And Whiskers on Kittens

Last updated on August 17, 2025

Oh, gods, so many kittens…

Daniel’s attendant had this little problem. Her outside cat had a litter, but Momma Cat was, shall we say, less than maternal. The kittens weren’t being looked after, and the runt was full-on rejected. It had been five days of forcing the mum to let the runt nurse, but it was clear that this wasn’t going to be enough.

They brought us the runt on Thursday, a mottled, messy gremlin of a kitten with fierce little murder mittens. I started out calling her “Short Stack” because that’s just what you call kids around here, but then I asked her her name, and she told me.

She is Meep the Merciless.

The kittens were born mid-July, so they are only just now four weeks old. That means that, depending on the quality of their mum, they may or may not be ready to wean. Meep was definitely not ready, but she also couldn’t quite figure out the bottle. She still has her milk teeth, and she does try to latch, but it’s a challenge.

At four weeks of age, kittens should, on the average, weigh about 500 grams. Meep’s first weigh-in was 279 grams. Not unsurprising for a runt, but she is as mighty as she is tiny, and we went about getting all the things we needed to beef her up – KMR kitten formula, high-calorie food, lots of toys.

The next morning, the attendant sent me pictures of the aftermath of just how bad off the Momma Cat was mentally and physically, and the total number of kittens was reduced by one.

Understandably, the attendant was a little freaked out and took the other kittens away from the Momma Cat, but she (the attendant) doesn’t have the manpower or resources to take care of a litter of newborn kittens – not after her own daughter gave birth to a whole human only a week after the kittens arrived. So, I hopped over there, used a little dish soap (you know the one, don’t make me say it) to clean off oh my god so many goddamned fleas, and took them back to reunite with their sister.

The attendant, not being thoroughly versed in feline anatomy, told me they were all girls.

This was 100% incorrect.

The Boys Are Back In Town

Every last one of the remaining kittens has a pair of trouble puffs waiting to descend.

Plus, Meep is clearly a girl because tortoiseshell calico and at least two of the others are boys because orange tabby.

Fun Fact: Calicoes in general and torties in particular are almost always female because the color of coat trait is expressed by the X chromosome. When two zygotes meet and the mother (X chromosome) has a calico-or-orange trait, the gender determined by the father says which way it’ll go: XX genes are calico, XY genes are orange (broadly speaking). About 1 in 3,000 calicoes are born male, but with the mutation giving them XXY genes, only 1 in 10,000 are fertile. Similarly, female orange tabbies are rare but not unheard of, and probably more common than male calicoes because there is slightly more of a chance of a male passing on an X chromosome with the orange trait; they guess that about 20% of orange tabbies are female. They are only slightly more likely to have fertility issues than their non-orange counterparts, though, especially compared to male calicoes.

The rest of the crew has also earned their names:

Jelly Roll is a white-and-orange marmalade whose first weigh-in was only 327 grams – better than Meep but still nowhere near where he needed to be. We started off just calling him Jelly because marmalade but also he absolutely must have a taste of whatever anyone else is having. He totally has FOMO bad. And then he earned the last name Roll because, well, he’s not real steady. He wants desperately to eat food, but he’s stuck in “suckle mode”, which means clearly out his nose a lot. And he just falls over. It’s hilarious and adorable.

Ron Purrlman is a full orange tabby, and man, is he a FULL orange tabby! He’s incredibly curious, exploratory, fusses the loudest, leaps the “highest”, and has already been voted Most Likely To Escape And End Up Someplace Really Weird. He clocked in at 345 grams on intake, and he pretends to eat like a champ, but those milk teeth are still very much present. He’s tried to breathe in the solid food twice now, so he’s also nominated for Most Likely To Aspirate On Tuna.

Lastly, Walker Notaranger is completely white (so far) and was clearly the favorite of the litter before the Gruesome Discovery. He came in at 362 grams, and we can’t quite tell if he’s a little touched in the head or if he’s the wisest of them all. He hangs back from his siblings and kind of lets them do all the exploring, and then he saunters over once he’s watched them for a little while. When he eats, he does okay with the bottle, but he loves the wet food… but he also consistently tries to eat the bowl. Redirection does not seem to sway his determination.

Oh NO YOU DI’NT!!

We get the boys arranged, get everyone fed, and all the kits are running around trying to escape explore their new surroundings, but I noticed that Meep wasn’t really doing much. I mean, I get it, hanging out with a bunch of boys wipes me out, too, but this was… not great. She was breathing really fast, and when I checked her pulse, it was way over 180 bpm.

And, when I picked her up, her head flopped around. Zero tone, no strength.

Well… we knew there was always a higher chance of losing the runt – we can’t be sure we can make up the deficits from early-life neglect – but I’m also not satisfied with just shrugging and letting her go. Her heart was still beating, she was still breathing, and her pupils were reactive to light. And, if I messed with her butt enough, she’d let out a plaintive little mew and tell me to quit it.

So, there’s still a little fight in there, eh? Good.

I took her to the 24-hour animal emergency hospital – the same place we had to take Tank three years ago – and they were amazing. They checked her over to make sure there wasn’t anything obviously wrong, gave her some fluids, ran some tests, and by the end of it, she was back to her feisty self, loudly protesting the indignities of their ministrations. (But, now she qualifies as an Expensive Pet, so good luck prying her from my very-alive-and-hanging-on hands.)

Fate of the Momma

We found out yesterday morning that the Momma Cat was worse off than we originally thought. I’d seen her, checked her over, and she was clearly unhealthy, real thin, which makes sense if she was stressed out from the pregnancy and undernourished from hiding from her humans. But, she also seemed very lethargic and resigned, letting me handle her without fighting or resisting even a little, and she doesn’t know me at all.

The family took her in and they found that she had a cancerous tumor in her abdomen roughly the size of a lemon (which is a big deal for a small cat). Rather than prolong her suffering, they escorted her over the Bridge. Everyone over there is devastated, but they all know it was the kind and merciful thing to do.

And this, gentle reader, is why you need to spay and neuter your goddamned cats, especially if they’re outside cats, but they really shouldn’t be outside because they are an invasive, murderous species that upsets the natural balance of things. I am not opinionated about this in any way, these are just objective facts.

I could go on another whole rant about the flea control and vaccinations and regular checkups, but I won’t. I haven’t been perfect about this, but that means I’ve learned some of these lessons the hard way.

We live so much longer than dogs and cats, and while that may seem to justify having a cavalier attitude towards their lives because they’re in ours for such a short time, we are often there for their entire lives. Any of us could easily oversee six to ten generations of cats in our own adult lifetimes. Like that one Tumblr meme says, we are to dogs and cats as Tolkein elves might be to us: eternal, everlasting, constant.

It’s easy to undervalue a brief non-human life. So how about don’t.