Friday, May 25, 2007 , terribly early in the morning

Nine weeks!  Nine!

My little kittens are now nine weeks old!  I don’t know what happened to eight weeks, but I guess I missed it.  Please don’t assume that my silence about Carlo and Bunny is a sign of lack of love or lack of interest.  I adore them, but Carlo’s continued bowel problems mean that their care is extremely time-consuming, and between that and having a lot of freelance work to do, I just haven’t found time for photos.  I do have at least three structured playtimes with them every day, but I’m often too exhausted to get the camera.  Luckily, Flippy was feeling artistic today, and she took a ton of photos.  Here are their grown-up portraits:

carlo_9_weeks

bunny_9_weeks

As I mentioned in a post a few days ago, I’ve thought since they were a day old that a specific person was going to adopt them.  That person has backed out, and doesn’t want Carlo if he has health problems.  As I don’t have that luxury (not that I’d exercise it), I’m persevering with the adorable fellow but he’s not making progress.  He’s a normal kitten except that he’s small, and he has bowel problems.  More graphically, his stools have always been soft, they’re abnormally frequent, and they seem to be associated with cramping and gas.  He’s been on every dewormer in the universe with no results.  Metronidazole didn’t work.  He’s now been on sucralfate for a week for “IBD”, and it hasn’t helped either, except that his stools are no longer “puddles”, but are more like “soft serve”.  Besides his obvious discomfort, he’s stopped using the litterbox for 90% of his bowel movements, and that really concerns me.  I’ve kept him confined to an area with a linoleum floor, and every.single.morning I have to get down on my hands and knees to scrub the entire floor with bleach and water.  I then do it all over again two or three more times each day, which is why I’m lacking for time to take pictures!  I’ve kept him on the same food since he started solids, so I guess he could have a food sensitivity, but he’s one of my rare foster kittens who didn’t have constipation problems.  He’s been a diarrhea kind of guy since he was born.  In contrast, Bunny is a litterbox champ.  At least Carlo pees in the litterbox all the time, so that’s one potential problem which didn’t happen.  Still, can you imagine trying to find someone to adopt him in his present state?

I need to call the vet’s office to report that sucralfate hasn’t worked.  I also need to call to order Eli’s eye meds, as mentioned below.  Both kittens need their first set of shots, too.  They still haven’t been tested for FIV/FeLV, and Carlo hasn’t had any liver function tests performed, but I was advised to hold off on that until the kittens were twelve weeks old.

These photos show just how mature they’ve become.  They’re ready to march out into the world to slay dragons together, but so far, only Carlo has ventured out by climbing the confinement gate, and he only made it as far as the livingroom.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 05/25 at 06:16 AM
The Litterbox • (10) Comments • Permalink
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