This feels very in contrast to the claim
If you are weighing in grams they should gain 7-14 grams a day.
Either they weren’t getting enough food and starved to death without you noticing despite twice a day weighing or they all had a congenital condition incompatible with life and you’re fine with her having more litters that won’t survive.
Your casual demeanor around suffering is shocking.
Thanks all. I truly hope your day is better now, since you all got this off your chests. I posted this thread to ask about how to set up a safe space for kittens once they were old enough to safely go outside when they were months older.
I’m very glad to hear, over and over, how cruel I am for taking in dumped cats, providing them a place to be and being unprepared for kittens so I was in regular contact with a vet who told me what to do and what to feed them. I’m very glad to hear how awful of a person I am and how callous everyone seems to think I am for not showing more emotion over the loss of the kittens. I’m glad everyone knows me so well that they can judge so quickly and I hope that every single one of you is 100% perfect in every single aspect of your lives.
You’re all entitled to your opinions. But to be called cruel, callous and accused of being casual about suffering. That is hurtful and untrue, especially if you knew me personally. I may not be a vet and I may have absolutely no experience with kittens, but I did my absolute best to make sure these creatures were safe and warm. I was in near constant contact with a vet, asking and re-asking and checking. I was concerned about the kittens and their weight, but the vet assured me the important thing was that they weren’t losing weight. That’s why I started supplementing them, because they weren’t gaining weight. I could see them suckling on mama. Cruel would have been to just accept that as fine, but I still supplemented them and fed them every 2 hours. They were three days old. I started feeding them at day 2 when I realized maybe mama wasn’t getting enough into them. They still died. I’m not a vet so everything I’ve posted about potential cause of death is purely speculation based Google, vet and everyone I’ve talked to with more experience than I do about kittens.
Thank you for calling me irresponsible for not getting cats spayed as soon as they show up on my property. I’ll just start turning the cats away, to continue down the road by which they came. Surely they’ll have a better shot against vehicles and predators than they will with such a cruel, callous and horrible person such as I. 
And most of all, thank you very much for being so very welcoming and helpful. It has been an exceptionally difficult year for me as I’ve let on in a previous thread where I also got just abused for my horse getting put in a tie down ONCE by her trainer. This was just the perfect cap to it all.
Have a wonderful day, all of you.
Fantasy. A vet would tell you to bring the cat for a postpartum exam and more, not shrug and say you did your best and these things happen. You’re either untruthful or completely irresponsible or both.
Whatever the truth, don’t ask a bunch of animal advocates to get excited about a litter, then brush them off when they point out how dreadfully you handled the whole thing, and how you continue to do so.
It IS irresponsible to not spay the animals in your charge, and I am happy to provide papers that quantify the effect of feral (or otherwise loose) cats on ecosystems. They are so detrimental that they’re considered invasive in Australia and Hawaii. Many native species have been extirpated or driven completely to extinction because of cats. Please reconsider your stance on this
Man, this is wild. I mean, I know there are people out there that don’t see barn cats (or sometimes cats at all) as animals that need actual care, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so damned proud of it.
There are probably places on the internet where you can go and talk about how you don’t bother with regular vet care, and just let your cats breed willy nilly, and people won’t call you on it, but yeah, this definitely isn’t one of those places.
The cognitive dissonance in complaining that cats just show up and then allowing them to breed is bonkers. You think all these kittens (if they survive, I guess) are just going to stay at your place? You think the boy kittens will just know to not breed their sisters or mommas? By spring you’ll be the farm with an out of control cat colony that’s supplying the highway and nearby farms with cats.
Personally, my vote is the space heater + heating pad kept them way too warm. Kittens with a momma cat aren’t baby chicks. Since you’re going to have more litters, perhaps you can spend some more time learning about how to care for them.
Better yet, since fixing four now seems like a hardship…move heaven and earth to figure out how to make that happen, because it’s sure not going to be easier to fix dozens. Most areas have a few ways to an inexpensive spay or neuter.
Best of luck, and I really hope you figure it out.
The most important takeaway from this is to neuter/spay the four barn kitties you currently have. The dozens that will come from not fixing them will end up out on the road and suffer a far worse fate than not being born in the first place, which will negate all the good you’ve already done by taking in the existing dumped cats.
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