Joy cometh in the morning.

After previous meltdown, nedlnthred mixed up a batch of condensed milk & egg yolk, a combination she's had success with before, and put it in the other bottles that Rollo et al. had sort of chewed the tops of the nipples off. This seemed like it might be too big for them to suckle on, but for some reason, it started to work; they did a kind of half-suckle, half-drink Thing which started getting warm food into kitten tummies.

And then! Piewacket, who had been sitting in the hallway watching with mild interest our strange proceedings, came over and started washing the kitten Beth was feeding. We put the kitten to her breast, and lo! she accepted it! And we added the rest, one by one, and she took them all!

Result:



I'm not sure but that we might still have some attrition--there is one squeaker who is always on the outside of the pile, and is noticeably more sluggish than the rest. And I'm still really worried about Mage, and I still rack my brains about who can take the office cats, and I have no clue how we're going to home these kittens; but we won this round.