Life ..... and Death

This has been a hard week. We fostered a mama cat & 3 sweet baby kitties out of a  high kill shelter .

the mama kitty was a doll... or so we thought.

well..with people she is. totally sweet. completely litter box trained, this was someone's house pet that they dumped . very pregnant. And like many high kill shelters they simply destroy the mom & babies... unless a rescue group steps in with a foster. We were that foster.

Problem is. Mama cat got sick... what seemed like a cold turned into an upper respiratory infection. We headed to the vet last Thursday & bought lots of canned stinky food  to get mama cat to eat & gave her meds. But by the next morning... baby girl kitty had the sniffles. The vet had said if the kittens came down with it their prognosis wouldn't be good. and the very next day baby girl kitty (the kids called her Kaity) got sick. sniffles, sneezing wouldn't nurse. so we bottle fed. But fluid was building in her lungs and the end did not look good. This morning sometime between 4am & 6:30 she passed in her sleep.

But 2 nights ago mama kitty snapped. she suffocated the little grey & white kitten ( we think) and the ONLY reason I suspect that is because I SAW her try to kill his brother too. I actually pulled the mama off of him. Perhaps she knows something that we don't. But that surely didn't make it any easier waking up to what seemed like a healthy kitten... WHY would she kill him?

So we have one left.
 One cute fuzzy 2 and a half week ball of cute fuzziness.
 I have discouraged the kids from naming him yet though... since he too now has the sniffles. In fact, we go back to the vet again today to have him checked out. My heart is heavy. I wonder if I did these kitties any favors by bringing them home. Mama kitty definitely picked up a nasty virus from the shelter... and maybe in some small way we made these kittens lives better for 2 weeks.... I sure hope so.

But it isn't easy. losing such sweet babies is really hard on me & the kids emotionally.

Pray for us as this last little guy still isn't out of the woods... yet. pray he makes it through.