It started with a phone call. One of our patients called, and left a message for me to call her about kittens. I reluctantly called Mrs. X and she quickly asked if I wanted 2 kittens. I just as quickly said no. She persisted, saying the kittens were about 8 weeks old and had been abandoned by their mother under a general store owned by Mrs. X's daughter and son-in-law. The son-in-law was now saying the kittens had to go, or he would get rid of them himself. When Mrs. X told me he had threatened to flush them down the toilet, I relented, and told her to bring them to me and I would try to place them in homes. She agreed to drop them off at my office the next time she was in town.
Five days later, on my day off, my secretary called and left a message that the kittens were at the office. I went to the office to pick them up, and was horrified when I saw them. Two frantic, tiny skeletons greeted me with hoarse cries. They were filthy, with patches of fur clinging to feces-covered skin. I honestly could not see through the filth to tell if they were male or female. I was afraid to handle them too much for fear I would break their bones; they were truly skin and bones and not much else. I immediately called the after-hours vet, and took the babies to her. She was not encouraging; the list of medical problems seemed endless. They were 2 and 3 ounces respectively, and she estimated they were about a month old. Their temperatures did not register on her thermometer, so she said the temps were below 94. Besides malnutrition and hypothermia, they had rickets, coccidia, dehydration, hair loss from malnutrition, liver and pancreatic failure (the pancreatic problem caused the male kitten to "faint" from hypoglycemia with great regularity). The severe medical conditions caused their internal "thermostats" to go berserk, making their temps fluctuate from below 94 deg. to over 105 deg. in about an hour. The vet gave fluids, and antibiotics, handed me a fistful of medication, and wished me the best of luck, warning me they probably would not survive. She guessed both the kittens were male, and so they were named Ike and Mike.
Ike was the fainting kitten, and had actually been put in a box for burial twice before I got him. Both episodes had occurred at night, and the box had been placed in the garage for daylight burial. Both times he revived on his own and the people heard him in the box before they buried it. He had several episodes in our first few days together, and he truly did appear to be dead. Fortunately, feeding him every two hours around the clock appeared to stabilize his blood sugar, and stopped the fainting spells.
After a week of every-two-hour feedings, they had tripled their initial weight. I started giving them daily sponge baths to remove the crusted filth, and discovered several days later that I had a boy (Ike) and a girl (Mike). They continued to thrive, and fortunately with a proper diet and medical care, their problems slowly resolved. The vet's warnings of blindness and brain damage did not come true, and their bones straightened and strengthened, their (longhair!) coats began to come in, the diarrhea stopped, and they began to look like kittens.
Mrs. X had called to check on the kittens several days after dropping them at my office. I asked her why she had not told me the truth about their age and condition, and she began to cry and said she was afraid I wouldn't take them if I knew how sick they really were. She had been feeding them dog food and cow's milk, since that was all she had to feed them. The son-in-law and daughter did not want to spend money "on kittens that were going to die anyway". Ike and Mike proved them wrong, and did live, and went on to show their kitten season in 5 TICA shows during the 1995-96 season. Mike, a tortoiseshell smoke longhair, was TICA mid- Atlantic region 6th best HHP kitten for the year. Ike, Mike and I had a talk after their kitten season, and they decided they did not want to be showcats. Since they are spoiled rotten, I let them have their way, and now they wait at home while others travel with me. I am grateful that they are mine, and hope that they feel the same way. I am also grateful for their incredibly strong wills that allowed them to survive what I feared were overwhelming odds against them.
Elayne Early
Va. Beach, VA
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