We have 3 barn cats, Annie Oakley, our orange calico, Darlin’ Clementine and Calamity Jane…I can’t tell these last 2 apart so they are basically known as “Kitty”. We started with 4, but Wild Bill, our
orange cat, was killed, not in a card game 🙂 but by our overenthusiastic Huskador, Blue, who wanted to play but sadly didn’t know how big he really was.
About 2 weeks ago I started to notice that the 2 Kitties were looking pretty large around the middle, like 2 butterball turkeys. It became quite obvious that they had both been playing fast and loose with an unknown male, and were with kittens as it were.
So on Wednesday morning when I went down to the barn to feed the alpacas, I found that one of the girls had given birth to 6 new babies! I have little experience with cats and none with new births, so this was quite exciting to me. Mom had already cleaned them up and they were feeding voraciously.
Later in the day I noticed that she had something protruding from her vulva and assumed it was either a prolapsed uterus or placenta. I wanted to give it some time to see what happened and when I went to check on her in the afternoon, I found that the other Kitty had given birth to 4 babies which by the next morning turned in to 6. Talk about having my hands full….
But back to Kitty with the protrusion…After checking on the 4 new ones, I went to see how the “protrusion” was looking and found 2 legs sticking out of mom…not good. Called the vet and it was decided I should pull the unborn kitten out. He suggested she may not be too happy with this procedure and to “wrap her up like a burrito in a towel” if needed. Well, the baby was in there like a swollen cork in a wine bottle and after some gentle pulling and Kitty not being very happy about this, I was able to give it one long firm pull and out it came, breached and dead. I am sure mom’s scream could have been heard 2 counties away but she quickly settled down and went back to sleep, none the worse for the ordeal.