vetbed. It
took Millie a whole 2 hours to work out what she could do next.

She took up residence in the litter tray. Ok, that's fairly innocuous,
right? Wrong. When you've got five eating, pooing machines who have
suddenly worked out just how to poo, and when you have a mum intent on
not only blocking the toilet, but teaching them to regard it as a bed
and a cuddle spot, well, that's a problem! Add to that that I had put
some of Millie's poo in the tray to try and encourage kittens to poo
there through smell association, and you'll see that the problem is
even larger!

Millie didn't care. When I caught her trying to suckle the kittens in
the tray, I'd had enough and almost lost my rag. She was pulled out
and cleaned up which resulted in a bath which then resulted in unhappy
kittens as mum didn't smell like mum any more, and a stressed mum
because the kittens were unhappy.

This morning I thought I was back on track. Yes there were various
poos dotted artistically around the pen, but there were also two poos
and a wee in a litter tray! I put in a tiny one yesterday so that
Millie couldn't block them all off at once. When it came to feeding
time, Stripe and Apache only needed the most minimal of coaxings
before they were eating from the dish. Everyone except Berry had a
little nibble. Then the fun started.

In my tiredness I went to serve up food for Millie. I give her dry as
well as wet as she's a dry fanatic and I'd rather see her eat while
she's suckling than force the wet issue. I needed to open a new bag of
food. Now, I have small bags here of Royal Canin for kitten owners to
try, but I don't feed mine on it any more as I found that they were
prone to getting the runs on it. Guess what I put in Millie's bowl
this morning by accident?

The runs started about 2 hours ago, and they're spectacular. She's
already had another bath, and I suspect that there'll be another to
come some time in the wee hours.

Since this morning, not one kitten has toiletted in the litter tray,
and every single one of them has done it all over the pen. Someone
also thinks it's a good idea to use the Vetbed as a wee spot, and it
was literally dripping when I took it out earlier. And it only went in
clean this morning! I'm so glad the heating pad underneath is
waterproof. Of course, they all happily lay down to sleep in the pee
puddle.

There's only so much you can do with a flannel, and to be honest, I'm
not too comfy with bathing them at this very young age as they chill
so easily. At the moment, I'm hoping like crazy that Millie will clean
them up, otherwise the bath it'll have to be. I'm planning to change
their food to raw tomorrow in an effort to firm up their poos as they
are still the same consistency as the first poo they always do, i.e, a
little gloopy.

Stripey now squeals constantly whenever she hears you in the room. It
just goes on and on and on and on unless she's eating or sleeping.
She's bright and playful so I'm not worried that there's something
wrong, but she's so desperate for human attention, and it really is a
very loud cry!

To be very honest, as I promised I would be, there's no pleasure in
these kittens at the moment. I know this phase will pass, and when it
does, I'll know that it's all worthwhile again, but at the moment, I'm
at a very, very low point and wondering why I breed just to give
others a nice pet. I'm very, very glad that Tia didn't take when I
studded her, as I'm not sure I could have managed 2 litters going
through this stage at the same time. Really, I think it's because this
pen is so flaming small. Can't wait to get my bigger one.

Anyway, that's all for now. Hopefully I'll be a bit more cheerful tomorrow!