That Time a Kitten Saved Me

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have noticed something about home offices. A lot of them have pets. I, for one, absolutely love going on zoom meetings with folks who I know have pets. It has become an important part of office culture to introduce our peers to our furry coworkers, and I am absolutely living for it. As is the case for many of us, I have been working remotely for over a year now. Remote work suits me. I am the type of person who is most productive while in a comfortable space, and of course, nearby my children (not one of them human). As 2021 crawled by, my life has changed enormously. As most of my life tends to be, my story can be begun with an interaction I had with an animal.

Summer of 2021 was meant to be a low key one for me. I was vaccinated, but still not totally comfortable in the wide open world yet. I had an easy job that I liked, working for a College, in admissions. I had just moved, just started a new relationship, and my job was relatively new as well. But for whatever reason, I still felt rather bored. My new job was an office job, and I was used to working in animal care. I had my own dog (Frankie) and cat (Stevie) at home, of course, but I was itching to get back into the activism part of animal welfare, where I had spent a decade employed.

I decided that I wanted to foster a litter of kittens. This was something I was very familiar with – I’d fostered dozens of litters, perhaps even hundreds, throughout my career in animal welfare. I had seen healthy kittens grow like weeds and get spayed/neutered, adopted, and that was that. I had also seen unhealthy litters. Anything from ringworm to distemper to feline leukemia to feline immunodeficiency syndrome. I had also raised “spicy” litters of feral kittens, to a relatively high degree of success. Basically anything the shelter had- I was confident I could handle.

I contacted the shelter, one that I had previously worked at, and asked if they needed help with any kittens. A few days later, I went to pick up my litter. They were approximately a week old when I met them. There were four of them, all black and white. All four had extra toes on their front feet. They were perfect. They had fleas, so they all had Dawn baths, followed by the spa treatment with a hairdryer (on low) and a towel, and a toothbrush – toothbrushes mimic the texture of a mother cat’s tongue, and is a great way to make your kittens feel safe and comfortable.

I created a nice large plastic bin “house” for them, with blankets, heading pads, stuffed animals, and one of my own cat’s blankets. My cat was not allowed to interact with them yet, since they were too small at this point to be checked for communicable cat-to-cat diseases, but I felt like it was important for them to have a female cat to be able to smell, and a warm blanket with her fur on it to snuggle. I had my supplies at the ready to make formula (made fresh for each feeding – I was paranoid of any mold or anything weird growing inside the bottle by reheating it). I had my heating disks on rotation in the microwave, and clean blankets always on hand. Baby wipes at the ready.

All of this had to happen every morning before I clocked into work. During work, I was able to focus on my job, and use my paid and unpaid breaks to clean and feed the babies, changing out blankets and bathing them as necessary. Sometimes, I’d need a coworker to cover me for a few minutes if I had a “poop emergency” or one of them had managed to climb out of their box.

So now, here I was, I had my next adventure ahead of me. New coworkers! They would certainly be a hit at my next zoom meeting. My best friend, Sarah, was interested in adopting a pair of them. She was not really a cat person, but she was already in love just from the photos she’d seen. I’m always a fan of having my fosters end up with people that I know. As much as we try not to get too attached, it’s nearly impossible not to, so having them stay within the family is definitely an added bonus, if it can be worked out that way. I also loved sharing my journey with my work family. My team loved my babies, and they asked on their welfare, often. They requested photos and updates after they had their vet visits for de-worming and weighing. These four baby kittens were part of my little work team, and I loved it!

I asked Sarah to name the entire litter. The babies were still too small to determine their sex, but Sarah did not disappoint. David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Rita Moreno, and Billie Holiday. Rita and Billie were named for their powerful lungs – they were always the first ones we heard yelling for a meal when their two hours had passed. Dolly was named for their tiny, beautiful, doll-like face. David was named for their sheer attitude. These four little angels now effectively ran my entire life. I was bottle feeding them, cleaning them, and changing their bedding and cleaning their bin every two hours. Day and night. My boyfriend, Greg, loved the kittens and was always supportive of my decision to take them on, but I could definitely feel myself starting to crack under the pressure and lack of sleep.

About six weeks went by without any major trouble. Billie and Dolly were on the smaller side, and David had been having some diarrhea. They were due for a checkup anyway, so we went to the shelter. When pulling them from their carrier, David and Billie also appeared to have developed URI symptoms. I was sent home with an oral antibiotic for all four of them, eye drops for David and Billie, and some more rigorous and careful feeding instructions for Billie and Dolly to help them gain weight.

A week later, at 11 pm, I sat on my living room floor, holding a nearly lifeless David Bowie. She had crashed sometime between her last feeding and 11 pm. I had been in constant communication with the shelter and the vet that entire day. It was decided that since I already had the medications and other emergency support supplies here at home, it would not be ideal to bring her to the shelter for fear of exposing her to more germs. I had spent that entire day giving David supportive care. I used a warm compress on her face to loosen the crust on her eyes, nostrils, and mouth. I gave her fluids, subcutaneously (under the skin, with a needle). I made her a mixture of formula with some added calorie paste and a very small amount of kitten wet food, heated to just the right temperature, and fed into her very carefully and slowly with an oral syringe. I dabbed her gums with corn syrup every hour. I sang to her, I asked her what she needed, I begged her to stay, and I told her it was okay to let go. I cried, I held her, I rocked her, and I allowed lack of sleep and food to overtake me. Feeling slightly on the edge made me feel closer to David.

I remembered my vet telling me that kittens will hang on as long as they are in the presence of their caretakers. I looked into David’s unfocused, cloudy eyes and asked her “What do you need?” Her eyes slowly slid into focus and I could feel her communicating to me. She asked me to let her go. I kissed her on the nose, wrapped her up gently in the softest blanket we had, and put her to bed, forever.

Over the next month, I lost Billie, and finally, Dolly. They were simply too small. The vet suspected some sort of genetic problem that was preventing absorption of nutrients from food. I had been weighing them daily, and while David and Rita were consistently gaining, Billie and Dolly never seemed to put weight on, no matter how much they ate. My heart broke for them. They were sweet, beautiful souls. Each of them was released in the same way David was. At this point, I was beginning to doubt myself. Had it been too long since I’ve had bottle babies? Should they have gone with someone with more experience? I tortured myself, berated myself, blamed myself.

But I still had Rita Moreno left. Who actually turned out to be male. But names are all gender neutral, right?

At this point, Sarah and Greg and I had been through so much with these kittens. We had started out this journey thinking this would be an easy litter. I have tons of experience. I’ll never forget Sarah’s cry of excitement when she first looked into the bin, “Sara I did not know they made cats this small!”

She still had her sights set on David and Billie when David passed away. I could not bring myself to call or text her at 1 am, when I was up for my next kitten feeding, and had found David, lifeless, in the soft blanket I had given her. The next morning, I worked up the courage to tell her that we had lost David. She had known that she had crashed the day before, and knew that it did not look good, but it was still a going to be an upsetting conversation. Losing the other two were even harder. Each time I had to admit to losing one, I was creeping closer and closer to starting with four kittens and ending with zero. They deserved better.

At this point in my journey with the kittens, it was just me and Rita Moreno. I watched him like a hawk. He was an excellent eater and was healthy. He had tested negative for feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency syndrome, so he was now free to wander my apartment, with my cat and dog. Greg and I kitten-proofed the apartment. Rita could not get out of any windows, climb curtains, get stuck in and drown in a toilet, get stuck under the fridge, or go down the stairs and not be able to make it back up. I knew I had done everything I could have done for that litter, and that none of their deaths came from neglect. But I still, somehow, felt guilty. What if I had happened to catch a symptom sooner? What if I had had an appointment on a different day at the shelter – maybe they wouldn’t have picked up those germs.

My furry coworker was my main support during the day – he was my reminder that I could not disappear into a hole of despair. I still needed to tend to his needs, and to my other pets. I could look around see bills piling up, and my workstation, reminding me that I cannot sleep all day. I was constantly exhausted during this time. At least Rita was now big enough where he could be fed every four hours, instead of two.

Then, in July, I got sick. Now, at the end of September, I am still sick, and do not have a diagnosis.

It wasn’t so bad in the beginning. It started off with myopic jerks that kept me awake at night. I was having worsened anxiety and depression. I couldn’t sleep, and when I could, my dreams were terrifying nightmares. Eventually I began to have seizures. My condition got so bad that I found myself unable to work. I was having seizures daily; my hands and shoulders would shake uncontrollably on and off throughout the day. My right leg became paralyzed. I was experiencing a frightening whirlwind of symptoms attacking me one by one, week by week. After a month or so, horrifyingly, I began to cycle through my earlier symptoms again, compounded with what I had already experienced. My doctor wrote me a letter placing me on medical leave.

When I submitted my paperwork to my job, HR called me, and let me go. They were unable to hold my job indefinitely, and their only course of action possible was “separation.” I was devastated. What on earth was I going to do now? The days following this life changing news are a blur. I was lost, scared, and overwhelmed. What I needed was some help. Greg, Sarah and a few other close friends rallied around me. Together, we did everything that needed to happen in order to keep me in my home. It took weeks, but we all picked away at lists until everything was finished.

Throughout this process, I have been spending as much time with my furry children as possible. Frankie and Stevie can tell that there was something off about me – I am stressed and worried all the time, and it’s stressing them out. I do my best to control my negative emotions for them. Only Rita seems unaffected by my stress. He remains a playful, happy, curious kitten throughout my entire medical crisis. I often sit and hold him and stroke his forehead and thank him for being patient with me. And when he looks back at me, I know he is thanking me for taking good care of him when he was very small.

Rita is now a Big Boy. He has officially been adopted by Sarah, although he is staying with me until Sarah is finished with an upcoming move. He looks me in the eye, every day, and tells me to keep going. Rita Moreno, my best friend’s son, a hilarious cat with baseball mitts for paws. He stares at me with his gorgeous golden eyes and reminds me that he is the center of my universe, we are co-workers and co-owners of the home, and he needs his breakfast. Now.