7 Week Bump

Not a great pic, (camera still missing *sob* and I don't think I'm using this camera phone at all the way I'm supposed to, all too clever for me) but you get the general idea. ie she looks as though she's swallowed a rugby ball. Hee! She's very much got the pregnant waddle now, and takes a long time to find a comfortable position to snooze in because her belly gets in the way. Poor Inds!

She's had a few tummy troubles this week, a bout of vomiting (but without the collapsing she indulged in a few weeks back, my God...!) and diarrhoea, and I suspect she's having trouble keeping up with the amount of food she's having to eat. So I've moved her onto the kitten food now, which is much more calorie dense. Hopefully she'll have to eat less of it to get the nutrition she needs, which will lessen the strain on her digestive system.

She's also getting wet food at night just before I go to bed, which means the others have to as well. Theo starts nagging me about 9pm for this despite the fact I don't generally go to bed for several hours after that! Blooming cat! I've got plain chicken ready in the freezer, but want to keep that one up my sleeve for if Inds starts to struggle feeding so many kittens after a couple of weeks, like last time... it worked a treat! And there will always be the Christmas turkey...

I'm still trying to guess how many kittens she's going to have. I've had a thorough, but gentle, feel of her other side whilst the babies were particularly vigourous this morning, and I think I felt two, (if not three) distinct areas of movement. With the three I think she has on her other side (cats have bicornate uteruses, two- horned, one on each side, and the babies grow in one or the other) that makes a whole lot of kitten! Five, possibly six, I'm guessing, this time!

Of course I guessed last time and got it wrong. Vets can tell, I believe, from quite early on, but I am not a vet and I'm not about to go prodding at my cat to find out, lest I do her a mischief. Besides which, cats regularly resorb fetuses. In fact I read somewhere that cats start off having 20 or more fetuses, most of which then die off in the early stages to leave the strongest to make it to term. Very clever. Even at seven weeks I believe this can happen (or an unborn kitten can die and become mummified) so five or six distinct wiggly areas now does not necessarily mean that number of kits in two weeks time.

But it is fun to speculate. And Indigo likes nothing better than to have her tummy rubbed at the moment, so any excuse really!