Playing catch-up

Its been over a month since I posted anything. Truth be told, I was terrified. Spider and Spout seemed to be doing really well, I was just too afraid to commit that to written words, because each time we thought we were out of the woods, another kitten became gravely ill.

So, I took a hiatus from actively documenting their progress. But I just fell in love with them. It was such a joy to come home and spend time with them and mama Charlotte. They were desperate to explore the house, to run as fast as their little legs would let them, to be kittens. We ended up having them for about 9 weeks.

And last Friday, we had to say goodbye and send them back to the shelter to be fixed and put up for adoption to begin the next phase of their lives. I just don't know if its ever going to get easier to do that part. Saying goodbye in the morning before I leave for work, and forcing myself to get in the car and drive away knowing I'll never see them again is my Sisyphean struggle. Even after a week, a cat in my home feels like a part of the family. Its tough to come home at the end of the day — I'll have a momentary lapse where I start walking towards their room to say hello, and then suddenly remember that they're no longer there.

The good news is that Spout was adopted his first day out on the floor, and Spider went sometime mid-week. And I just checked the shelter's listing, and it would seem that even Charlotte has been adopted. My holiday wish was that they all went to good homes. I truly hope that's the case. They will always have a special place in my heart.

And the ashes of Itsy, Bitsy and Water are now here with us. We will be their forever home. Its amazing that something so small leaves such a big hole in your heart. But we will take this experience and apply everything we've learned to whatever may come in the future. In the meantime, I think we're hoping for a small break to emotionally recover and give extra attention to our girls.

Surgical drama

So, we had 5 sick cats, with 3 different medication schedules. We made a chart to keep it all straight.

Cordy went back for her X-ray and sure enough, we needed to schedule surgery. She went in on Friday, and stayed overnight, which gave us time to prepare our bedroom for her to convalesce in.

Its so overwhelming trying to care for everyone in completely different ways, but there's no alternative. You do because they need you.

Cordy is recovering well, and basking in all of the solo attention she's getting. She was our first and she had us all to herself back then. She's taking it easy and getting spoiled. Her favorite treat is Whiskas Cat Milk. Tip: We asked for liquid antibiotics, so we could mix it in with her Whiskas milk and she drinks it of her own accord. Much easier than the alternative, because after a couple of days of forcing medicine into her, she becomes frightened of us and hides.

Now if only she'd stop licking the wound, otherwise we'll have to put a lampshade collar on her...

Away to the vet with 4 cats

Even though we were relieved to assume that Charlotte was only in heat and not suffering from a contagious and debilitating disease, I went ahead with rounding up my 4 adult girls and taking them to the vet at 8:30 on a Sunday night. I still wasn't feeling 100%, but certainly better.

As we waited for the vet, one of my girls, Corduroy, peed in her cage. I didn't find this out until I pulled her out to weigh her and she was dripping with her own urine. And that urine was tinged with blood. They took a sample of what collected in the cage and spun it down.

She at least had an infection. But possibly also bladder stones. We could treat the infection and assume that was the problem, or I could get her X-rayed and know for sure. And the X-ray showed 2 large stones—or a poop in a loop of bowel that could be hanging down. The best way to be sure was to bring her back in a couple of days for another X-ray. If it was identical to the first, it was stones. If not, then its bowel. In the meantime, she was put on antibiotics for the infection.

Pez, as it turned out, had earmites. More medication.

At least Shelly and Alf were healthy.

A Different Scare

On Saturday, I took Charlotte, Spider and Spout into the cat vet and had to break the news to E. that Water didn't make it.

The vet looked at them and told us to continue doing everything that we were and keep tabs on them.

I took them back home went about diligently caring for them. They were eating some soft food at this point, but Spider was also getting KMR supplements every 3 hours, since Charlotte wasn't producing a lot of milk.

The endless cycles of feeding and medication went on. Then Saturday night Charlotte started acting very weird. I watched her use the litterbox, jump out, and then she refused to stand up straight. She hunched close to the carpet and crawled around.

I reached for Kittens for Dummies, absolutely convinced that there was some degenerative neurological disease going on which impaired muscle control of the lungs in the kittens and was now attacking Charlotte's limb function.

I read about the woes of FPV and FIP, both very deadly feline diseases and was convinced that not only did they have it, but that I had now exposed my girls to it and I was going to end up watching 9 cats and kittens die one by one.

I called my vet and made appointments for Sunday for my adult cats to get checked out and get updated vaccines. I called E. and left a message giving her the details. Then I went to bed wondering if I was going to open the door to their room the next morning and find Charlotte dead.

I woke up on Sunday feeling horrible. I was breathing fast and shallow. My temperature was more than a degree below normal. I was nauseous and didn't think I could eat or drink without vomiting. I was close to going to urgent care, feeling I was so extremely dehydrated, weak and exhausted from not taking care of myself. Alas, because it was daylight savings, urgent care wasn't open yet and I had to try drinking water in the meantime. I was able to slowly drink enough water that my breathing became normal again, and Michael let me nap while he did the morning medication rounds that I usually did.

Michael spent time with Charlotte and the kittens, and when I woke up from my nap, I went to find him. He asked me "Is it possible she's...just..........horny?" I pooh-poohed that idea. Based on human physiology, I figured that mammals rarely are fertile while nursing. But he insisted that I look up the "symptoms" of cats in heat. Sure enough, she had every single thing on the list, including the crouching, butt up and tail hanging to the side, extreme affection and head rubbing, she tried to escape the room every time the door opened, and, as Michael put it, "She's giving me bedroom eyes. I feel dirty."

Crisis averted.

Spider and Spout

On Saturday I took Charlotte and the two remaining kittens into the vet and they were given a cautiously optimistic prognosis.

Spider, though a relatively small guy, was a feisty little guy, right from the start. Even at 2 weeks old, he would run up to greet us when we opened the door, even as the others made wobbly attempts at moving just a few inches. And he is a smart little guy, too. He was the first to figure out how to escape through the bars of the cage. And when his head grew too large too just walk through the bars, he figured out how to tilt his head 90° to fit in between the bars and squeeze out.

He had the pervasive eye infection also. Unlike the others, he had it in both eyes, but both eyes cleared up very well and very quickly, luckily.

Spout was the bruiser of the pack. From the moment we got him, he was nearly twice the size of everyone else, and continues to be significantly larger than Spider. If you ever wondered where Spout was, you could bet he was wherever Charlotte was, nursing away, seemingly only taking breaks to sleep.

He was sniffly, but never nearly as sick as the others, and didn't have any eye infection, so he always seemed like he'd be ok in the end.

Spider and Spout are our hope at this point. Its been a tough road, and though I'm still holding my breath, I truly hope they are now in the clear and will continue to thrive.

Sweet Water

From the moment we brought the litter home, Water always seemed to be the second strongest. She nursed a lot and we didn't have much reason to worry about her, compared to Itsy and Bitsy. After we lost Bitsy, we added a steam humidifier to our arsenal of tools. Also not as effective as the vet's nebulizer, it was able to deliver constant warm water vapor to the kittens at all hours of the day and, unlike our shower, which we had to shuttle the kittens back and forth to, and the hot water ran out after 15 minutes anyway.

She did have a bad eye infection, and even with the antibiotic ointment they gave us, her cornea clouded over a bit. We were worried that she might go blind in that eye, and the vet tech at the shelter had made some reference to having to put down a kitten she was fostering after it went blind in one eye. I was not going to accept that as or Water's fate, so we kept hoping it would clear up.

After Bitsy was gone, the specialty cat vet that my friend D. hooked me up with suggested putting everyone on Clavamox. Although it wouldn't directly fight the URI virus, it would help fight the secondary infections that the virus either caused or allowed to take hold by compromising their immune systems (which one, I'm not sure). So, we started them all on Clavamox and assumed that the worst was behind us. That was Tuesday.

By Thursday afternoon, I noticed Water was a little lethargic. I didn't see her eat at all on Thursday evening, though Michael says she did nurse a bit at 1 a.m. Fri morning.

Friday morning she was breathing through her mouth and wouldn't eat anything. We used a baby snot sucker, trying to open up her nasal passages so she could breathe. Michael was with her all day. She wasn't any better by the time I got home from work and I called the cat vet tech, E., and asked if she thought I'd be able to get in to see the vet on Saturday morning. She thought yes, and I just hoped Water would make it through the night to see the vet. E. called back 5 minutes later and said that with the history of this litter, she thought better of waiting until morning and offered to either bring supplies over to our house, or to meet her at the office. We agreed that option B was better so that she would have any supplies necessary at her disposal. I scooped Water up, took a suggestion from the book Kittens for Dummies and poured uncooked white rice grains into a clean sock and microwaved it to heat up the rice, and that made a good heat source for Water during the transport.

We got there and E., bless her heart, was dressed to go to a family Halloween party, but took time out to come take care of Water. She and another tech who was closing u for the evening set Water up in an oxygen/anesthesia tank with a humidifier and oxygen. She started to breathe easier (and through her nose) and took a nap. We took her out periodically so that E. could tube feed her, and give her her Clavamox and ointment. Everytime we took her out, she immediately went back to breathing through her mouth, so it wasn't her nose that seemed to be the problem, but that she wasn't getting enough oxygenation.

After an hour and a half, it seemed time to send her home and hope for the best until I could bring her back in the morning, with Charlotte and Spout and Spider all in tow, just to check their health.

I took her home and took her into the bathroom for some intense steam. She got a little fussy and I took her back to the room and set her up in some cozy blankets inside a cage that I set at eye level next to the bed and watched. She was breathing so hard. Eventually, I took her out and set her on my chest and she nuzzled under my neck for extra warmth and napped there for 45 min. or so. When she woke up, she was awfully fussy and vocal. I was afraid I knew what that meant, but opted for optimism that maybe she was feeling a little better and hungry and wanted to nurse. I put her in with Charlotte, but she kept crawling off into the corner of the cage and burying her head in the corner, so I pulled her out and set her back into the cage. A few minutes later she started convulsing, throwing her head back as if she were trying to scream, but I could see that her lungs weren't moving. I picked her up and tried to do some CPR, but her little body went limp and she was gone.

I held her and cried. Anger, hurt, disbelief, guilt and failure all ran through me simultaneously. I walked with her nestled in the crook of my arm into the bedroom and woke Michael up. He took her from me and held her and cried, clearly also just as shocked that this happened to quickly, and to a kitten we thought was going to kick the URI.

We wrapped her in towels and put her in a cage with ice packs until we could take her body back to the shelter.

In retrospect, I believe that her lungs filled with fluid. I'm no vet, but the fact that on pure oxygen she could breathe through her nose, but was gasping for breath otherwise, plus the convulsions (which I suspect were a result of her basically drowning) make me think that's what happened. She just didn't get on medications soon enough, and that kills me that she might still be here otherwise.

Bitsy's Battle

On Saturday morning, we woke from the sadness of losing Itsy to find that Bitsy was showing the same signs of weakness, lethargy and labored breathing that Itsy had been. So, we quickly put him in a cage and brought him to the shelter to get checked out.

He was given some subcutaneous fluids (IV fluids injected under the skin), some Duralactin and also some Nutri-Cal, a high-calorie, nutrient-rich paste that is the color of molasses, and some antibiotic eye cream for their eye infections. Bitsy still had some fight left in him and we took that as a good sign, though we were now very paranoid. I asked about starting Clavamox drops, but they told us that it can cause problems in the digestive tract for kittens that young, and just to let their body fight off the infection, which was viral anyway, so antibiotics don't work anyhow.

By Sat. afternoon, though I was really afraid for Bitsy's life, so I made an appointment with my regular vet that evening, ready to shell out of my own pocket not to lose another one. He wasn't eating. Trying to hand feed him while he was breathing through his mouth brought him very close to aspirating the KMR and he wasn't getting any nutrition.

I took Bitsy in and my vet said that she would put Bitsy on Clavamox to at least combat the secondary infections his tiny body was trying to fight off. My immediate concern was about his lack of appetite. His body was going through so many calories, and he wasn't eating to keep up, most likely because breathing through his mouth was interfering with being able to breathe and swallow at the same time.

They offered to teach me to tube-feed him, but it terrified me. I was already shaky from all of the emotional overload of the past 24 hours and didn't think I could forgive myself if I accidentally put the tube into his lungs instead of stomach and drowned him in KMR. So, I decided to pay to keep him overnight. They promised a tube-feeding every 3 hours, sub-cutaneous fluids as needed, nebulizer treatments (like a concentrated humidifier), and oxygen as needed. It was certainly more than we had at our disposal to give him, and I was willing to pay if it gave him a chance.

On Sunday, I went to visit Bitsy and make a decision. His breathing was better—he was breathing through his nose and it wasn't labored. His eye was still in bad shape, crusted shut, but I took the improved breathing as a good sign. But I still didn't think he was out of the woods; maybe one more night in intensive care would get him over the hump. So, we opted for another night.

On Monday, the vet called with an update that he was still the same. Low energy, no improvement from the day before. I agonized all day over what to do. At $280 a day, we couldn't afford to keep him there forever, but I felt bringing him home with no specialized care was a death sentence.

One of my friends, D., suggested maybe her vet could help. She had found and raised (with much help from her vet and vet techs) two very sick newborn kittens. She called and made an appointment for me that evening.

I left work early, and made a mad dash to pick up Charlotte, and the three other kittens from the shelter (they went in for a nebulizer treatment), drop them off at home, swing by my vet to pick up Bitsy, and make a mad dash to make it to my friend's vet by 5:30.

They took one look at him and whisked him off to warm him up, feed him and evaluate him. When they brought him back, they made it clear he was critical, but where there is life, there is hope, and they had been able to save kittens this critical before. And, as one vet tech said, "someone has to speak up for these little guys." Finally, someone who cared in the same way I did. He wasn't a statistic, a game of odds that was not in his favor. He was a tiny, living breathing creature.

The vet said "We can teach you to tube-feed, or one of my techs, E., is willing to take him home with her and care for him." I was so grateful that someone who knew what they were doing was willing to take that task on. (My vet had warned me that "tube feeding IS a scary thing" and "only a select few of us will even do tube feeding." So, fresh off of those words of "encouragement," I wasn't feeling very confident. If someone who handled animals for a living was too afraid, it seemed unlikely that I would be able to master the skill without injuring or killing that which I was trying to help.)

E. agreed to take Bitsy home, saying she'd call if anything changed. I gave her a tearful, grateful, hopeful hug, kissed Bitsy and told him to be strong.

A little after 5 a.m., E. called and said she had been up with him all night in the bathroom to give him steam and tube-feeding him. He was getting worse and it was probably only a matter of minutes or hours for him.

We were devastated. I think we felt less guilt, knowing that we had tried every possible medical intervention, but no less sadness.

I picked up Bitsy's body at lunch and took him back to the shelter. He was to be cremated, just like Itsy, and the ashes returned to us so that they could forever be a part of our family. I cried for him as I said my goodbyes, and went home to work from home for the rest of the afternoon.