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If I could get them to stay in my hoodie I might be able to get away with that
So the little ones are about a month old at this point. It turns out we have 2 boys and a girl. Littles is one of the little boys and he's got issues. I'm about 99% sure he has a condition called Flat Chested Kitten Syndrome (FCKS).
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
The condition causes weight-gain to halt, respiratory distress, inability to feed normally and, in a significant proportion of cases, death. However, since a significant percentage of kittens survive the condition immediate euthanasia is not indicated, and supportive treatments can be employed to increase the likelihood of survival.
Without reading the article it can be described pretty succinctly with the next 2 images:
Not being a vet I would put him in the "mild" bordering on "turtle" level of severity. He does not appear to be struggling or laboring to breathe but he does seem to have a bit of an issue getting the proper amount of suction rolling for a good, solid feed. Depending on the angle of rotation that Mom has adopted when feeding and his angle of attack on the nipple he sometimes folds himself in half and struggles to eat. He is about 65% of the weight of his siblings and looks to be about a week behind on physical development. He plays like the other kittens but tends to nap a bit more. He does suckle from momma but his obviously bigger and more robust siblings will punt him without a second thought. Once the big ones get full and blackout on feline dairy the little one has a chance to move in and eat, but this is only if mom decides she wants to continue to lie there. If I'm in the room I need to be very, very calm and still and offer mom pets and head scratches so she will relax and let him continue to feed.
You can see him here ponied up at the Milk Bar on the far left and it makes the size difference pretty apparent.
Again, little man on the left.
Once we finally had a good working idea as to what the hell was going on, the wife and I had a good talk about what we wanted to do for him moving forward. We did not feel he was struggling enough to require euthanasia but he was obviously not getting enough to eat. After watching his weight for a few days in comparison to his siblings we got on the supplemental feeding train. Sadly, he wanted nothing to do with us or the nipple for a few days and we were unable to get him to eat. He actually lost weight one day last week and I missed a weight in, but I FINALLY figured out how to get him to eat. Out of desperation I put some formula in a spoon and stuck it in his face until lo and behold he started lapping it up! I feel like a complete retard for not trying this last week, but unfortunately that's how 20/20 hindsight works.
So this is now how we spend our mornings and evenings together:
He goes OM NOM NOM NOM NOM
...and then he goes /BONK
Originally Posted by also the Wikipedia
Kittens with FCKS may die (or have to be euthanased) very soon after onset. There are two points at which breeders report kittens that were otherwise doing well deteriorating and dying: at 10 days of age and at 3 weeks. Generally if the kitten is still flat, but survives the 3-week developmental stage, its prognosis is good. Many will have returned to a normal shape by this time. Those retaining some degree of flatness often grow out of the condition at any point in the ensuing 6 months, and the vast majority of survivors appear to lead normal lives with no side-effects, either physical or immunological.
So he is starting to pick up not just weight but body mass and that gives me real hope. I can usually get Mom settled down enough to let him suckle for about 10~12min and when she gets distracted by the other two rugrats I swoop him up and we do the spoon thing. I struggled at first with what to do, thinking maybe I should just let it go and see how it works itself out but then came to realize that there was no god damn way I was going to sit here on my thumb and let a kitten starve to death in my home while watching and doing nothing.
The wee man and his sister from the other day.
There is still the real possibility that he may not make it but for now I'm confident we are doing good for him.
Oh man, I've always like the black and white kitties. I was secretly hoping Annie might have been cooking up little black and white one for us, but I'm certainly not about to start complaining about the The 3 Stooges
It has been almost four years since Ecuador granted Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, asylum in its embassy in London. A police van is stationed outside the building, and he fears that he will be detained if he tries to leave, given that there is still a warrant out for his arrest. He has Internet access, is allowed visitors and interacts with embassy staff, but much of his time is spent alone in quasi-solitary confinement.
But this week, Assange got a new friend to keep him company, and, apparently, stick up for him on social media. The unnamed cat immediately got a Twitter handle (@EmbassyCat), and presumably “dictates” to Assange the pun-filled witticisms that it wants broadcast to the world. As a spectacle aimed at softening Assange’s image, it simultaneously evokes “awws” — and pity.
If he leaves the embassy, Assange faces extradition to Sweden for questioning over multiple allegations of rape and sexual assault, though he has cited American threats to prosecute him for the publication of a three-quarters of a million classified and sensitive documents leaked by Pvt. Chelsea Manning as his main reason for seeking asylum. There are still four more years until the statute of limitations are up on the charges Assange faces in Sweden.
Accounts of Assange’s strange life within the confines of the embassy portray him as somewhat consumed by paranoia, which may be warranted. There are reportedly eight police officers devoted to monitoring the building in case he attempts an escape — which costs the British public an astonishing £4.2 million (roughly $6 million) in tax money annually. The Huffington Post reported that Assange has asked journalists not to name his favorite sushi take-out place. “They might track the place down,” he said. “They might put something in there that won’t kill me, but make me very sick so I’ll have to go to hospital.”
Assange already spends a huge amount of his time tweeting. The Evening Standardnoted that the Wikileaks account posted 10,118 tweets in his first year in “captivity,” and most are thought to have been written by him. He is also said to run four miles a day on a treadmill (enough to complete 28 marathons over the course of a year) and binge watches political thrillers, all while trying to keep Wikileaks up and running.
He has likened his stay to “being in a space station.” In his room, he has a light that mimics blue sky, and he barely ever goes outside. Last September, in an ironic twist of fate, Buzzfeed gained access to leaked internal reports from the Ecuadorean embassy that shine a light on Assange, documenting numerous occasions in which he displayed erratic behavior.
In one instance, “a security guard was on duty at around 8:30 pm on Sept. 6, when Assange was in the embassy with two associates. Around this time, the guard discovered that Assange had made his way into the embassy’s secure control room — a room strictly off-limits to him — and started tampering with the security equipment. This led to a scuffle between Assange and the guard that caused damage to the embassy’s equipment.”
In another case, a guard heard a loud boom, which turned out to be a large bookcase falling over in Assange’s room. Assange then spent a “period of hours” locked in a bathroom down the hall. Assange apparently recorded his own tendency to “shout and talk incoherently” at night, which he attributed to night terrors.
The reports are assiduously kept by staff at the embassy. On Assange’s mental health, they note, “it’s clear that his situation could result in psychological harm because of the circumstances in which he finds himself, it’s equally clear that there is no protocol that might help avoid or minimize this.” It now looks as if Assange and his new friend are resorting to drastic measures to get the British government to realize their folly. On Tuesday, @EmbassyCat took a pithy dig at Palmerston, the U.K. Foreign Office’s cat (who goes by @DiploMog). Quoting Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II, Assange belittles his prison guards and likens himself to a lion, and Wikileaks to a roar.
05-10-2016, 12:23 PM
