Lola gave birth to seven big, beautiful kittens today. She was two days late, but maybe extra-big kittens need more time to bake in the uterus.
As it happens with these things, Lola was showing no signs of going into labor this morning so we left the room for half an hour. When we came back to check on her she had popped out the first two kittens. The smart girl did it in the nest and everything. Maybe she wanted some privacy.
We’re keeping a close eye on the seventh kitten. He (she?) was slow to start moving at first and had trouble finding the nip. With stimulation and supplemental feeding Number Seven is getting progressively stronger and more active. We’re cautiously optimistic.
Buster was in the next room meowing as if to say, “Hey, I had something to do with this, too!”
All of these kittens are reserved.
Yeah, Lola isn’t going make getting these pictures easy just yet.
Update 8/5:
The seventh kitten is doing very well. He/she is active and nursing and putting on lots of weight. Unfortunately, one of the other kittens unexpectedly passed away a few hours after birth. All of the other kittens are doing well. As always we’re weighing them twice a day and checking on them regularly to make sure they are progressing normally.
It’s hard to tell gender at this age by looking at their nether regions, but we can make some initial determinations because of color and all the genetics behind it.
The red and white kitten is a boy.
The three torbies are girls.
The black and white kittens are TBD. One of them has a white chin with a little black goatee in the middle (hipster kitten!) so we hope it’s a boy (but who says girl’s can’t have goatees if they want to?).
Chunky monkeys