We are officially at the 14 day old mark. Phoenix hit 189g today (6.7oz), and he's doing well. While we had hoped his eyes would be open by now, we're thankful for all the other progress he's making. Here's to many more weeks together!
Two Weeks and Counting
Tomorrow will mark two weeks since we've had this little guy. It's been a bit of a blur, and I'm quite surprised by how much he's grown! With just 3 more grams, he will officially be 3x the weight he was when we found him.
We've started bottle feeding Phoenix since yesterday, now that he eats roughly 6 to 7mL of food at a time. It's been so much easier to feed him this way. He's been getting very excited for food and constantly searching. The challenge with the syringe is that the milk wouldn't come as freely, so if you didn't time some milk for him right after putting the syringe in his mouth, hit might pull away in search of milk elsewhere. Keep in mind, you also have to be very careful about shooting any milk into a kitten's mouth, since you don't want milk to go down the lungs leading to pneumonia or death. So this proved to be a challenge. That and the little guy continuously moves forward in search of food, often pushing your syringe up against the wall of his carrier. Then you'd have to readjust before letting him feed again. Nonetheless, I'm thankful for his appetite, and bottle feeding is now so much easier.
We just received our pumpkin baby food order as well. Though I realized today that we don't have a lot of KMR (kitten milk replacement) left. We'll need to go buy some more tomorrow, since there's only about 1.5 days worth left. This recent can last us about 1.5 weeks, but he's eating more now. So maybe we'll purchase two cans of KMR.
The poop scene has improved a bit, too. There's still diarrhea, but some of the accidents were slowing down last night. Of course, after I thought it was getting better, we were hit by another wave. He somehow got it on his chest, belly, should, arms, and all over his stuffed cow. Wonderful. And remember my 600 cotton balls? 100 of them are already gone. Seems like tired me had the foresight to know that 300 cotton balls wasn't nearly enough to tackle this challenge. Also - I'm buying the larger ones next time. But really, overall, he seems to be doing better. I do think it hurts him to go to the bathroom, so it makes me sad to have to try to make him poop.
I also had another bad-Mom incident today. When I transferred him from the bedroom to my office room, I forgot to turn on the power outlet that I had plugged his heat source into. When I was looking to see where the little guy was at, I noticed he was fully sleeping under the cow. More recently, he's been more comfortable sleeping around the cow to keep the temperature he likes. So as soon as I saw that, I checked the blanket temperature and realized it was cold! Oops! All in all, he was fine and was sleeping soundly, and I've made a mental reminder to always check that my heat source is turned on. I usually do, but sometimes I convince myself it isn't necessary, and then things like this happen.
He's been consistently eating 6-7mL in a feeding (our rough estimate based off of bottle weight changes). With the bottle, we end up getting milk mustaches more often, though it's been hard catching a good photo of one. Here's the best one I got today.
We've been working on slightly extending his feedings today to help fit the feeding schedule to our own schedules. on target for a 9:45pm feeding. That puts us at a 12:45pm, 3:45am, and 6:45am feeding. So the plan is to sleep at 10pm and up at 6:45am to do our weekday workouts at 7:15am. Plans are all well and good - let's see if it comes to fruition.
Photos and Videos
I blame Nguyen for derailing this video. But this short conversation made me laugh, so I decided to share.
Little guy fussing around. This is a fairly normal occurrence after eating until he finally figures out where he'd like to fall asleep. This sometimes happens when he's searching for food or needs to go to the bathroom as well. Otherwise, he's generally just sleeping.
I think this is one of my favorite positions to find him in. He just looks so happy, in my opinion.
It's things like this that make me think maybe he can hear. I know, wishful thinking. But look at his ear!
Snack time? That or he's starting to learn how to groom. But I like to think he takes after me and has an insane appetite.
Where's Phoenix? Can you spot him?
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