Peekaboo! We’ve got kittens (again)!
When it came to choosing the moment to give birth, Mumu turned out to be the perfect mum-to-be. First of all, she didn’t keep us in suspense for long — day 64 after mating (with a textbook feline pregnancy lasting 63 days) is a very good result. Secondly, she kindly held off on labour until I had finished work, and only then, at regular intervals, gave birth to four kittens.
We thought that was the end of it. An ultrasound three weeks after mating had shown “four for sure, maybe five” kittens, and after tidying herself up, instead of acknowledging the seriousness of the postpartum period, the mother casually escaped the bedroom and began playing carefree games with the older kittens. So I calmly tidied up the bedroom, moved the kittens from the “working” birthing box into the enclosed nest where they will spend the next four weeks, and encouraged the queen to take an interest in her offspring.
At some point, I succeeded: Muriel graciously agreed to lie down and nurse them — but soon enough she chose freedom again and relocated to our bed. We lasted about half an hour like this, after which I decided once more to move her back to the kittens. And that’s when the surprise came: the chocolate-coloured quartet had turned into a quintet. The last kitten, still wet and with the umbilical cord intact, was already energetically crawling among its siblings.
And that wasn’t the end of the shocks! In the middle of the following night – roughly 30 hours after the first five had been born – I discovered kitten number six in the delivery room. That was a real bombshell: not only did the baby arrive after such a long interval (we had heard of situations like this before, but it was the first time it had happened to us), but we weren’t expecting it at all – after all, the ultrasound had shown five. Of course, I worried that our “latecomer” might struggle to catch up with siblings born a day and a half earlier, but those fears proved unfounded, as he’s doing really well.
Compared with our other cats, Muriel takes a rather unorthodox approach to kitten care. In the first day after giving birth, she wouldn’t exactly have ranked high in any Mother of the Year contest – but we know this phase all too well: a post‑partum, somewhat disoriented queen who shows limited interest in her babies and needs quite a bit of encouragement from us to stay with them usually doesn’t last long. What we didn’t expect, however, was for her to become a permanently “part‑time” mother. Some cat mothers hardly leave their kittens at all; others, even though they enjoy their alone time, rush back at the slightest squeak. For Muriel, caring for a litter is simply one of life’s tasks – important, yes, but certainly no more important than playing with the Naughty kids or lounging with them, as well as Koko and Gapa, on her favorite beds in the living room. The kittens are perfectly fine with their mother dividing her time between these three activities. Well fed and meticulously groomed during Mum’s visits, they spend much of the day sleeping alone in the delivery room. We’re fine with that too, as long as their weight gains show that all their vital needs are being met one hundred percent.
More info about the kittens will come soon!
