Hey everyone for those who don't know
I recently moved to California and I've spent the last couple weeks doing the most exciting thing
Building a kitten nursery in my home that is dedicated to saving the lives of the little guys
So today I wanted to take you guys inside of my nursery and show you how it's going so far
We're about halfway set up, but I thought I'd give you an inside scoop of how it's looking
So this room is definitely a work in progress
But we've got all sorts of cute
toys
And beds and all sorts of things that are ready for our little babies. Everything in the room has to be able to be sanitized,
Because I'm working with kittens who might be sick or have unknown health history. So that's why everything you see is plastic or metal
um here
I have a metal kitchen cart from Ikea as well as a plastic chair that I use for
actually doing the bottle feeding and then on top of here is some of the art that will be hanging
This is a piece by the very talented artist Megan
Wincott and she gave this to us because we call our baby room the baby farm
Because we grow mighty fine babies here. The stainless steel tables are an awesome addition to this room
These are really easy to clean and sanitize. On the table I've got a microscope,
I've got a couple different types of scales for weighing the kittens and I've got my cleaning supplies and some medication
Then up here I've got my
bulletin board and up here I'm able to do things like
weight tracking,
medication tracking, all of that, helping me stay organized so that I can keep good track of the kitten's progress.
Okay, so we have a new mini fridge. This fridge is where our medications that have to be refrigerated go
This is where our formula goes. It's just a dedicated fridge for the nursery
We have a microwave which I'm waiting on a stand for but that is a
really important part of the nursery too - that's how I heat up their heatpads, etc
And then I got some dirty laundry here because there's soo much laundry with these little guys,
Then we've got clean laundry and then I've got just another little bin here that I use for
putting the kittens after they have gone to the bathroom or eaten
This is the incubator
unit where the kittens live when they are two weeks and younger. An incubator is a really great way for kittens to have stable
temperature, you can control for humidity, you can control for their environment.
You can also add a nebulizer here if you have a kitten who's very sick with an upper respiratory infection
It's a really really cool unit. Obviously
This is an expensive piece of machinery, it's not something that I had for the first several years that I was doing this
but if you are hardcore about doing rescue work with neonates, this is the one that I have: the Pet Brooder ICU.
So no kitten room is complete without
Kittens, so I'm really excited to show you guys the new kittens
that I picked up this week
These are my first babies in California and they are
precious!! Babies have been living in that incubator, but now they have upgraded to their very own pen!
I really love these plastic pens because you can set them up to be any size or shape
You can kind of use them to fit the room that you're in, or the amount of space that you want to give your kittens.
It's just about time for these little guys to eat and I think
they might be hungry.
You guys ready to eat?
Is anybody inside the blue strawberry?
Who's inside the blue strawberry??!
Okay. So here we are in the kitten bathroom. The kitten bathroom has two sinks: one that I've used for bathing dirty butts and
the other that I use for mixing my formula, so this is
formula mixed with Pedialyte, and I'm just gonna shake it up real fast, and then we can feed them.
Okay, let's go feed 'em.
Okie dokie who's first?
Okay, so these little guys are named after Southern California beaches,
We thought it would be fun to give them California names since they are our first California babies
So, this is Topanga, Topanga's named after
Topanga beach, but also Topanga Canyon. So the first thing that I'm doing is helping them go to the bathroom before they eat
Good job Topanga!
Topanga's definitely the chunkiest of the kittens. She's got a huge appetite
these guys came from a Los Angeles animal shelter
when they were just about a week old. I've had them for about nine days now and they're doing great
First couple days they had some pretty gross poop problems, but we got them sorted out and now they're really really doing well.
This is Will Rogers and Will Rogers is named after Will Rogers Beach. Do you have to poop Will?
He is a funny pooper
He's cute. He just has a little bit of a caveman look and he's got poop hanging out of his butt. But other than that
he's adorable!
One of my favorite things about him is
litte antenna tail while he eats
His little tail's always going while he eats,
like, "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah"
Paws up if you like your snacks
Ooo doo dee doo!
This is Catalina.
Catalina are you ready for a snack?
She's like "heck yeah I'm ready for a snack girl!"
Catalina was the one that was doing the worst when she got here, but now she's doing awesome
She is such a cute little tortie. Oh
Look at those ears
Those are what I call happy ears
Good job Catalina!
Zuma is nursing on the side of a stuffed animal
Right now so she's gonna be happy cuz it's her turn
So typically their mom would help them go to the bathroom by licking them with stimulate elimination
But since they don't have a mom, I stimulate them to go to the bathroom with a soft tissue.
Are you hungry? Yeah you're eating my finger hang on
Here, look, look, look
Zoomy Zuma!
So, this is Zuma, I call her Zoomy Zuma because she is zoomy, she is the first one who figured out
how to escape the incubator, she is the first one to run up onto your legs when you come say hi.
She is a very enthusiastic
and energetic little kitten especially for someone who is only two and a half weeks old
So you might notice that Zuma has some blue on her ears. That's from the shelter
she came from - a lot of the time shelters. If they can't tell kittens apart. They will do something to distinguish them
so she's got blue nail polish on her ears to distinguish her from Catalina and
It's just coming off
It's okay. We can tell you apart. We know who you are Zuma!
And last but certainly not least, this is Balboa
We're pretty sure he's a kitten. He might be a polar bear,
time will tell. Ooh it feels so nice to pee. Look at his little hand going!
You're so relaxed cuz you're gonna poop. Oh my god. You are full of poop.
A breeze!
Listen, poop is just...
Poop is part of this.
His poop looks really healthy
I love Balboa, he is like so
Woolly and soft, his hair is like sheepskin
Okay, so that's it
these guys are two and a half weeks old which means they eat and go to the bathroom and every three hours. In between they
just stay in here and they hang out, and take a nap
One of the things I'm so excited about is that I have storage here so check it out
You guys I can fit so many supplies in here I've got my tissues I've got my bottles
I've got my supplements my stuffed animals all of my medical supplies
My gloves make syringes my needles my trash bags
I mean everything fits right in here
Which is awesome and one of the things that I need to get out of here right now is actually a playpen because guess what?
We're getting new babies today
All right, so I need this playpen
She's here, she's here, she's here
Hello! Andrew the babies are here!
Let me see you!
Hi little boys, they don't look that bad, (no I think they look okay) they're just skinny. (They're just little aliens) You're just skinny and you have big eyes
Meet your new friends!
Ohh hi!
Aren't they adorable? Yeah they're cute
Um, let's go get them set up. Cool
We interrupt this kitten tour to bring you: new kittens!
Nothing makes a nursery complete quite like brand new kittens.
I think for now since these guys are sick, we're gonna keep them inside of a play pen, while we figure out what's going on with them
So a playpen is a great way to just quickly give kittens a new environment where they're safe, that's why I really like these things
You know, we just got these guys. We're not gonna let them free roam,
we don't know who they are, we don't know anything about their health
So they're gonna be going in here while we figure out what's going on with them. This will keep them contained and safe
and give them a place for all of their stuff
So these little ones just got here and they are from the local animal shelter, these guys are really really underweight
They're really thin. So hopefully we'll be able to give them extra care here and get them nice and fattened up.
Look at this skinny little tail
Oh
Hi, and who are you? Oh hi sweetie
You guys are a mystery why are you so skinny? Well, we have all sorts of different types of food here
So hopefully we'll find something that they love to eat and get them nice and fat. Hey!
You coming to say hi? This one is way smaller, you are the one to watch my friend
So these guys are 7 weeks old. They should be like getting close to 2 pounds at this age
And this little one is... one pound.
So you need to fatten up!
You need to have some snacks here, buddy
This little one is even smaller
So let's see, I'm very curious
Yeah, I know
point seven pounds!
Okay, you are like less than half of the weight that you should be. That's not gonna work we've got to have some snacks
I gotta show you the joy that is eating
So let's get them some food ready
Okay. Oh my gosh!
So, uh these guys are old enough to not be drinking formula
but I'm curious about whether this will help them.
Look at that! Ohhh, not your paws in it!
Okay. Wooo! Well we definitely have enthusiasm for the formula.
Sometimes I'll give kittens formula even if they're older just because it can help fatten them up a lot, it's really highly palatable to them
So if he's super skinny, this is basically giving him the chance to get some really good nutrients
He's got both of his freakin paws in there. I guess you could say he's really into his food. Hehehe
I was gonna give you a couple options, but it seems like you're pretty stoked on this one
Wow, they are hungry
It'll be interesting to see if they perk up here or I mean I was thinking maybe they needed to be hand fed
Sometimes kittens who are not gaining weight just need like extra assistance with eating like encouragement through hand feeding
But these guys seem pretty happy to eat
Oooh yum!
Can't decide!
So many options
A bit like Golden Corral up in here
You don't need to stand in your food, you don't need to stand in your food. Do you want some of this?
You wanna try that one? Ohhhhh
This is an absolute mess. But
A kitten cannot resist a spoonful of baby food. I heard you didn't like eating very much. So we just got one of everything
Woahhhh god
You are so nastyyyy!
You guys made a mess!
Are you filthy?
I can't wait for our new guys to be able to explore this whole room!
And to have it all set up for them. In the meantime, we've definitely got our work cut out for us
So thanks for checking out the kitten rooms
We are so excited to complete this project and get it looking awesome in here
If you want to support our kitten rescue efforts here in the nursery
You can visit orphan kitten club dot org to find out what we're doing here in San Diego and to make a tax-deductible donation
As always please subscribe to my channel if you want to find more awesome fun and educational content about kittens
I'll be doing lots of updates about the nurseries about the babies and of course about everything you need to know about how to take
Care of kittens. Thanks and see you next time