[lullaby music]
Good evening everyone. Tonight I'm going to be talking to you about a very important subject
which is
fostering work and kittens and
overnight care.
One of the things people seem to fear the most about
fostering orphans is the idea that you have to wake up in the middle of the night to feed them.
So I thought I would make a video all about my overnight care routine and show how simple it can be.
If you're curious about what it takes to care for it work on kitten like Kabu, this is the video for you.
I'm going to show you all about how it works and give you some simple tips for caring for young orphans without tiring yourself out.
So the first thing is to understand the overnight care schedule for a kitten and how much it varies by age.
Kittens are an altricial species, meaning that they're born in an undeveloped state and require lots of attentive care from a mom
in order to survive and grow to an age of independence. For the first week of life kittens will be with their mom almost
constantly, and the older they get the more independent they get. So why do young kittens need such frequent care? For one,
they're growing rapidly. A newborn kitten will double her weight in the first ten days of life.
But her stomach capacity is very small and her organs are immature. That means that she can dehydrate
rapidly, and she can become hypoglycemic
rapidly if she's not fed in frequent intervals.
So these very little guys eat small amounts with high frequency, and the older they get they eat larger amounts with less
frequency. Check out this feeding chart to see how the feeding schedule works. As you can see while it's true that a three-day-old
kitten will need to be fed every two hours, a three week old kitten only needs to be fed every four hours.
This means if you're fostering a kitten who's three to five weeks old,
you'll only have to wake up once in the middle of the night. A kitten older than five weeks old you might not even have
to wake up at all.
So if you're really scared of waking up multiple times overnight, you can still work with these populations who definitely need your help, too.
But of course a kitten like Kabu who's two weeks old needs the most help of all. These little guys are the hardest to find
foster care for, and that means they're the most frequently euthanized.
So don't be scared to help out little babies like Kabu. It's not so bad,
is it? I promise you it doesn't have to be scary. Just a couple minutes
every couple hours can save a kitten's life! A few minutes can save your life? I can manage that.
As she gets older, my work gets easier, and there's nothing more rewarding than watching them grow.
Okay, so when you're doing overnight care for a kitten, you're gonna want to prep ahead of time.
I recommend making your formula fresh right before bed and making enough of it to last you through your morning feeding.
Keeping your formula fresh is really important. You'll often hear me griping about not over-preparing formula.
You don't want to make so much of it that it starts to go bad.
But as long as you're storing it well and you're only using it for a few feedings, that's totally okay.
Kabu eats every three hours,
so she'll eat right before I fall asleep and then twice
overnight. That means I need to make about three to four meals worth of formula for her, which I'll mix in a jar.
I'll fill up my bottle, keep the excess in the jar, and then put both of them in the fridge until I'm ready to use them.
You'll also want to prep a feeding station.
Your feeding station should have supplies like your baby scale, tissues, and baby wipes.
Don't forget that your kitten should always be in a safe container like a bin or carrier with a soft blanket, and
always provide a heat source. Some people might find it helpful to have their feeding station right near their bed,
but I like to have the feeding station closer to where I'm going to be heating up the food,
so I'll get up,
be able to walk over, heat up the food, do what I need to do, and go right back to sleep.
So wherever you decide to do it, prep your area and make sure you have everything you're gonna need so when you wake up, you're good to go.
One important tip is to schedule your last feeding of the night for right before you go to sleep.
This is important because then you get the maximum amount of rest before you have to wake up again.
So if a normal night of rest for me is from 11:30 until 7:30 a.m,
then I will feed at 11:00, 2:00, 5:00 and then 8:00.
So that means I'm waking up twice in the middle of the night, at 2:00 and 5:00.
I highly recommend setting all of your alarms before you go to sleep, not waiting and doing them one at a time
because you don't want to forget.
So at night time I'll do my 11 o'clock feeding. Then I'll set my 2:00, 5:00, and 8:00 alarms and go to sleep.
So now I'm gonna show you guys what it looks like when I wake up to do my 2:00 a.m
feeding. My alarm will go off at 2:00 o'clock.
I roll out of bed and as I walk down the hallway, I'm waking up just enough to be functional.
I grab the bottle from the fridge and I pop it in the microwave for about 10 seconds.
I grab my tissues or my wet wipe and I stimulate Kabu to go to the bathroom.
I place Kabu on the scale and write down her pre-feeding weight. I feed her with the bottle which takes about one minute
I wipe her up. I weigh her again.
I put the food back in the fridge and I plop her back into her space and go back to the bedroom. If you're not
a microwave fan you can get an electric tea kettle and do a hot water method for heating up your formula.
Just remember to test it on your wrist and make sure it's a good temperature.
So all in all this process takes about four or five minutes. A minute to get up and heat the bottle,
a minute to stimulate her and weigh he,r
about a minute to feed her, and a minute to get everything put away and go back to the bedroom. So you can see this
process is really really fast.
Even when you have a couple kittens
It might add a minute to a minute-and-a-half per kitten but overall this process is really quick. Aside from the prep work,
the most important things are the ability to, 1) get yourself up and,
2) get yourself to go back to bed. In addition to setting your alarms before you go to sleep,
I recommend setting your alarm with a tone that will annoy you enough to wake you up.
If you're someone who famously hits the snooze button, then I recommend setting an alarm not just for 2:00 but also 2:02, 2:03.
But ideally you want to get yourself in the habit of just
putting your feet on the ground when your alarm goes off. Trust me,
it really helps when you remember that there is a hungry baby who is depending on you.
It might help you to keep a photo of the baby next to the bed, or even make them your
background on your phone.
You will remember how important this is and you will feel that that baby is hungry and needs your help.
You are their only means of survival,
so once your alarm goes off just put your feet on the floor,
get yourself up out of bed, and go to the feeding area.
You want to wake yourself up enough to be attentive to the kitten and to make sure everything goes right,
but not so much that you're not going to be able to go back to sleep.
I just keep my eyes on the prize and stay focused on what I need to do and
getting myself back to bed as quickly as possible.
If it helps you to write down the steps so you can check them off one by one,
that's okay to do. You get yourself up, heat up the bottle, stimulate the kitten to go to the bathroom,
take their weight, feed them, get them all cleaned up, and go back to bed. That's it.
Don't hang out for an extended period of time, don't kiss them on the head a bunch, don't hang out and take their photo.
Just do the basics get yourself back to bed.
I do recommend keeping the light slightly dim while you're doing this.
You want it to be light enough that you can see what you're doing and make sure the kitten's okay,
but not so bright and fluorescent that it wakes you up entirely and you can't get back to sleep.
So I keep a lamp next to my kitten station that has three settings, and I just keep it on the lowest setting at night.
After you're done, you need to get yourself to go back to sleep. For me
that's the hardest part because I have a pretty busy brain.
Something that's really important for me is not letting my mind start to wander and get distracted.
So I highly recommend not looking at your phone, don't check your social media or your email,
don't start to think too much about the day ahead.
Don't look at your phone at all other than to confirm
that your alarm is still set for your next feeding. Something else that helps me a lot is darkness.
I recommend getting yourself an eye mask and wearing it after your feedings. If I wake up and the sun is starting to rise, or I
start thinking too much about my day, it's impossible for me to go back to sleep.
So for me, it's all about smoothly transitioning back into a calm state of mind where I can go to bed.
Not too much time. Not too much thought.
Not too much bright light. If I can't fall asleep
I try to get myself into a really calm and meditative space.
It might also help you to just close your eyes and focus on your breath.
I'm asked a lot if I feel really tired during the day when I'm doing overnight care for kittens, and the answer is I truly
usually am not tired during the day. It honestly affects me minimally, if at all. Even though I'm almost always caring for kittens
I'm not always caring for kittens who are newborns.
Personally, I do not drink coffee. I find that it makes me feel really groggy and up and down.
And I really don't like being dependent on caffeine, but for some people that's a technique that does work.
Every body is going to be different,
so you have to know your body and what is best for
you and your sleep cycle. For me when I do have a baby this young
I just make sure that I'm going to bed little bit earlier so I can still get those eight hours of sleep.
It's definitely important for you to be caring for the caregiver as well.
So make sure you're getting your eight hours of sleep,
you might just have to go to bed a little bit earlier. If you're sleepy, it's okay to go to bed early.
It is also okay to take a nap during the day. One question
I receive a lot is, if the baby is still sleeping
do you wake them up to feed them? The answer is yes,
absolutely. Even during the day a kitten Kabu's age sleeps all the time.
She basically is always sleeping when I'm not waking her up to feed her.
So you're not waiting until they get fussy and then feeding them. You're just feeding them consistently on the same schedule
Gently waking them up, letting them know that it's time to eat.
Another question I get a lot is, what if you accidentally sleep through an alarm?
This is something that really scares foster parents and reasonably so.
It is a thing that can happen. The answer is that sleeping through one alarm, though
not ideal, will not kill the kitten. If you oversleep by two or three hours,
yes, the kitten is going to be very hungry.
But you just need to get yourself up and feed them. If you miss feedings on a routine basis,
then this probably is not for you. Don't kick yourself,
just get yourself up and give the kitten the meal that they need.
Of course a hugely helpful thing is if you can get somebody else to help take some of the responsibility for overnight care.
I've been raising kittens for a decade and I've always done it myself.
But now that I have Andrew I do occasionally ask him to do a shift.
He really likes to stay up late and play video games sometimes, so I will prompt him to stay up a little bit later
so that he can do one of the overnight feedings.
"Are you gonna stay up late playing video games?" "Only so that I can help you."
So for example, I will do a feeding at 10:00. I'll go to sleep.
He'll do a feeding at 1:00 and then he'll go to sleep. And then I'll do a feeding at 4:00.
By that point I've gotten six hours of sleep, which is quite nice and then I can just do my morning feeding.
You're going to bed. So looks like I'm gonna have to stay up.
So if you have a family member or a housemate who's willing to take a shift,
especially if they have an opposite schedule to yours, that can be really helpful.
But don't fear if you don't have it, most of the time I don't and it's okay.
Ultimately when the fate of an animal is in your hands, you do what it takes to help them survive.
This is really not like caring for a human baby where you're up for months on end in the middle of the night.
These guys grow up so fast,
it could be a matter of days or just a couple weeks depending on how young they are when you start fostering them.
So yes, there is some light interruption to your sleep schedule.
It's just a few minutes for a few weeks and it gives her the gift of 20 years of life.
That's a sacrifice that I'm willing to make.
Before you know it, your kitten will be eating independently and you'll be celebrating not only her incredible growth
but also your ability to get a full night of sleep.
Thanks for watching and happy fostering!