Saturday, April 19, 2008

new talents!

Darby's talents rely on his ability to be cute and show off his adorable striped belly while simultaneously attacking the other kitties and chewing on their ears!!

Mabel's talents include her strong voice and love of lying on her back and having you rub her belly.
Roosevelt has been our leader in starting new things like for instance, he was the first to use the litter box and the first to play with toys. He is our most photogenic kitty.... or at least, he is the one that will hold still the longest to get his picture taken.
Gizmo and Gadget have been hard to photograph. I am going to work hard this week on that. Gadget is much bigger than Gizmo and we are not having problems telling them part anymore.
We are very fond of Gizmo because he has become a real snuggler this week. You can often find him resting on my shoe while I am helping another kitty, patiently waiting his turn. Gadget was the first to lap formula from the lid rather than a bottle. He is the biggest but very gentle.
Any advice on getting kitties off the bottle and into soft food would be appreciated. We are mixing soft can food with formula and they will eat it if you put it to their mouths but no one
(except Gadget) will eat off the lid yet. This process has led to many baths. I will put those fun photos up next!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Try smearing a little of the formula/food mixture on their faces near their mouths. Kittens hate having a messy mouth and will clean themselves up and get the idea that the food is good at the same time. Let us know how that works for you. It saved one of my itty bitties many years ago.

HoosierKitty said...

Sometimes they will eat dry kitten chow when they seem MUCH too tiny to do so. I soak kitten chow in formula so that it is soft. Some of them like that. It's always a messy proposition though! Good luck, they look lovely and healthy.
(Last spring at this time I had 9 bottle babies to feed all by myself) Enjoy them!

Anonymous said...

I hate to tell you, but this will be their messiest time. Stimulating them to use the bathroom was nothing compared to weaning them. We did have a few kittens who refused the formula/food mush until we added so much formula it was mostly liquid. Then we slowly added more and more food until they were actually chewing instead of drinking it.
And watch their weight carefully at this point! We had one kitten not take well to this and we spotted it in time to put her back on the bottle for a few days.

Jenni said...

We first had our itty bitties drink the formula off of plates/bowls before going to solid foods. They will let you know when they are ready. Similar to human babes, when the formula is just not enough, try to ease some moist kitten food on a plate. Are they lapping up the formula on their own yet?