Litter #12 ~ Gone Too Soon
Unfortunately our newest kittens didn't make it. They weren't eating, no matter what we tried, and we knew something was wrong. They were sick with Distemper/Panleukopenia (the feline relative of Parvo in dogs). This is an incredibly contagious illness and we will not be able to foster again right away, even if the shelter did have more litters. We will need to disinfect the foster room (our master bathroom) with bleach before even our own cats can go back in there. It's crazy though... For months we weren't able to foster and then when we can, the shelter only has these 2 babies that need a foster home and they were too sick to make it.
This disaster of a week is ending with all of our own fur babies getting shots to make sure they are current on their Distemper vaccines and throwing out the litter of all 5 boxes in the house. All of our new litters stay in 'quarantine' while they acclimate to their new environment and we watch them for any potential problems. When they get comfy and we know they are healthy, we will usually let them run freely through the house and live with our cats as long as everyone is safe. So, thankfully, our cats were not exposed to the Distemper but since it spreads mostly through feces, we had to take into account the fact that we were walking in and out of the bathroom and then around our house before we knew about the tiny ugly germs. There was also a small chance that one of the weird white poop clumps we found in the fosters litter box was scooped out (for a sample for the vet) with the same scoop that we ended up using to scoop our own cats boxes later that night. It's a very small chance that is was contaminated and spread to our kitties boxes but it's better to be safe than sorry. I have a firm rule on hand washing after every visit into and out of the foster room so this went a long way to keep us from spreading it around the house.
I wish I had some cute new kitten videos for everyone but this litter was too sick and with us for such a short time... I did try to record an UnBoxing and a 2nd day update but I'm not sure if I will upload them to our channel or not. I also have more videos of Scrubby's last 2 weeks with us that I haven't decided on publishing either. On a very personal note, this has been an extremely hard week. We had to let go of our 18 yr old kitty because of cancer, and really, that would be enough to bring us down pretty hard. But we had several more crises this week that have wreaked havoc in our home, all while dealing with a terrible migraine. Losing 2 fosters certainly didn't help any of those issues, or our grief. It's hard to want to immortalize these feelings on YouTube.
These videos could potentially be helpful to someone, however, so I will think about putting them up later. When litter #9 got Conjunctivitis and I posted a spur-of-the-moment video on what it was and how to treat it, I never dreamed it would have over 5,000 views a short 4 months later or that I would have been able to personally help so many people who were dealing with the same thing and found my video while looking for information. Kitty cancer and Distemper... Maybe I can help a fellow animal lover by sharing these experiences as well. We'll see.
Rest in peace, sweet babies. You were loved.
