Long Day Part 3: Sick Kitten

As soon as Lynne and I got back from East Lake Animal Hospital, we were onto the next job: moving in two cats whose owners was going away. (Lynne doesn't usually petsit, but she was doing a favor for a personal friend.) The cats were going in a hutch, so Lynne and her friend worked to get it all ready. Meanwhile, Margaret and I started checking the Project Purr messages. All of a sudden, Lynne rushed in saying that one of the kittens was really sick. Margaret and I rushed out to find one of the feral kittens lying on his side, dehydrated and barely conscious. Margaret and I immediately rushed him to the emergency vet.

The vet gave him fluids and tried to get him warm. His temperature was too low, and blood tests showed his liver was working too hard. The best guess the vet had was that he had been stung by a bee, and was too small to work through it on his own. The overnight vet eventually guessed that he may have eaten a bee, and the stinger had been caught somewhere in the digestive system, and that it was continuously pumping venom into the kitten. Whatever it was, it was the vets were not able to save the little guy, and he died during the night.

The kitten was feral, one of a litter of three tabby males. They had all been trapped and sent to the shelter, put on the kill list, but Lynne had rescued them. They had been joined by another male kitten of the same age, and were living in a hutch in Lynne's backyard while waiting for a home. Tomorrow the remaining kittens are supposed to go to their new home as garden cats, where they will be named and loved.

I fed all of those kittens that morning, and there was nothing wrong. It's not like there was anything that could have been done to stop that bee, but it hurts just the same. Loosing such a young cat with so much potential is hard. But it's something that happens with cat rescue. Not all of them make it, and sometimes there's nothing you can do.