Sunny and the Kittens Update!

Wednesday March 12th, 2025

Tags: cat, life, mental illness, personal, photos

(previously...)

We had no idea what we were getting into when the vet said we would need to feed the kittens ourselves. I thought I heard him say they would need feeding every 4 hours, and maybe that was wishful thinking on my part, or maybe he was trying to soften the blow, but it's more like every 2 hours. Kittens need to eat a lot, and they vehemently don't want to be fed from anything but a mama cat. They will squirm and struggle and fight you every step of the way. They will also scream their adorable little heads off. There's no way to hold them that gives me access to their mouths without feeling like I'm torturing them. Holding them by the scruff of the neck helps calm them down, that's a natural way their mom carries them, but you can't feed them like that. You have to just try to hold them as still as possible and get the tube into their tiny screaming maws.

Despair

The first few times I tried to feed them, I melted down afterwards. I was barely able to get any food in them, and several parts of the process triggered the sensory sensitivities that go along with my ADHD or autism or secret third thing. I'm particularly sensitive to high-pitched repetitive noises, which is unfortunately exactly the kinds of noises kittens make. At this point, Sunny was also completely freaking out, understandably so. She just got back from being separated from her kittens at the vet and didn't understand why she couldn't nurse them. She never got violent, but was scrambling and desperately trying to get to them. It was heartbreaking to see, and her anxiety rubbed off on me.

Feeding all 5 kittens an adequate amount of food, helping them pee, trying to help them poop and getting them comfortable again takes, if you're lucky, about 90 minutes. I mentioned that they need feeding about every 2 hours. I'll save you from doing the math: that leaves approximately fuck all time to do anything else. My spouse did most of the actual feeding, and I do not know how. She's a superhero. Her dedication to caring for the babies was astonishing. I was mostly providing support: mixing formula, cleaning syringes, keeping us fed, trying to calm Sunny and keep up with the usual household chores as well as I could, and even that exhausted me.

I felt bad that she had to deal with my meltdowns when I tried to help. I felt awful that the kittens had to go hours between meals when our bodies demanded rest. I felt terrible about how scared and traumatized they must be. I felt shame at my failure, my inability to cope. I questioned several times whether we were doing a terrible thing, whether it would have been better for the kittens to have them painlessly put to sleep. And I felt like a monster for even considering that possibility.

A Lifeline

On Monday, in desperation, I posted in the mutual aid channel of a local community group asking if anyone could help, or knew anyone who could. I got several recommendations for a shelter who would be able to take the kittens and quickly find them homes with people who had nursing cats. I was so afraid to reach out to shelters, because I know how overwhelmed they are, how few resources there are to go around, and how big of an ask it would be to take such vulnerable animals that require constant care. I didn't know placing them with other mama cats was a possibility, and I started to feel hopeful.

I sent them an email because I was a little too emotional to communicate effectively in a phone call. Thankfully, someone got back to me very quickly and said they could help. They asked if we could take care of the kittens for one more night, and someone could come get them the next morning. I said we could. A ton of stress melted away and I immediately felt like a decent human again, knowing that rescue was in sight and they would be taken care of.

OneTwo Last Meals

When I got home, I helped my spouse feed them two more times before we had to sleep. By now, Sunny had started to understand that we were taking care of her kittens and wasn't so freaked out the whole time. We had to keep an eye on her and keep the cat carrier securely zipped, because she would stick her head in and try to run off with one if the opportunity presented itself, but mostly she was comfortable lying on the bed and observing. That's an incredible amount of trust for an animal to place in us, and we knew we had to do right by her.

With the imminent rescue and a calm Sunny, feeding the kittens was a lot easier. They were still screaming their heads off, but now that they're a week old, they're starting to catch on little better. After so much struggle, seeing a kitten latch on and start hungrily sucking the formula out of the syringe¹ was magical. I felt like a super genius cat whisperer when I got it to happen.

One thing that really helped, and this is going to sound inane, was me and Izzy talking to the kittens in baby talk and giving them cute nicknames.² Anyone looking on would've been convinced we were babbling lunatics, but I didn't care. It helped keep our morale up, and made what we were doing feel more normal. We celebrated the little victories together: boasting about how much the kitties ate and celebrating whenever we got them to urinate.³

After the last feeding, I barely cried at all, and it was mostly tears of relief and happiness. I was glad we were getting them to eat and proud of us for working so well together. But there was a little bit of regret, too. There was a part of me that was so pleased with our success, I thought "maybe we can really do this."

But I knew that wouldn't be fair to the kittens. Our success wasn't sustainable. There's no way we could give them all the care they needed for the next 3 or 4 weeks until they could wean. We'd need to go out for doctor appointments and supplies. It wouldn't be fair to make the kitties go hungry for hours while our bodies needed to rest. Neither one of us has the constitution for waking up every few hours in the night to feed them.⁴ Maybe if I didn't have to go to work, and we could watch them in shifts, we might've been able to take care of them...

But then we would've had to find homes for them, anyway. There's no way we could have that many full-grown cats around the apartment: we're barely allowed to have Sunny, and that's only because Izzy got a letter from her doctor stating that a cat would be good for her mental health. Our plan was to keep the kittens until they were done nursing and then find homes for them; circumstances just sped this process up. It would've been even harder to let the kittens go after that much more time raising them.

Rescue

I made the hand-off on Tuesday at around noon. Izzy had one of those aforementioned unavoidable doctor appointments: she had already rescheduled and been waiting since November, so she couldn't cancel or reschedule it again. So I offered to come home on my lunch break for the hand-off. It wasn't a big deal, I usually eat while I work and spend my lunch break doing something else anyway, and the shelter is about 20 minutes away, so the timing worked out well.

I brought the kittens out in a transparent plastic tote lined with soft towels. The kittens were mewing up a storm, and I explained that they were cranky from having not been fed since early that morning, but they were strong and healthy. Mr. Chonkers was trying with all his might to break out of kitten jail and the rest of them were anxiously crawling around. I showed her which kitten was the runt and explained that he had the most trouble eating, and would probably need a little extra attention. I offered our remaining can of kitten formula if it would be useful to them, which she accepted. And they were off to new homes and a better life.

It's hard not to feel a little bit like a failure for needing the shelter to rescue them, but I'm trying to tell myself we did the right thing. The person from the shelter who picked them up was very nice, but did tell us to bring Sunny in to be spayed when she was well enough "so this doesn't happen again." I thought it sounded a little judgmental, but she didn't know Sunny was already pregnant when we brought her in, so I tried not to take it personally.

Before heading back to work I spent a little time with Sunny. I figured she'd be sad when she realized what happened and I wanted to help her feel less lonely. It made me a little late getting back to the office, but whatever. I unzipped the cat carrier where the kittens were living and left it open so she could explore it. I figured it'd be easier for her in the long run than trying to hide it.

Now

When Izzy got back from her appointment, Sunny was in the carrier. She was visibly upset. She can't meow; we don't know if it's a physical issue from an injury or a condition she was born with, or part of her personality. She opens her mouth but no sound comes out, or it's a barely audible squeak that reminds me a bit of a cooing dove. She'll occasionally look at the carrier and meow silently. It breaks our hearts.

But she's recovering well from her illness, and she's more loving and cuddly than ever. When she was pregnant and nursing, she could be a bit standoffish—understandably! She would sit in my lap purring happily until my legs fell asleep, but she also needed time to herself, which we gave her. It made us a little sad to see her sitting by herself on the stairs, but she had been through a lot. She also seemed hesitant to get on our bed, despite our encouragement, and would usually sit in my chair or her cat cave while we were sleeping.

Also, at first, she strongly preferred me over my spouse. She wouldn't let Izzy pet her for as long, and wouldn't stay in her lap. I chalked it up to me just having a bigger lap that was more comfortable to sit in with all the babies inside her, but I worried that she wouldn't warm up to Izzy once the babies came.

Well, I had nothing to worry about. Unless she's eating or pooping, she's pretty much always in one of our laps or by our side. She sleeps with us all night and helps make sure Izzy's toes stay warm. She'll cuddle up and gently place her paws on us, a gesture so sweet we might literally die.

I think she knows on some level that we helped her get better when she was sick and took care of her babies. I think she's grateful to us. We're grateful to her too.

The Future

We followed up with the regular vet after her emergency stay, and they gave us some medicine. She's been taking it like a champ and forgives us every time. We've been lucky enough to afford all of her care so far—this happened shortly after getting our tax refund, so we had a buffer⁵—but being a former stray, she has the potential for a lot of health problems and I feel dumb for not anticipating this. She seems to be recovering well, and her appetite is back with a vengeance. We have another follow-up with the vet scheduled, but that might need to wait until the next paycheck. She seems fine, but the uncertainty sucks, and I wish we were rich so we could afford whatever care she might need for anything that might come up. But whatever happens, we're going to love her as much as possible and give her the best life we can. What else can we do?

When we were still expecting kittens to start popping out at any moment, Izzy wrote "The Final Countdown!!!"⁶ on one of the fridge whiteboards. We hadn't thought of a suitable replacement, and once the kittens were gone, it felt a little more lonely in the apartment. So, not really knowing how to accurately represent a black cat on a white board, I nevertheless gave it my best shot:

"Is that supposed to be me? 😒"

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