The three Rural Linn Colony bottle babes went to PAWS in West Linn. They are extremely adept with bottle babes and mom was not caring for them well and possibly has coccidia. PAWS gave me some Marquis Paste to give to the mother cat when I took them up and bought back the big canister of KMR I bought to feed them. I had not opened it. I'd also bought a can of liquid KMR which is what I used to feed them initially. I made both purchases when on the way home with them last Saturday after they were found in the barn behind the colony caretakers house. KMR is outlandishly expensive. When PAWS bought that can from me, I was thrilled. I used the money to put gas in my tank for the drive home. It was another long trip just to take them up there and then get home. But it was worth it to me.
There are two girls and one boy amongst the three. Again they were coated in their mother's dried poop. It's good they are gone from her. She has had stomach issues and while she would let them eat, she did nothing else for them, gave them no outward signs of love, like cleaning them and looked desperate to be away from them.
Heartland also had offered to take them, and I am very grateful for their offer, but in the end, because mom has parasites and the kittens likely do also, I chose PAWS because they specialize in bottle babe care. Thank you so much, Sharon, for taking them.
I gave the mom the Marquis Paste and she seems to be a little happier with the kittens gone. When her poop is normal she will go home to her cat family. She is very lonely for them.
When tiny kittens are found, it's hard to know what to do. In an already large colony, where it would be difficult to selectively trap them later on, if they survived, it is usually best to take them out and also take the mother, to care for them, if possible. But they'd been without their mom for three days already, so were in trouble. In such a case, you have to take them, or understand they'll likely die.
Now whether to keep them with a feral mom or not, that's a call one has to make. It can be a challenge to keep a feral mom happy for the time until they are weaned. Some do better than others. In this case, she wouldn't clean them and had diarrhea herself which got all over the kittens. I bathed them twice daily but could not keep up. Mom didn't feel good and although she'd let them eat, that was it. In the end, to up their survival chances, and considering the mom's loneliness, I made the decision to take them from her. It's not a easy thing to decide.
I got some updated photos of Bart, the former Millersburg stray now with his beloved saviors. He is an incredible mouser and can even smell them through the floor of the house. It still chokes me up to think how much he wanted them to take him home, from the fed feral colony he'd attached to, and how much he loves them for taking him home with them. Makes me want to cry every time!
Bart had been running with his nose to the floor of their house, so they knew there was a mouse under the house and set a trap. When they caught the mouse, Bart tried to run off with the mouse in the trap.
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