Joy and Her Very First Litter

I thought Joy would be able to become a great mom as she would have been 19 months old when she gave birth to her kittens, but it was completely wrong.

She'd been acting such a kid during pregnancy - didn't really care about the change in her body and kept on running around, playing hide and seek with other cats, jumping up and down the high rise condo, and other activities which made us worried that those would lead up to miscarriage. Well, thank God that didn't happen - the pregnancy finally reached 55 days and I took her for an x-ray, then showed the result to the vet. We could see there were 5 little kittens inside her stomach and when the vet did the ultrasonography on her we only heard 4 pulses, but the vet said there was nothing to worry about the other kitten that might hide somewhere we didn't manage to find.

In short - Joy finally gave birth to her very first litter but I was worried it came a week earlier than expected. The process was quite long, as Joy might not realize she was in the middle of delivering her babies - she kept on playing around, enjoyed her food as usual (strange isn't it? coz most cats will cease touching food approximately one day before the day), she even fell asleep after the 3rd kitten was born - she really didn't care about the contractions she was having and she tried to focus on licking herself all over the body *which perhaps it was just a distraction to the pain she had*

Then the 4rd baby came out - already without the birth sac - so the vet who helped the delivery process started wiping the face and the whole body to dry off the newborn as well as giving the good circulation. Too bad, he didn't survive. The last kitten was born right after the vet gave Joy a shot of induction.

Two blue torties and two creams were born, but they were all underweight. The smallest kittens I've ever seen - they weighed ranging from 40 to 60 grams only on the first day. We did our best to those little creatures by giving warm bed, forcing Joy to breast feed the babies and lick them, bottle-feeding them while we didn't manage to get their mother lying down on her back, rubbing their spines to encourage better blood circulation, etc. But still we didn't get the chance to see them grow. They all went to rainbow bridge less than a week after they saw the world. Joy didn't feel sad at all, she just enjoyed all her daily routines as if nothing happened.

Well... 19 months old but still she is not mature enough for being a mom!