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.