Sprinkles' Babies at 3 Weeks

I cut the door in the birthing box all the way to the floor yesterday so everybody can get out, walk around and build their muscles.  Litter box training also started.  That's their little box on the right.  I found them at Walmart for a few dollars and bought four.  They're perfect for the babies.

The babies are getting bigger and drinking more milk, and Sprinkles has been spending more and more time outside the birthing box lately.  She'll go in the box to nurse, then come out and lay on the floor.  She's been a very quiet cat, but I swear that when I was cutting the door open yesterday she was squawking at me.  I really think she was wondering what the hell I was doing.  Why was I letting her babies out and how was she going to have any peace and quiet, now?!  Her expression was something like this one.  In order to give her some breathing space, I used a box to block off the doorway so she can easily jump over it and be in the bedroom.  She likes to lay on the bed and look out the window.

 This is a pile of gray kittens.  Five are in the bed.  All have different colored Velcro collars so I can tell them apart when I weight them every morning.  It's also good to know who's the friendly one, who's using the litter box, who's more playful, stuff like that.  That's hard to do with 6 gray kittens.  Sprinkles has been the best mom.  Her babies are all at or above average weight for their age, and all have nice, full bellies.

There is now officially more kitten weight than mama weight.  The kittens are all a pound or slightly more, and mama weighs about 5.5 pounds.  She's so small, but she obviously is producing enough milk for all six babies.  I do give her at least 4 small cans of Fancy Feast a day, plus 1/3 c of formula and as much dry food as she wants.  And she's not getting fat. 


 
Mom was laying on the bed, so I got two kittens and tried to get some good photo ops.  Not everyone cooperated, but little Orange got a hug, and Blue managed to not fall off the bed.