I really need some advice RE: Grieving Mother Cat

bendy dennett

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My cat (well it's one of my Mum's cats, but I am currently living at home) had 4 kittens on Monday and I woke up this morning (Wednesday) to find them all dead in the nest. I can only assume that the Mother was not producing enough milk, as she never left them except to go to the toilet and seemed to be acting suitably maternal so I figured all was normal.

I was literally in pieces this morning (for the Mother cat mainly), and after an hour or so I managed to pull myself together and noticed she seemed to have lost interest in the nest and was downstairs eating from the normal food bowl instead of the one I put next to her nest so I removed the dead kittens and have buried them in the garden. This nearly killed me and I was blubbering like a baby (I am a 26 year old man)

The problem I am now facing is that now the Mother cat seems to have become interested in the nest again and is sitting in there wide awake.... just sitting.

I don't know what to do? She's never really been massively affectionate so I don't want to try and take her away and bring her in to my room as I know this will agitate her. And to top it all off, one of my other cats seems to be acting aggressively toward her - hissing and growling every time she sees her (incidentally this is also the Mother-in-questions Mother and the Grandmother of said dead kittens)

I really could use some helpful advice from someone who has experienced something similar

And yes, before anyone suggests, I will be getting her spayed ASAP.

Thank you in advance.
 

di and bob

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When I have removed kittens to bring them to their new homes, mama cat always sat crying and looking for them. This lasts for two or three days and is indeed heartbreaking. I'm so sorry you had to go through that terrible experience, and no one at this sight will think anything of you crying for those dead babies, we all would. It just shows that you have feelings. The other cat is most likely sensing that your cat is upset and is upset too, or she could be smelling the kittens on your cat and thinks she is 'different, just like when they come back from the vet and smell different. I pray the kittens have crossed over the Rainbow Bridge and have joined the many before them who will watch over them. Please accept my condolences and give mama a kiss for me. Take good care of yourself and your babies, you are a good man!
 
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bendy dennett

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Thank you. She is still in the nest now. She is laying down but isn't sleeping.

There is something else I feel I should mention, and apologies if this annoys some of you, but this has all happened out of my control due to neglect on my Mothers part before I was living here RE: Not getting the cats spayed in time.

That there is another cat in the household (the grieving Mother's sister) that is heavily pregnant and as far as I know fell pregnant a maximum of 7 days after the one I was originally talking about.

I have a horrible feeling that this is going to cause some very strange and difficult behaviour amongst the cats.

I know it must seem like this is all completely irresponsible ( to a degree I guess it is :( ) but I am trying not to point the finger or place blame here as it was sort of a financial issue that lead to them not being spayed straight away, and my Mum already had homes for the kittens as she works in a very big office and has hundreds of (responsible) friends who snapped at the chance of a kitten.

After all.. who could have predicted this?

But yeah, back to this - The other cat that is about to give birth very soon.... I appreciate that most people will have never been in this situation but has anyone got at least a clue what to expect?

I am at my wits end worrying about this.
 

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Hi!  What a tragedy. I dont think it was lack of milk, they wouldnt go suddenly, all toghether in a few nightly hours. I would sooner guess on a sickedness of some sort. Bacteria perhaps or a parasite, or genetical - although if genetical they wouldnt go together either, but perhaps one a day. 

This also means, I cant suggest you try and get hold on some orphans, or kittens from a very big litter.

Not if we dont know what happened.

The problem is essentially the same as in other cases when the mom mourns... Try and be as sympathetic you can. Be near, talk softly.  Give her perhaps a couple of small stuffed animals, like small teddy bears, or even better, small teddy cats.

Lessen a little on the extra rich food I suppose you are giving her.

The milk coming on is a problem. As I know, most just let it dry out.  Although you must have eyes open so she dont get inflammed there... In that case, you must contact a vet asap, mastitis hurts.

Good luck!

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di and bob

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There are many more that are LOTS more experienced in the kitten department then me, I hope they answer you. I know exactly what you are saying about the expense of spaying, I have begged every vet around here to give me a discount, one went down about 20.00. I don't blame them though, they would go broke if they did it too much. I see all the cats at the shelter and it breaks my heart, then people dump their unwanted cats around my place and they just know I'll take care of them and come to my house. I've spayed 5cats in the last couple of years, people actually dump them, pregnant and so afraid. I did find them good homes. Someone left a old neutered and declawed male on the road who had mouth cancer, I know for a fact he was a house cat, he wanted in so bad. I gave him a loving home until he died and he was SO grateful it made me cry. This is why on this site we are pro neutering and spaying, we see so much heartache. I don't think the other cat having kittens will disrupt the household. She may be very protective of them though, you may want to isolate them for a while. No one should condemn you, you are doing the best you can, it's not irresponsible when you will do something about it now. Don't worry, you can get lots of advise on this site, cats have been having kittens for thousands of years, you'll do fine. Just remember, cats can get pregnant RIGHT AWAY after birth, I had one that had kittens two and 1/2 months apart. So don't delay in the spaying, and keep the males away! Once again good luck!
 
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bendy dennett

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Thank you.

I've just been looking up about Mastitis and I'm guessing it is pretty easy to spot? At the moment her nipples seem pretty normal?
 
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bendy dennett

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Thank you for the kind words.

All I can do now is keep my fingers crossed that things don't get any worse.
 

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I also heard that sometimes spaying soon after loosing kittens can help with the grief since it will eliminate a lot of the hormones that are probably confusing her right now. Part of her problem I imagine may also be that she has full milk ducts and no kittens to nurse, I know in human mothers that can hurt quite a lot. I am sorry you had to go through that, I can't image how heartbreaking it must be. 

As far as spaying, where do you live? Some states have free spay/neuter or heavily discounted.
 
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bendy dennett

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Hello again.

......so you know when I said I had my fingers crossed things didn't get any worse? Well....

If everyone here wasn't so nice I would be unleashing my full extensive vocabulary or the very finest British swear/cuss words that would offend even an Australian, in every sentence, USING ALL CAPS RAGE to describe some of the events that have ocurred in the last 3 days. The sort of obsenities you only bring out for special occasions, like if you were to come home from work to find your missus in bed with your best mate or your brother or something so bad that you just wanna....... you get my point.

So to let you know what happened....

A few hours after my last post on here I was keeping an eye on the Mother, making sure she seemed OK and all that and she looked a bit sad but generally was pretty quiet and wasn't too agitated.

So I'm sitting in the lounge when she walks across the room in front of me and out of the corner of my eye I catch a glint of red, looked over to her, and lo and behold things COULD get worse. There is blood coming from her vagina and very suddenly I noticed a look in her eyes she didn't have a few hours before - Panic.

Of course I absolutely crapped myself for her wellbeing as I had already buried 4 cats in the garden that very morning and I didn't much fancy another one, and just thought 'this isn't the time to fanny about on yahoo answers for 20 minutes seeing whether blood coming from the vagina of a cat that has just lost all 4 kittens is normal or not, this is obviously NOT supposed to be happening. So she was rushed to the vets in 10 minutes. This was at around 7pm, so it was so lucky I noticed it when I did for reasons I will go in to in a minute.

So I get to the vets at around 7:15pm (bearing in mind they close at 8pm and I don't think there is any sort of 24 hour pet ER around here at all? If there is I can only think London would be the closest one and that is about 120 miles away) and he says she has got an inflamed uterus (Pyometra), so he injects her with a painkiller and an anti inflammatory and says she needs to be spayed ASAP, like preferably NOW, but he doesn't want to do it immediately, because she is:

a) still really physically weak from labour, so the anaesthetic might kill her

b) too inflamed to operate, so the wound would be massive and too much for her body to try and heal along with the infection AND recovering from labour AND the added emotional stress from grieving. This too alone would probably kill her

c)  ..(and these are his actual words lol).. "she really is a poor specimen isn't she? I haven't seen a cat this small that wasn't dead in YEARS!"

He does kind of have a point though. 2 days after giving birth to 4 kittens and she only weighed 2.4kg which is actually ridiculous. ............That's 5.29lbs in old money btw ;)
She is just a really really small framed cat (like a cat version of Kylie Minogue or something), and should never have been allowed to have a litter in the first place.

So the consultation and 2 injections comes to £50 and he says she NEEDS to be spayed within 2 days MAX or she will become toxic and obviously die from internal infection So come back in tomorrow. I made the appointment for 1pm the next day. and took her home where the bleeding died down and she seemed ok until about 6am (I stayed up with her all night.... I couldn't leave her alone after the day she had had.)

Soooooo.

The following day (Thursday Morning - BST -)

At around 8am I notice one of her nipples (which were not big like they should have been for a nursing mother) is huge and swollen which must have happened so quickly. Great.... Good old Mitosis has popped in to join the party. This should be fun... -_-

During the course of the morning after I noticed this she seemed to lose a lot of energy and it dawned on me that I had seen her eat a little of her normal 'complete' dry food, but she had literally only drank a couple of sips of water that can't have added up to more than around a couple of teaspoons, and when a cat isn't drinking, you know something is seriously not right.

I kept a close eye on her, all the while in my room with me on my bed looking and looking really drained. 12:45pm FINALLY comes and I go to the vets once again, and this time a different vet has a look at her, and I explain all about everything.

After 2 lots of blood tests, one to test for kidney/liver failure/deformities etc. and another test for whatever else he was testing for, I don't remember, he too agrees that she almost definitely has an inflamed uterus and is 90% sure she is in the very early stages of a severe bacterial infection that medicine would stand no chance against, so she literally HAS to go in for spaying within 12 hours or she WILL die of infection. Oh, and it shows that she is anaemic, also her red blood cell count is low, so there's a good possibility that she has feline leukemia which could also explain her apparent abnormality in size and weigh. Oh yeah... and this cuts her chances of surviving through an operation to remove a large infected womb by about 20% (not your standard spaying, they go in through the belly instead of the side because of its size) and also cuts her chances of actually recovering fully from the infection even WITH a course of antibiotics afterwards by about 40% because her body will have trouble healing its self. Plus she's weak anyway, obviously. It really was just one thing after the other.

Add that to everything else she has been through in 36 hours and you have one very fragile cat that is probably on the cusp of just giving up.

I left her in the hands of the vet, and agreed to go in to pick her up at 6:30pm, although I was made aware that this 'wasn't an every day spaying' and there was an increased chance of complications in her current condition, and even though I knew she had a better than 50% chance of pulling out of the anaesthetic I prepared myself for bad news, as I am a pessimist at heart.

Luckily the operation went perfectly and she regained full conciousness shortly after, and in the 2-3 hours after the operation when the nurses were looking after her she perked up and looked 100% healthier than when I dropped her off only hours earlier.

The vet removed her swollen uterus which had started to become badly infected and would have killed her by the end of the day or the following morning at very latest.

ALL IN ALL, INCLUDING THE FIRST £50 CONSULTATION AND INJECTIONS, THE TOTAL AMOUNT PAYABLE FOR PROCEDURES, MEDICINES, BLOOD TESTS, LAB COSTS, STAFF AND ADMIN FEES, IT WAS £490 INCLUDING TAX (20%) ----- SO THAT'S ABOUT $750 EQUIVALENT.  OUCH. ESPECIALLY WHEN A STANDARD NEUTERING COSTS ABOUT £60!

So far she is doing OK. It is now 00:51 BST on Saturday morning, she is eating loads and loads, drinking loads of water, BUT, somehow now her personality has completely flipped on its head. She won't leave my side and meows loudly around the house what I can only assume is calling for the kittens? She hated human contact other than stroking her head/back like normal before, but now she is on my lap, snuggle up, head rubbbing and purring and won't leave my bed

So the story of the dead kittens now makes some sense. She is not a cat that nature intended to have kittens. Her natural instinct is to breed, and in nature this would have lead to her death had I not intervened. It's natural selection trying to do it's thing I guess, but humans have done worse things to nature than domesticate cats, and it's not their fault that they're domesticated lol.... so in a way I guess it is kind of out duty as humans to do everything in our power to care for them as we are after all the ones responsible for them existing as they do in our homes.

Anyway enough with the philosophy crap. ^_^

Let this please be a warning, advice, or just a story to remember so you can drill it in to that crazy cat lady down the road with 27 cats running wild, that: Kittens with no place to go, and a house that smells like something died aren't the only risks of letting your Domesticated cat breed like she was a Wild cat....

Oh but that's not all. There's icing to go on this 13 tier cake teetering precariously on a wonky table. AND a cheese and biscuits course for after.

The vet didn't give us a lampshade for her head to stop her getting at her stitches which are internal and external and 1.75/2.00 inches long and very visible as her entire belly was shaven, and guess what?

Aside from the fact she now feels the need to try and be the most active she has ever been? Frightening the life out of me, trying big jumps before I can stop her, and every time she lands, I expect her fresh stitches to explode open. She does NOT want those stitches holding her together. Apparently she wants to experience her guts all over the floor, so she keeps going for them when she cleans herself and I have to jump to wherever she is and pull her head and teeth out of the fibres. 1 or 2 of the external ones holding the internal ones inside have started to come loose and I can't leave her alone as within an hour I reckon she could have the whole lot open. She never was a bright cat but  that is a dumb thing to want to do.

The cheese? Her sister is ready to explode kittens and I just know when she hears the kittens meowing she is going to freak out so badly and think that they are hers and she has found them and oooohh my God I don't even want to think about how to try and deal with that one.

The biscuits? I haven't closed my eyes for a single minute since I woke up on the Wednesday morning I found the kittens dead and had to bury them as I have CONSTANTLY been looking after one cat or the other. It's now 1:27am Saturday morning and I have work at 10:00am doing manual labour lugging around freaking logs in the bloody woods until 4pm, and then a huge meal to go to with loads of people in the evening just in case I wasn't already dead. I can't cancel either because I was the idiot that booked it last week >_<

I think I'm going a little bit crazy from not sleeping lol. It can't be good for your head missing 3 nights sleep in a row, kept awake purely by stress, worry, panic, and 8.2% English Cider.

I'll let you guys know how things go with Mother's situation, and also what happens when her sister has her kittens.

Sigh... wish me luck.


ps... that is the most I have ever written on a forum, you should feel privileged hehehe
 
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mamabirdy

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Hi Bendy, lol love the name,
You certainly have had a tough few days, and I sympathise with what you've gone through.
I've followed your post since you first put it up, probably because of the way you put your story across, there was something about the way you put it across that drew me and I now know why from your last post, which had me chuckling to myself. ( not the content of the post, but the way you put it). You are a fellow Brit and the irony of your tale is what drew me in. The cheese and biscuits bit was so funny. Whereabouts in the UK are you? I'm in Shropshire. I hope that everything goes ok with your other Momma to be, and that your Mum comes round to your sensible attitude. xxxx
 
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bendy dennett

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Hi Bendy, lol love the name,
You certainly have had a tough few days, and I sympathise with what you've gone through.
I've followed your post since you first put it up, probably because of the way you put your story across, there was something about the way you put it across that drew me and I now know why from your last post, which had me chuckling to myself. ( not the content of the post, but the way you put it). You are a fellow Brit and the irony of your tale is what drew me in. The cheese and biscuits bit was so funny. Whereabouts in the UK are you? I'm in Shropshire. I hope that everything goes ok with your other Momma to be, and that your Mum comes round to your sensible attitude. xxxx
Yeah, Bendy is a nickname from Primary school and it kind of stuck. Oh well, it's more interesting than Ben I guess. I'm from Gloucestershire. Cheltenham to be precise.

I got a bit carried away last night on the old writing front. I think it was the sleep deprivation. Although saying that I still haven't been to sleep because guess who decided to go in to labour at 4:30am this morning? Yup. And guess who, after choosing my freaking cupboard as a nest, would literally not let me leave her eye contact until after the first kitten was born. Yeah.

Ironically my mate who I was supposed to be working with text me at about 6am saying he had done his back in 'trying something new' with his missus so we wouldn't be working today (actual true story)  ..... hooray for small miracles I guess.

The labour did scare me quite a lot actually, because after an hour of contractions ranging from 2 minute intervals to around 30 second intervals all she was doing was pushing so hard she sounded like it was really hurting and there was hardly any liquid. Naturally I completely lost all composure bang on the hour mark because the internet told me to panic after exactly 60 minutes of contractions and no kitten. So I went for the DIY birthing kit. You know the crap the internet tells you will be of any use whatsoever? Stuff like a pot of vaseline and a sterile glove and DENTAL FLOSS. Yeah great let me just lasoo that umbilical chord off one kitten while I shove my gloved, lubed and sterile pinky up the mother cats arse with my free hand to correct the position of the next one!. If you're not trained vet or at very least an experienced cat breeder, then that stuff is about as much help as shouting PUSH! C'MON GIRL! YOU CAN DO THIS!. Which embarrassingly I did actually do but I'm putting that down to 3 nights without sleep though.

I didn't have to resort to the redneck midwife kit in the end, because by the time I had fumbled it all together I could see warm goo everywhere and a head poking out like that bit in Ace Ventura when he comes out of the Rhino.

The rest was easy. After the first came out the second one dropped literally about 4 minutes later which apparently is quite fast? I read somewhere that A lot of the time with first time Mums, the first kitten will die because of the long time it spends in the birth canal. It did look a bit weak in comparison to the second, but after 20 minutes or so, it was doing fine.

Well I say the rest was easy, and technically it was. About 30 minutes after the second one came the third one. Healthy, strong, great. What came after wasn't a massive issue for the Mum, but I went all weird for 10 minutes after investigating to see how she was doing.

As I looked, the 4th and final 'kitten' (and I use the word kitten very loosely here) came out looking like a gooey, bumpy, golf ball made of random bits of what I assume was cartilage, skin, random bones, and a nose for good measure, all attached to the side of what looked like (and thinking back, it probably was) an entire set of kitten organs..... I definitely made out something resembling intestines before I ran away like a little girl and had to go and sit down for a bit and compose myself. And yeah it had a NOSE on it!  A LITTLE KITTEN NOSE! AHHHHHH WHY? WHY?!

I manned up (a bit lol) and went back to check on her 10 minutes later, and the first thing I see when I peek my head in the nest is her, happily crunching away on a nice big boney chunk of this nightmarish deformity like it was a packet of pork scratchings..... I left her to it after that.
 

Let me tell you. That moment will haunt me forever.

They are all doing brilliantly btw and they are all look pretty massive for newborns. I will weigh them up and put some pictures of them all up tomorrow unless something else goes wrong this week. Which, knowing me, it will do.


I'm off to bed now to finally get some sleep, as the sleep depro is actually starting to make me feel properly weird. It's making me see stuff in my periphal vision that isn't there when I turn around, and I keep going dizzy which isn't cool at all. On the plus side though: if I close my eyes, it's like a kaleidoscope, which is quite fun.... but I'm guessing that cant be a good sign either lol.
The joke is though I'm not even tired anymore?

Oh well... g'night.


 
 

mamabirdy

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OMG what a time you had, hope you managed to get a good nights sleep.
So Cheltenham is where you are, we shall be down in Gloucestershire in July, we go to Fairford every year for the airshow, we camp on the field behind the hangers and have a great time.
 
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bendy dennett

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Yeah it was a hard week for sure.

The kittens and mum seem to be doing well, and the grief of the other mum has died down a lot, only now she just sulks because I won't let her outside. I can't though, not yet. She's been through so much this week, and if I let her out and she split her stitches open whilst jumping up fences, and/or got them infected and became ill again or died because of it, I would never forgive myself.

This is the other cat and her 3 kittens. 1 is by her head, you can't really see it very well. But don't they look huge for new born kittens? They were only about 6 hours old there. I think they must have been a couple of days overdue, because she was looking for nests all week beforehand.

 
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I'm so sorry for you!  Puts all my worry into perspective, though.  I've got 6 healthy kittens, and I'm just worried that their skinny little mum will be able to keep up with feeding them.

Did you get a FeLeuk test on your cat?  If it was me, I'd rather know one way or the other instead of worrying about it forever.
 
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bendy dennett

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Hey all... just to let you know, the poorly cat is better now and it turns out she doesn't have leukemia, but she is anemic and the vet wants to keep an eye on her weight because she is under 2.5kg (yet she still eats loads?)

She is just small framed imo. She's not super skinny or malnourished or anything, she's just a tiny cat.


The Mother and kittens are doing fine too btw :)
 

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This post made me laugh and cry! Glad they are all ok now, shame about the 4 dead kittens though
 

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I am glad to hear the poor cat whose kittens died and she got pyo , is recovering ,  and that her sister and the sister's  kittens are doing OK. 

 Make sure not to let the new mum cat outside because cats can get pregnant again even when nursing a litter --  which would be very  hard on her if that happened .    You can get her spayed when the kits are about 8 or 9 wks old and pretty much weaned. 

 What with the one deformed kitten , that is even more reason to spay.    There may be some genetic problems there,  though hopefully the other kittens in this litter are  normal and healthy.    but i would not want to take chances on another litter.

Take care Bendy.    Thanks for helping your mum's cats.  You sound like a good guy.   
 

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Hello, I know this is a old post but I just read your story and when you mentioned the kittens dying I immediately thought about cat leukemia, it can take them very quickly and imagine that's what got them.  I'm so sorry for all of your troubles but have to commend you for going out of your way and taking extraordinary care of that cat and helping her out so much.  You truly are a great person for doing all of that.  Sounds like she's feeling better than she ever has and that she's very thankful for you helping her.  Just wish she wasn't being so happy with those stitches in lol.

It's very easy to try to help animals only to find out that you are part of the problem instead of the solution.  I started out by feeding some feral cats because I felt so bad for them and it's quickly turned into a nightmare, plus there is something in the woods where I live which is now preying on my kittens when I've never had this problem before.  I'm down to 9 cats, yes down to 9 cats, I know that sounds like a lot but trust me it's not.  I've always been a dog person and just did not realize cats bred so fast and so  often.  I thought a litter a year like dogs, no problem.  Well it's more like 4 or more litters of anywhere from 1 to 8 kittens a pop.  I have had some illnesses with my cats and fear one of them may be a carrier for feline leukemia or HIV so I'm currently in the process of spaying/neutering all of them. My outside wilder cats I'm going to find a donation or free clinic because they automatically test them for HIV and the leukemia and if any have it then I'll just go from there.  Plus I just don't have enough money, but regardless I am going to find a way to get them taken care of.

 Even though I've already started this process I have taken your story to heart and while I haven't had that kind of a problem nor anything near so expensive. I've lately been having trouble with my cats breeding.  The kittens just don't do well and neither do the queens.  I plan to have each and every one of them fixed before spring so they won't have to go through that ever again and then I'm happy just to feed them, take care of them, love them and get their shots like I am supposed to.  Of course I'm going to keep looking for good homes for some of them too but want to make sure they'll go somewhere nice and I just refuse to give someone a cat that hasn't been spayed/neutered.  I will not make this someone else's problem. 

Thank you for sharing your story.  Every time I think about getting lazy with this I will reread it and remind myself how much is truly at stake.  Thank you so much.
 
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