Last Fall, Lois had a litter of 4 kittens. Three beautiful black ones and a little orange striped tabby. They were so cute. There's something about Lois though that I need to make clear right off the bat.
She has a bad upper respiratory infection and she has this thing about moving her kittens frequently.
I'm not sure which issue caused the problems with these kittens, but it may have been one or both.It was September 6th, 2012 when she gave birth to them. When I saw them the first time, they all seemed to be doing pretty good. However, one night it was cloudy and threatening to rain and for some odd reason, Lois decided to move the kittens to our neighbor's yard. He has an old truck sitting there and the bed of it is full of junk. It also has a toolbox or whatever it is, stretched across the back behind the cab and I guess she felt that was a safe place for the kittens. I caught her in the process of moving them and watched where she was going, which is how I knew where they were. Since it was already starting to rain, I grabbed the last two kittens and brought them to her at the truck. What else was I supposed to do? I didn't want her to leave anybody behind, they needed their mama and with the rain, I felt it was best to get both at the same time and pass them to her in the truck.
I was annoyed at her because it really wasn't a great place for them, but you can't reason with a cat, know what I mean?
I left the kittens in her capable care and went to bed. The next morning, I went to check on them and they were being moved again. I found two but couldn't figure out where the other two went. I waited a bit until Lois came back and saw her coming from our other neighbor's lean-to shed, which connects to our back yard. Okay, that was a decent place - at least out of the rain and heat. There were some old truck tire rims in there filled with leaves and that's where she put them. Right inside those tire rims. I got to say, she's creative - haha. I noticed the kittens were all a bit wet, but didn't really think anything of it at the time. It was still relatively warm out so I figured they would dry and be fine.
About a week later, I picked up the little orange kitten and while I was holding him, I noticed that he was breathing funny. He acted like he was gasping for air. I got concerned because I didn't know what was wrong. I had never seen this before. I put him up to Lois and he didn't seem to want to eat. So, out of desperation, I got a kitten nursing bottle and some formula and tried to bottle feed him. He didn't seem to be able to swallow.
I called our vet and told her the problem and she said that it was likely aspiration pneumonia. If the kittens got wet in the bed of that truck during the rain the week before, it was likely they inhaled water and their little lungs were too immature to cough it up and then they probably got a bit chilled during the night and subsequently got sick. Now, that being said, Lois has that infection in her lungs too, so my question was, did she make them sick by passing the infection on through her milk or did they get sick from the rain and getting cold? We'll never know.
The vet said I could try giving the kitten antibiotics, which I did but he never got better. Lois obviously knew he was dying and she kept moving those kittens and avoiding him. One Sunday afternoon about a week later, I found that she had moved the kittens yet again. There's this old toolbox, the kind that's on wheels and has a cabinet at the bottom, drawers on top, behind our travel trailer. I found 3 of the kittens in there. I was furious with Lois because that was the most dangerous place she could put them. It's old and rusty, full of holes and there's no way I could get to them if they had fallen through the holes to the bottom, without having to move a pile of other junk to access the entire toolbox. I frantically searched for the orange kitten, because all the black ones were accounted for. I moved them back to the old tire rim and looked everywhere for that orange one. I couldn't find him. Finally, I went back to the toolbox and strained to look inside it, but if you could see it, you'd understand how difficult it was to look deeper than the first shelf in there. I finally stuck my hand in, at the risk of getting cut by the rusty edges or bitten by some unknown creature in there. I found the kitten - he had fallen through one of the holes that had rusted out. Somehow with adrenalin pumping, I managed to fish him out. He was pretty limp and at first I thought he was already dead, but after looking closer, I realized he was still breathing, just very weak.
I took him back to the others and coaxed Lois into the tire rim with them. I put him up to her and she did reach her paw out and placed it on him. I thought maybe there was hope. He still wouldn't latch on to her, but what more could I do? By this time, I noticed one of the other kittens acting the same way, gasping for air.
I started administering antibiotics to that one too. She had wicked snot coming from her nose and crud from her mouth. It broke my heart. Thankfully at this stage, the other two still seemed okay.
Late that night, I went back to the neighbor's yard, with all the creepy crawlies in the shed, to check on the kittens. I found the little orange one lying off the one side of the tire rim and Lois nursing the others. From the way his paws were spread out beneath him, I knew he was dead. I picked him up and he was still warm, so it must have been only moments ago that he died. I was heartbroken. He was so cute and so fragile.
I put him up to Lois and let her smell him. She gave him a lick and then looked at me like she understood that he was gone.
I took him to the house, wrapped him in some newspaper and put him in a box and then buried him the next morning. I named him Rusty, partly for his color but also because of his incident of falling into the rusty hole in the toolbox.
I went back to check on the other kittens and the little female with the snotty nose was still having a rough time but she was nursing so I gave her antibiotics and left her with Lois, hoping for the best.
The next day, I couldn't find the kittens in the tire rim anymore. I searched everywhere between our yard and the neighbor's. I finally found them on the ROOF of the shed where the tire rims were. I was livid. I mean, what cat in her right mind puts kittens on a roof - anywhere? Sure, it's somewhat protected by the huge trees hanging over it, but seriously, they could fall off.
So...I got a ladder to allow myself to climb up and see exactly where they were on the roof. They were precariously near the edge on one side of it, but still accessible if I could find a way to move them. I got down, found a golf club and climbed back up the ladder. I carefully inched the golf club up to the kittens and pulled them towards me one by one. I put them back in the tire rim. When I got them all, I went to put the ladder and golf club away and came back to check on them - and they were gone - AGAIN! In a matter of 5 minutes they all disappeared from the tire rim. I stood there in our neighbor's shed, cursing Lois and wondering where she went this time. Would you believe it? Back on the roof!
I finally left her and the kittens alone, there was nothing I could do. I also couldn't give them any antibiotics anymore so I gave up and just checked on them as much as I could. About 4 days later, she brought the kittens down and they were sitting under a tree near the shed. They didn't appear any worse for wear, all things considered, and I figured she would find a new spot, hopefully closer to ground level. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Back on the roof they went. She carried them up there while I watched and thankfully I was there, because one did fall off. He broke his fall by landing in a tree and I was able to catch him before he fell all the way to the ground. Poor little fellow. I named him Scooter, since he had been one of the stronger ones at the beginning and moved pretty quickly.
It made me sick to think of finding a kitten dead after falling from the roof. It's about 8 feet high at the lowest point and about 10 feet at the highest. There's a vehicle sitting under part of it, so it wouldn't be as far if they landed on the car but what are the chances?
It rained that night again, and Lois finally moved them off the roof and back to our yard. I didn't get a chance to check on them though until later the next day. That's when I found one of them with a broken neck - obviously dead. I don't know if it fell off the roof or if Lois broke its neck when she carried it. The kittens were about 4 weeks old by this time and getting too big for her. She's a tiny cat. I didn't see it happen so I really don't know.
I got out the newspaper and another box and buried him next to the little Rusty.
The remaining two kittens seemed to be okay for the most part. The little snotty-nosed one was still having issues, but she was running around more and I thought maybe she'd be okay. At this point they were in a pile of logs in our yard. I managed to make a little pen of sorts, out of the logs to protect them a bit better but wasn't convinced that would work for long.
The next morning I went out to check on them again and both kittens seemed fine. They were eating and walking around so I left them alone.
Later that afternoon I went back out to look at them again and noticed one was missing. I searched everywhere. Lois was sitting in the pen with the other one and he seemed fine and she didn't act like anything was wrong. All of a sudden she got up and there was the kitten, the little snotty one, flat as a pancake under her mother. I was horrified to say the least. I don't know if Lois accidentally sat on her and killed her or if she was sitting on her to protect her until I came.
Once again, I got out the newspaper and another box and buried that kitten too. I called her Bubbles because of her snotty nose.
Now we were down to one kitten. He too had a bad eye infection and a snotty nose, but he seemed strong. He certainly wasn't showing any signs of distress. I left him alone for the most part, as far as giving antibiotics. I only treated his eyes with some Terramycin and that seemed to help clear them up fairly quickly. Since he was the only survivor of that litter, I named him Rupert, after the fellow on the show Survivor that won the million dollars a few years ago. Some of you may remember him with the tye-dyed shirts.
Rupert seemed to get stronger over the course of the next couple of weeks. He quickly learned where I fed all the adult cats and he would run over to the plate I have out there for them and sit in the middle of it. See?
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| Rupert (center) Owen (left) & O-jay (right) |
Then one night it got chilly outside. It was supposed to get down in the 40's and I didn't know what to think about Rupert. However, since he was 6 weeks old and still hanging out with Lois most of the time, I trusted him to her care and went to bed. The next day, Rupert was breathing funny, like his siblings did. My heart sank. I started giving him the antibiotics, but that didn't seem to help at all. Each day he got a little worse. I called a friend of mine and she said I could try giving him saline drops in his nose to try to clear it up. That seemed to be his biggest problem, he wasn't able to clear his nose very well and he was frequently choking on the crud in his throat. I didn't know what to do. The saline drops were a fail, he didn't like that for one thing and they just didn't seem to do anything for him.
Then it got colder. I found a box for him for the night and since he was fairly weak by this time, I decided I could put him in the box with it tipped on its side so he could get out if he wanted to, and I lined the box with some towels and a thick wool blanket and wrapped a heated rice pack in a towel as well and surrounded him with all of that. The rice pack to give him heat and steam and the towels to keep him covered up. I put a tarp over the whole thing and made a tunnel for Lois to get in and out and it seemed to be a good set up.
I'm not sure that it helped any or just delayed the inevitable, but the 3rd night of cold temperatures was Rupert's undoing. I went out to him late that night, put a fresh heated rice pack in the box with him, tried to get him to eat a bit, but he wasn't interested. Suddenly, he started screeching and his entire body stiffened. I was terrified because I didn't know what was wrong. I had just moved him a bit to make sure he was covered and he started this horrible screeching. It lasted about a minute and then he sort of went into a trance and just sat there, barely breathing. I didn't want to leave him but I couldn't very well sit outside all night with him. Bringing him in the house wasn't an option because of my 3 inside cats. I didn't want them catching whatever he had and it would be a circus trying to deal with him being so sick and them being curious about him. It was too risky.
I finally resigned myself to the fact that Rupert would be gone by morning and coaxed Lois in with him before heading to bed.
At 2 am I woke up with a bad feeling so I got up and grabbed a flashlight and went outside to check on him. He wasn't in the box. Half asleep, I shone the flashlight around the yard to see if Lois was nearby and had him with her. She was sitting near the feeding area but Rupert wasn't with her. I finally found him quite a ways away from the box, lying in the cold, wet grass. He was still alive though. I picked him up gently and brought him back to the box and got him all snuggled in again. He didn't fuss this time, just laid there, limp.
Lois came into the box with him and I left her to care for him, knowing it was just a matter of time.
At 5 am, I went back out there and again, he was out of the box. I looked around and this time he was just on the other side of the box, stiff and cold. Dead.
Poor Rupert. Here is a photo of him about a week before he died.
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| Little Rupert |
I had a box already prepared so I just put him in it and went back to bed for awhile. Later that morning, I buried the last of the kittens with his siblings. I was so sad to have lost him too, but part of me was relieved to finally have this fiasco overwith.
Lois seemed a bit lost over the next few days, but soon she bounced back and was her usual perky self. I felt sorry for her, but I guess cats don't grieve the same way humans do. I think she knew her babies were sick and she accepted their deaths with grace. At least she still had Owen and O-jay for company and life went on.I wish, in hindsight, I had more experience with kittens and their various ailments. I found out later that it might have been their blood sugar getting too low and I could have given them some Karo syrup to bring it back up. If I had the money, I would have hauled them and Lois to the vet and had them all treated professionally, but I can't do that with no income.
Ideally, I would like to have Lois spayed and of course treated for her upper respiratory infection. She's a sweet little cat but I don't like all the kittens because with that comes more responsibility such as caring for them when they are sick and finding them homes. With so many cats already in shelters, it's difficult to do that in this day and age.
It breaks my heart to think of turning Lois over to animal control knowing they will put her down because she's sick. I have already spoken with them about that and I can't do it. If there was a way to prevent her from getting pregnant again, I would do it, but without the funds to get her spayed, it's impossible.
So, for the time being, I will enjoy this new litter she's got and hope for the best for all of them.
As for Rusty, Scooter, Bubbles and Rupert - RIP sweet babies.
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