Note: this is a sad post; if you’re not up for it, I totally understand and I’ll see you on Monday with the usual happy fare. (None of the sadness involves any Catsbys or Nestlings, they’re all perfectly fine.)
Last week, Michelle asked if I’d be willing to take a pregnant cat. I told her that I would, once Daisy and the boys had headed to Petsmart. The cat was boarded at the vet for the weekend, and I figured I’d pick her up sometime Monday.
Sunday afternoon my phone rang, and I got the news that when the weekend staff showed up they found that the cat had unexpectedly gone into labor and she had a kitten hanging halfway out. They delivered the kitten (who had died), and five more kittens were born pretty quickly after that. They did an x-ray and found that she still had three kittens left inside her. I left immediately to pick her up and take her to the emergency vet.
This is Firefly.
These are Firefly’s first five kittens.
I had expected to find a distressed cat, but Firefly was bright-eyed and curious, and when we were waiting on the vet at the emergency clinic, she was interested in exploring the room. What she was NOT interested in, in the slightest, were her kittens. They were pretty squirmy and vocal and trying to nurse, but she had no milk at all (in retrospect, I wish very much that I had thought to bring bottles and formula with me). She let them try to nurse, but that was the extent of her involvement with them.
The ER vet did a couple more x-rays and we could see the 3 kittens still inside. But they hadn’t moved into the birth canal yet, so there was a strong chance that Firefly could still deliver them naturally. The vet suggested calcium and colostrum injections, and that I take her home, put her somewhere quiet, and hopefully let nature take its course. I got a second colostrum injection to give her in a couple of hours (we were hoping that it, and further labor, would help encourage her milk to come in.)
On the drive home, she delivered a kitten, but sadly one of the other kittens died. I got she and the kittens set up in a crate in my bathroom and left them alone. When I checked on them a little while later, I saw that she hadn’t cleaned the newest kitten, hadn’t chewed through the cord or consumed the afterbirth, was just sitting there chilling while the kittens huddled in a pile on the other side of the crate. I cut through the cord, cleaned the kitten, and put him/her up against Firefly. When the kitten tried to nurse, she kicked it away.
Firefly had zero milk, didn’t want her kittens up against her, and didn’t seem inclined to birth any more kittens. So I made the decision to take the kittens downstairs, get them nice and warm, feed them, and give them doses of the colostrum supplement I luckily had on hand. Once fed, they settled down and slept quietly.
I set up a camera in the bathroom so I could keep an eye on Firefly without constantly bothering her. She came out of the crate, used the litter box, drank some water, and then went back in to snooze. Around 1 am – 6 hours since the previous kitten had been born – I called and talked to the vet who said that as long as she didn’t seem to be in distress, it’d be okay to monitor her for a few more hours.
Literally the moment I hung up the phone, Firefly birthed a kitten. As soon as the kitten was out and squirming, she pushed it away and turned her back to it. I went into the bathroom, cut the cord, and brought the kitten down to feed, clean, and reunite it with its siblings.
I spent the rest of the night feeding kittens every 2 hours and keeping an eye on Firefly. By morning, she still didn’t look in distress to me, but she did look very tired. I didn’t want to wait until she was actually in a crisis situation, so I took her to the vet and came back home to feed the kittens.
A few hours later the vet’s office called to let me know that there was a kitten waiting for me. Firefly stayed at the vet to recover from the c-section, and I brought the last kitten home to reunite it with its siblings. (Firefly’s milk never did come in.)
The last kitten.
So again I was feeding kittens every two hours (I fell back into the routine pretty quickly). By the third feeding, 4 were taking the bottle and I was tube feeding the other three. Everyone seemed to be doing okay.
At some point late Monday, I was a little worried about one lethargic kitten. When I went to feed them a few hours later, I taken entirely by surprise: three brown tabbies had died since the last feeding, and the tuxie was in the process of dying. Before I could do anything at all, the tuxie died. And suddenly I was down from seven to three kittens.
Twelve hours later, Tuesday evening, another kitten died.
The last two kittens hung in there for another day, but Wednesday evening I lost one, and in the early hours of Thursday, I lost the last one.
It’s been a tough week, to say the least. It’s been so frustrating and heartbreaking to watch them die no matter what I did (I dimly recall promising the last two kittens anything in the entire world if they’d stay alive for me – “please, please… just stop dying.”) This is Firefly’s second litter of the year (when she showed up at a feral colony in Huntsville, she had older kittens with her), and so surely she went into the pregnancy – a pregnancy of NINE kittens – already physically depleted.
The one bright spot in this is that Firefly herself is recovering well – the staff at the vet’s office reported that she’s super sweet and a charming little lovebug. If she had given birth on her own on the street, there’s no way she would have survived.
I never had a chance to name the kittens, but I wanted to share their story here because I didn’t want their brief lives to go by unremarked. They deserved so much more than an incredibly short, sad life, but I know that I did everything I possibly could – and that they were warm and fed and very much loved during their time here.
(Firefly is still at the vet’s, and I imagine she will go to Michelle’s and will be available for adoption soon.)
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I am so grateful that I had these sweet, silly knuckleheads to remind me to breathe during all of this. Being able to just go in and hang out with them for a little while when things got hard was a great help.
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Posted on social media (Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr) yesterday.
It’s Thlurrrpsday, so please admire TaterPlover’s form. Nice job, Tater!
I love this picture of former fosters Phoenix (2017) in the back and Amber (formerly Ambercup, 2015) in the front. They’re all “Shhh, she’s coming! Look casual!”
(Thanks Debra!)
YouTube link
There is a whole lotta purring going on around here. The Nestlings are some happy, happy lapkittens.
Good night innernets. (Wren)
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Previously
2022: Jamie and Marsali playing a rousing game of “I bite you, you bite me” while Angus and Fergus do their own thing in the background.
2021: Solenoid update.
2020: Clyde and Honey in the Cutie box.
2019: “They’ll never find me here!” Katriane thinks.
2018: No entry.
2017: She almost looks airbrushed, doesn’t she?
2016: Tuesday morning, the pond was fine, and by Tuesday evening, there were hundreds of dead catfish floating on the surface of the water.
2015: Miz Poo
2014: So, it came as a shock to only a few of you that we’d decided to keep Dennis.
2013: No entry.
2012: No entry.
2011: I love how FS has his big ol’ rabbit feet pressed against Finnegan.
2010: Fostering by the numbers.
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: What a difference five weeks makes.