A Miracle Kitten

It’s not the kitten in the foreground who is the miracle baby but the little one at the top of the picture.  There’s such a difference in size, the big kitten is approx. 5 weeks old, the teeny one is only a few days.  They both look to be doing alright, where’s the miracle then?   The tiny tot was rejected at birth by her mother who came in because she wouldn’t settle as a house cat.  Although mum has a nice temperament she is what we call a ‘run-around cat’ and always on the go.   Being a house pet wasn’t for her, she took to barn living straight away though and thought it was heaven.

What we didn’t know was that she was in kit.  She showed no signs and ran around with her pals just the same.  One morning there was a kitten on the floor in the hay and mom was growling and hissing at it.  We tried for a while to get her to accept the baby but she was having none of it.  Spaying is next on the agenda for this little lady.   What would we do about the kitten?  Trying to rear one so tiny is very difficult.   All we could think of was that we had another cat with lots of milk.  She had older well established kittens though.  Would Twinkle accept another baby?

Usually mommy cats don’t like the smell of a newcomer so we made sure to get the scent of her and her own kittens on the baby.  We squeezed a few drops of milk onto the kittens head, she was crying pitifully and then held the baby out to Twinkle – would she hiss?  Swipe at it?  Reject it straight away?   No, Twinkle is a loving mother, she took one look and said ‘My Baby’ come here and started licking.  Then she rolled so she could feed and nudged the baby to her tummy.

The three other kittens, who, although still small are so much bigger, all helped with the nursing and snuggled round the little one to keep her warm.  It was a good start.   Even so it seemed that it would have to be a miracle for this minute scrap of life to feed and hang on.

She’s so tiny but she wants to live, she’s a survivor and Twinks loves her just as much as her own kits.  The kitten is doing well, nursing all the time and with a little tummy full of milk.  We didn’t expect her to survive, the odds were all against her but a miracle is just what came.