SAD NEWS ABOUT OUR FOSTER KITTIES

We first got our little barn kittens, Janey, Jilly, and Jeeves, on February 11.  Ever since then, we have been trying to get them to be all well and healthy so that they could be adopted.  But every time they got sort of better, something else would start being wrong with them.  The worst part was when we found out they had toxoplasmosis, which they took four weeks of medicine to get (mostly) cured from.  But in the meantime, Jason got toxo, and he was very sick, and it cost a bunch of money to make him well again.

Jeeves and Jilly

And then the kittens had a ton of different kinds of worms, and they also had giardia.  So they got treated for giardia, but they tested positive for it again, so they got treated a second time.

Plus they had really bad allergies, and they were always scratching themselves.  So for a while, they hardly had any hair on their heads or necks.  And their armpits were all scabby.  And Jeeves was the worst because he scratched one side of his neck totally bare and raw, and it looked terrible.





Then Dr. Regan gave Jeeves a steroid shot, and that made him all better.  His neck healed up, and he started looked really good again.  But after about 3 weeks, he began scratching some more, so he had to get another steroid shot.  And the steroids made his immune system weak, so he got conjunctivitis in his eyes.

Last week Mom took Jeeves to see Dr. Patricia because Dr. Patricia said she would give him an exam for free.  She listened to Jeeves' heart and found out that he had a heart murmur.  Which might make him have a shorter life, or it might not bother him much at all.  Anyway, Dr. Patricia said Jeeves ought to have an electrocardiogram before he had any surgery again, and she said the electrocardiogram would cost $300 or more.

Then Dr. Patricia said that Jeeves also ought to get a skin biopsy to find out for sure if he had eosinophilic granuloma syndrome.  And after that, his allergies could get treated, but that would be kind of expensive, and he would have to get treatment for the rest of his life.  So the more we found out about what Jeeves' adopters would have to do for him and how much it would cost, the more we thought that nobody was going to want to adopt him or his sisters either.

Janey

Anyway, the last thing to happen was that Dr. Regan sent a sample of Janey's poop to the lab to culture and see if any bacteria grew in it.  And the results came back saying that there was still giardia, which might have meant they still had it, or it might have meant they were just carriers.  Also there was clostridium, which is another icky thing that can grow in your guts and make you have diarrhea and stuff like that.

So on Monday, Mom and Aunt Tania sat down with Dr. Beth to talk about the kittens and all their health issues.  Dr. Regan was on vacation, so that's why she wasn't there.  Dr. Beth said the kittens would need at least two more weeks of antibiotics and de-worming.  Also she said that she was afraid the toxoplasmosis was not gone, and that the kittens would always have symptoms of it or at least be spreading it around for other animals and people to get.

Then after they talked for a while, Mom and Aunt Tania started to say that maybe the best thing to do would be to put the kittens to sleep because it didn't seem like they would ever be adoptable.  And Dr. Beth said that she agreed.  Aunt Tania said they would all "sleep on it," but by Monday night, Mom had decided that the kittens should be put down, so she called Aunt Tania and told her so.  After which,  we all found it really sad to live in the house with the kittens because we knew what was going to happen to them.  But at least they didn't know what was going to happen, so that was good.

Yesterday morning, Mom put some Parmesan cheese on the kittens' breakfast to make it a little bit more special.  They ran around the house and played for a while, and Jilly sat in the bathroom window, which was open.  I think maybe she was remembering when she was little and she lived outside and could run around everywhere on the farm and hunt mice and do fun stuff like that.

Jilly and Jeeves

Mom took the kittens to the Humane Society about 11:30, and she stayed with the kittens while they went to sleep.  She cried and felt very sad.  Now Jilly, Janey, and Jeeves are at the Rainbow Bridge, and they are running around there, and they don't have to be itchy anymore or have diarrhea or be sick ever again.

Our house seems kind of empty without them, but I think it is Jason who misses them the most because he liked to play with them.  He especially played with Jeeves, and sometimes he played with Janey, too.  When Jason played with Janey, she always squealed and squeaked and made lots of noises because she didn't really like to play so rough.  But Jeeves didn't seem to mind.

Anyway, our house won't be empty for very long because we are getting two new foster kittens later today, and maybe there will be three.  But they are much smaller and younger than the kittens we just lost.  They are only about 4 weeks old, and they are just starting to eat solid food.  I am looking forward to meeting them, and so is Jason, but Chloe and Charlie couldn't care less!