Baby Kitties

Shortly after Rachel was born our Mama cat also had a little of kitties. Right after she weened them we noticed that she was pregnant again! She had her second litter about 3 weeks ago. This past week we put her outside to go hunting, or whatever it is she does outside, and she never came back. She is a good mama so I'm pretty sure she didn't abandon her babies. I don't know if another wild animal got her or what, but we were left with 9 little kitties. I was going to take them to another mama cat to see if she would adopt them, but my sweet daughter couldn't bear the thought of losing another pet so we are bottle feeding the little darlings. One of the babies was sickly, though and it died. We weren't surprised and were expecting it long before Mama left. So now I am left with 8 little babies that almost all look alike. 7 of them are grey striped and one is black and white. I can tell 2 of the gray ones apart, but I'm lost on the rest of them. I need to paint their nails or put different colored bands on them or something. We are doing pretty good with feeding them. They are hungry a lot during the day and they wiggle a lot as you try to feed them, so the girls have had a hard time trying to help out. They sleep all night, though. I'm thinking that they should start eating food here in a week or so. One really nice thing is that Kami, our pug, is helping us out with their toilet. She will lick them and take care of them. Robert is weirded out by it all and wonders if Kami thinks she is a dog or a cat, but I'll take all the help I can get.