Folks,
Thanks to all who read this and I hope that your day has gone better than mine.
I share my house with two cats, a Calico female and a black male short hair cat that have been wonderful companions over the past 14 or so years. I've drug them from one coast to the next, sometimes by plane, sometimes by car and they've never quite shredded me as a result.
But this post isn't about them though they both have had their share of health problems, this post is about my girlfriends cat who became hers one night when she ran through the open door into her apartment and quickly won her heart.
Her cat is about 8 months old and was very skinny when she arrived, having lived outside for about two months after escaping from it's previous owner. My girlfriend named her Saphira and we watched over the past two months as the cat returned to health, played, learned to interact with my g/f's 8 and 3 year old and found creative hiding places when she needed to get away from them etc... About 3 weeks ago I remarked that Saphira was getting rather rotund and that I thought she might be pregnant. My g/f kind of laughed and countered that she didn't think Saphira was old enough...
...sure enough 10 days ago Saphira gave birth to a litter of four little ones underneath the 8 year old's bed. We scrambled to make a more suitable nest for her (a card board box with the top cut off and several towels atop a heating pad), carefully pulled the bed apart and relocated the newborn kittens. Saphira seemed to like this at first but the next morning must have felt that her nest was threatened as she moved them under a different bed.
I spend afternoons with the cats as Saphira is kind of a flighty mother and needs a bit of encouragement to let the kittens nurse. That afternoon my task was to build a new nest (a cardboard box with the top on but with a window cut through the front to simulate the darkness and closed in nature of under the bed) and relocate the kittens. This was extremely nervewracking as the kittens were all of two days old and I was really afraid I would accidentally hurt them as I moved them. I managed to move all of the kittens without incident, showed Saphira the new nest and gently urged her to lie down and nurse.
Saphira approved of this new nest and has not moved the kittens since but as the days have progressed all of the kittens seemed to have intermittent trouble breathing and all exhibited a behavior which I can most easily describe as "hacking up a hair ball". Also over the past 10 days Saphira has been much more vocal, chirping at us or my g/f (if I'm not there) then walking over to the nest, chirping at it then walking back. It's taking a lot of human intervention to get her to go in and nurse the kittens.
We noticed this happening a bit more frequently over the past few days and made an appointment with the vet my cats see today. The vet did a quick examination of Saphira and gave her a clean bill of health.
The same cannot be said for the kittens - the vet has told us that they all appear to have either pneumonia or distemper and are in various stages of the disease. She has given us antibiotics to syringe feed to the kittens twice daily, told us that it may help if it is pneumonia but if it is distempter than there's nothing to be done. She did vaccinate Saphira for distemper in the hopes that she would pass along the vaccine to her kittens through her milk.
My questions to you the reader of this post is what can we expect in the coming days if it is pneumonia? What can we expect if it is distemper? I very much want to help the kittens get better (my calico was diagnosed with thyroid disease a year ago and I opted for a thyroid ectomy rather than putting her to sleep as I felt she had more life to live) but I also want to know what signs to look for that they are not and what the likelyhood is that they will get better with the help of the antibiotics if it is pneumonia.
On a happier note, we were able to give each kitten the antibiotics tonight without much fuss (sooooo much easier when they are little and don't have teeth) and put them back in the nest with Saphira who licked each of them and let them nurse at will. The little ones still have a good appetite and are getting bigger and seem stronger each day.
Apologies for the length of this, my first post. I'll try to be more brief next time.
Chris
Thanks to all who read this and I hope that your day has gone better than mine.
I share my house with two cats, a Calico female and a black male short hair cat that have been wonderful companions over the past 14 or so years. I've drug them from one coast to the next, sometimes by plane, sometimes by car and they've never quite shredded me as a result.
But this post isn't about them though they both have had their share of health problems, this post is about my girlfriends cat who became hers one night when she ran through the open door into her apartment and quickly won her heart.
Her cat is about 8 months old and was very skinny when she arrived, having lived outside for about two months after escaping from it's previous owner. My girlfriend named her Saphira and we watched over the past two months as the cat returned to health, played, learned to interact with my g/f's 8 and 3 year old and found creative hiding places when she needed to get away from them etc... About 3 weeks ago I remarked that Saphira was getting rather rotund and that I thought she might be pregnant. My g/f kind of laughed and countered that she didn't think Saphira was old enough...
...sure enough 10 days ago Saphira gave birth to a litter of four little ones underneath the 8 year old's bed. We scrambled to make a more suitable nest for her (a card board box with the top cut off and several towels atop a heating pad), carefully pulled the bed apart and relocated the newborn kittens. Saphira seemed to like this at first but the next morning must have felt that her nest was threatened as she moved them under a different bed.
I spend afternoons with the cats as Saphira is kind of a flighty mother and needs a bit of encouragement to let the kittens nurse. That afternoon my task was to build a new nest (a cardboard box with the top on but with a window cut through the front to simulate the darkness and closed in nature of under the bed) and relocate the kittens. This was extremely nervewracking as the kittens were all of two days old and I was really afraid I would accidentally hurt them as I moved them. I managed to move all of the kittens without incident, showed Saphira the new nest and gently urged her to lie down and nurse.
Saphira approved of this new nest and has not moved the kittens since but as the days have progressed all of the kittens seemed to have intermittent trouble breathing and all exhibited a behavior which I can most easily describe as "hacking up a hair ball". Also over the past 10 days Saphira has been much more vocal, chirping at us or my g/f (if I'm not there) then walking over to the nest, chirping at it then walking back. It's taking a lot of human intervention to get her to go in and nurse the kittens.
We noticed this happening a bit more frequently over the past few days and made an appointment with the vet my cats see today. The vet did a quick examination of Saphira and gave her a clean bill of health.
The same cannot be said for the kittens - the vet has told us that they all appear to have either pneumonia or distemper and are in various stages of the disease. She has given us antibiotics to syringe feed to the kittens twice daily, told us that it may help if it is pneumonia but if it is distempter than there's nothing to be done. She did vaccinate Saphira for distemper in the hopes that she would pass along the vaccine to her kittens through her milk.
My questions to you the reader of this post is what can we expect in the coming days if it is pneumonia? What can we expect if it is distemper? I very much want to help the kittens get better (my calico was diagnosed with thyroid disease a year ago and I opted for a thyroid ectomy rather than putting her to sleep as I felt she had more life to live) but I also want to know what signs to look for that they are not and what the likelyhood is that they will get better with the help of the antibiotics if it is pneumonia.
On a happier note, we were able to give each kitten the antibiotics tonight without much fuss (sooooo much easier when they are little and don't have teeth) and put them back in the nest with Saphira who licked each of them and let them nurse at will. The little ones still have a good appetite and are getting bigger and seem stronger each day.
Apologies for the length of this, my first post. I'll try to be more brief next time.
Chris