Cattery Diary

July 16, 1999 This has been a harrowing week for us. The chocolate girl began to have diarrhoea a little over a week ago and by the time we got her to the vet she had lost a lot of weight and had a furious bacterial infection in her digestive tract. We gave her all the right medications and got creative about foods to tempt her but it was not to be. She drew her last breath in my arms yesterday noon. She was 45 days old. Because we could tell her apart from the others we had named her and that always makes things even more difficult. Her name was Willa and she had a very strong will to live but infections are furious things and will get ahead of living beings until they kill their host.

Fortunately the other kittens are all doing well and are beginning to seriously eat real cat food. They don't seem to like the "growth" cat food that we offered them but like regular Max quite well. I mix in vitamins, a little red meat and some ground up dry food so that they will learn to eat that as well.

We try to make use of all the space available in the cage so we hang fabric hammocks from the top of the cage and it is a right of passage when a kitten can navigate into the hammocks. They have all now made this passage. I have discovered that someone of the kittens has confused the cozy bed for the litter box so now they will have to do without a cozy for a few days until they resolve that issue. That is just one of the reasons we keep our kittens in a cage until they are ready for new homes.