The next was our first full day with all of the kitties. Each had to be given meds daily to clear up their eyes, clear up respiratory infections, and the older kittens desperately needed to be wormed. We gave each kitten a bath with regular Dawn dish detergent and spent about 10-15 minutes per kitten picking fleas off of them after their bath. I can not describe to you how covered in fleas these poor kittens were.
My mother, Michele, her husband, Kevin, and I were bottle feeding around the clock. We were floundering to try and sychronize our schedules to make sure someone could be with the kittens at least every couple of hours. All but four of them were on bottles and couldn't even go to the bathroom on their own yet.
The last kitten we gave a bath too that evening was Puffin. Puffin was my favorite. She was about 8 weeks old and I had every intention of keeping her. She was one of the most beautiful kittens I had ever seen. She had long black hair with flecks of orange, gray, and white. She was weak and somewhat lethargic (had been since we took her from the property). When I dipped Puffin into the sink for her bath the water immediately turned a red/orange color from all of the dried blood on her skin (a result of hundreds of flea bites). She was very weak and we imagine now that she was severely enemic from all of the parasites she was carrying (worms and who knows what else inside her and all of the fleas sucking the life out of her from the outside).
The last kitten we gave a bath too that evening was Puffin. Puffin was my favorite. She was about 8 weeks old and I had every intention of keeping her. She was one of the most beautiful kittens I had ever seen. She had long black hair with flecks of orange, gray, and white. She was weak and somewhat lethargic (had been since we took her from the property). When I dipped Puffin into the sink for her bath the water immediately turned a red/orange color from all of the dried blood on her skin (a result of hundreds of flea bites). She was very weak and we imagine now that she was severely enemic from all of the parasites she was carrying (worms and who knows what else inside her and all of the fleas sucking the life out of her from the outside).
After her bath we picked as many fleas off of her as we could but it was almost impossible to see them on her because her hair was so dark the fleas could easily hide from us. We wrapped her in a towel and laid her down to rest while she dried off. My mother and I did a round of bottles with the younger kittens and then turned our attention back to her. When we picked her up we noticed that she was suddenly much more weak than she had been before and was basically unable to even hold her head up. We knew she was dying. She was having a hard time regulating her body temperature and seemed very cold. My mother told me to lay down with her inside my shirt so that she could absorb the warmth from my skin.
I did and it helped her some. I laid on the floor with her on my chest inside my shirt for a couple of hours. I could feel fleas running around on my stomach. I endured a lot of flea bites that evening. She laid there and just looked at me. I know she was feeling loved for the first time and I could tell that she was taking great comfort in not going through her death alone. She fought so hard to stay alive. She lay there just trying to breathe. We kept hoping she would pull through but we knew it was basically inevitable that she was going to pass away soon. We comforted her all the way to her last breath. It was so sad when we knew she had passed on, but we were grateful for the fact that she was no longer suffering and that she died with us knowing she was loved instead of passing away alone and cold on the property she came from as many others had.
The picture at the top of this post is not Puffin. Puffin was an older kitten with much longer hair. Sadly we did not ever get a picture of Puffin because we had intended to take pictures after bath time that day.
ReplyDelete