In the midst of my starting school bus driver training, the Humane Society called. A mother cat and her 1 week old kittens needed a quiet home to grow and gain weight in until they were ready for adoption.
There were 6 kittens, and I had the fun of watching them open their eyes over a period of days. All was well until one little kitten started wandering from the nest. The mother cat would retrieve him, and almost instantly he would struggle to leave again, and after awhile the mother cat stopped going after him. He'd end up in a corner, alone. He was far too young to be wandering. Something wasn't right.
I got a high-walled box that the kittens couldn't crawl out of, but the mother cat didn't like it and started relocating the kittens herself, leaving some on the windowsill, others on the counter. About this time I started noticing little puddles of diarrhea and vomit. Then the blood.
In the parking lot of the Humane Society the tests were administered. It's done in the car so that the clinic is not contaminated.
Panleukopenia.
Last fall I had two kittens with Panleuk that I nursed through it, and they survived. I didn't write about it on this blog, but an article was written on them in the Seattle Humane Society Magazine. Click on the photo to enlarge it if you want to read the story.
Panleukopenia is fatal to 95% of the kittens under two months old who get it. It used to be that any kitten diagnosed with it at a shelter was immediately euthanized. A new vet at the Humane Society had changed protocols last year thanks to volunteers like me who were willing to take on the 24 hour intensive care needed to save the 5% who might recover.
Sadly this little one went downhill fast. The wandering from the nest was his first sign, likely an inflammation of the brain causing erratic behavior.
Despite frequent administration of sub-q fluids (pictured above), there was no return from the precipice for this one. He died early in the morning as I waited for the Humane Society on-call vet to call me back. I was livid that he had not been euthanized the night before when I took him in and asked them to. His eyes were already sunken in their sockets at that point. Watching him suffer in the end was very difficult.
His 5 sisters all had milder cases and grew and thrived. Their mother cat, named "Skinny-mum" because she was just bones and fur, started gaining weight. I would have had them another few weeks, but then a worse case came along, so off they went to another foster home and I took in the next batch....
TWO mother cats and EIGHT kittens, Panleukopenia positive. Had I not taken them the kittens would have been euthanized. 7 of these kittens were older (3 weeks instead of 1 week), so they had a little more weight on them. A single kitten was about 10 days old, possibly the survivor of another litter. The Humane Society knew that if there was any chance for them, I was it.
I got them late on a Saturday night. I checked on them throughout the night. At 6am I discovered one of the kittens dead. From 9am to Noon I volunteered at a nearby nature center, came home for "lunch" but instead took 2 more kittens directly to the Humane Society where I demanded they be euthanized immediately. I wasn't going to be sent away this time, I knew the signs of impending death, and these two were suffering. The clinic was busy and short staffed, so got to assist with the fatal injections. I had no time to grieve, I went straight back to the nature center and put on a happy face and fulfilled my volunteer commitment, assisting the park ranger in leading a hike through the woods for a raucous group of 6 year olds and their parents.
Monday I was giving fluids and supplementary syringe feeds to the remaining kittens through the night and between lessons at bus driving school. One mother cat was very attentive, while the other was more content to hang out on the windowsill where the kittens wouldn't bother her.
Tuesday, after bus driving school, I took another kitten in for euthanasia. It was a different vet on duty that day and we had an argument over my my opinion versus their professional expertise. I get it that the shelter wants to keep their numbers in a certain range to remain classified as a "no kill" shelter, and that every animal deserves a chance, but I was not going to watch another kitten suffer when there was no hope of recovery. I was ready to hold the kitten as it was injected, as I had two days ago with the others, but they sent me out. The tech who was to do the deed seemed hesitant, and I had to wonder if they just hooked the kitten up to fluids and put it in a kennel instead of putting it down right then and there, since they questioned "my opinion." Either way, death was coming.
The next week was touch and go (and lots of laundry with all the diarrhea, and sleepless nights), but in the end 4 of the 8 kittens survived.
Before I knew it they were big and active and ready to go. They were adopted quickly, as were their mothers with the magical orange eyes.
One of them was even featured on a promotional flier!
We're now in quarantine for 6 months, as panleukopenia can persist in the environment for months. How I would love to have an industrial style stainless steel bathroom that I could hose down and deeply disinfect, but for now all I can do is bleach the floors, walls, and cat bedding, and wait.
I should come out of quarantine just in time for kitten season next spring.