More kitten and foster stuff

Hello, all you wonderful Critter-Type friends and associates out there! This blog is written in response to a letter I received, and contained transcripts of a pretty tense "conversation". I am offering my opinion (which I warn, should be taken as such, since I don't "know it all"). Based on my observations, however, I am going to throw in my two hundred cents' worth, and who knows? Maybe it will help one of you out there. So here goes:

The main comment I have difficulty with is stating that doctors will take a thousand dollars to line their pockets and "extend suffering". Those are some really strong words, and if you recall the Client Relations module of VT5, you will remember that twelve people will say something negative for every one positive comment made out there...not only that, but the negative remarks begin to grow into legends because it's like a game of "telephone".

Considering that a great deal of any veterinary practice's clientele comes via word of mouth, doing something like that would harm a reputation and be very costly in the long run. So I am not buying it. For a veterinary practice, it's one of those "penny wise and pound foolish" methods of conducting business, and most simply know better. Remember, there is ALWAYS more than one side to every story.

And you know as well as I do that emergency practices do charge more...they have to. The level of skill which the doctors and technicians must possess, the fact that they are open all night long, and typically have to pay techs extra (which they deserve)...and carry drugs and supplies that cost a great deal more than your typical "day practice"...well crap yes, it's going to cost more.

I know many E.R. vets. I've seen plenty of desperate cases come in. They try to get a quick but accurate assessment before proceeding with treatment and are as up-front as they can be as to whether they think a patient will respond, how long it will take, what the alternatives are. They HAVE to do this. No one but no one wants to render treatment and then have to eat all of those charges and expenses, so an estimate is given up-front to see what course of action can or can't be taken. I know there are practices out there which do not have the patient's best interests in mind, but they are not the majority, not even close.

It's arrogant to say that a particular group has a 90% success rate and to say that veterinarians have a 10% success rate. I think these statistics are invented, and do not come from any legitimate statistics collected by anyone. It's going to vary from region to region, depending on time of year, from year to year. Either that or they are skewed. Let me give an example.

When I first started out fostering kittens, I didn't know as much as I do now...did I have more losses than I did after I really learned the ropes? Sure I did. Then as time went on, the success rate climbed. And yes, I did hit 90%. Hell, there were times when my rates soared to 100%. I did not let it go to my head. CUZ that would be STOOPID!!

BUT! As the doctors I worked with observed and realized the kind of "knack" I had, they started sending kittens my way...and guess what? They were more challenged kittens...that's how it is when you develop a reputation and start getting most if not all of your litters from an emergency clinic. The clinics are terribly busy, and the practitioners know that they just aren't staffed to give the sort of care a tiny kitten (or a bunch of them) demands. It is wrong to take them in, and then to have to leave them sitting in a box in a cage, getting soiled, cold, hungry. No one wants to do that. No one wants to have to walk past a cage and hear that heartbreaking mewing, knowing no one can get to them just yet, and that most likely, they'll have to be euthanized before the end of the shift. So they maintain a database of volunteers who can intercept quickly, before the kittens reach the point where they're unsalvageable.

Nevertheless, in many instances, I had many orphans, that, by the time they reached me--they were in "shit shape". Some of them were screwed up when they came in--umbilical infections, dehydration, URIs, etc...So....I had my work cut out for me. I had that little premature kitten that went into arrest the first day after I got her home and did FRICKEN CPR. She made it, only to get desperately, mysteriously ill at age three weeks. I could not figure out WHAT was wrong with her. It went on all night, literally 10-12 hours of dying. I hit her with everything I had, and by some kind of miracle, she pulled through. Never say "never"! What was it exactly that saved her? Hell if I know! I don't even know what was wrong with her!! But hey, she lived. My daughter has her still, and she will be five years old in June. Her name is Blackberry, and she was the little kitten I put into one or two of my Power Point presentations.

Other kittens didn't make it. They likely had congenital problems that weren't evident at birth; I can't say, because I did not have post mortems done. They were dead. I didn't want to turn around and cut the poor little things up to top it all off. What good would it do? There are ten thousand things that can go wrong during the developmental process, and it isn't as if I can cut a little window into every sick kitten I get hold of so I can say, "Oh yes! It's a heart chamber defect!" (Yeah, right.) All I know is that I'd have two or three kittens from the same litter, and one of them would start to lag behind. I had a pair of kittens that started out the same size, but by nine days of age, one kitten was only maybe half, or maybe even a third the size of the other. At age ten days, the little one had died. I gave him all I had, I had help from my vet friends, it broke my heart, but at least I knew we had done everything we could. If there was any way that little guy could sense he mattered, then he knew it by the time he passed away. It will sound hokey to some, but I held him in my hands as he became unresponsive, and finally I told him it was okay to let go. I knew he was tired. He couldn't fight anymore, and I couldn't make him, but I could keep him as comfortable as I could until he slipped away. Do you remember our feline restraint lab? I had the young Siamese (Nakori) and the brown tabby shorthair that was just fine as long as he could hide his face somewhere (Bobby AKA Boo). Bobby was the survivor of that pair of kittens, and I've always felt like a bit of his brother lives on in him.

All I know is that when the majority of kittens I took in were sick, well, hell yes, the mortality rate was going to go up. How can it not? I had a friend I did rescues with, and once I got them stable, I usually handed them over to her, so I could help more sickies, the tube-feeders, the "I will have to bathe you 12 times a day, give you SQ fluids, crack out the Karo syrup, give antibiotics, and keep you within eyesight and earshot at all times" cases. So guess what? Her success rate began to exceed mine, but only if viewed from one angle. I had weeks where the mortality rate was 50%, sometimes higher. It just depended on what was wrong with them. But the question has to be asked: Was I losing my "touch"?? No!! If I took all the kittens I ever fostered and added them all up and then added up all the deaths, yes, I will estimate that the survival rate had might possibly have slipped from 90% to maybe 80%. Did that change the way I did things? Nope! I had to tell myself to SCREW THE NUMBERS. It will NOT change the amount of effort I will put into foster/medical care.

That said, I will tell you that it got to the point where a doctor would call me at home and I'd have to ask what was wrong with them and how they felt about their condition...and some I had to say "I'm really sorry, but I just can't" to....if they had maggots and I was already running a damned ICU from home, I already had my hands full and it was in no one's best interest to compromise the babies I was putting so much into. I finally came to an agreement with the vets I knew to "please don't call" if they knew I had super special-needs babies, and whatever they had come in was in grave condition. Then I could focus my attention to what I already had. One of the most important things a foster family MUST know and practice is to NEVER take in more than you can care for, or sooner or later it will bite you in the ass! And it wasn't so much my ass I cared about; it was about trying to do the most good.

This is a very long-winded way of saying that it is very unfair to point fingers at vets or anyone else and portray them as pathetic failures and then compare themselves as shining examples. Pride comes before a fall. See my "bite you in the ass" observation above.

Most fading kittens that make it past the first few days, but die somewhere down the road succumb to infections or parasites. Remember that the prepatent period for roundworms is 2-3 weeks following birth, and then if you give them a week to wreak havoc in a kitten or puppy's body....guess what? Four weeks can be a critical time. There are parasites that evade detection; there are infections that can result from littermates suckling on genitals...there is cumulative damage that happens because of long-standing diarrhea...the profound anemia that can occur in a matter of hours due to fleas...it goes on and on.

Then there are the kittens that are only a few days old; they look fine in the morning and are dead by nightfall.

One problem that many laypersons are not aware of is "Neonatal isoerythrolysis"...it happens when a mother cat with blood type B becomes impregnated by a tom with blood type A. Those two CLASH. The kittens will most likely inherit blood type A, and when they start to nurse, they receive the colostrum with anti-blood type A antibodies. However, their intestines are still "leaky", that is, they have normal "holes" in them that permit large antibody proteins to pass through them into the blood stream for the first two days. Usually this is a good thing. This is how the babies get a nice fat dose of the antibodies they need in order to avoid many illnesses until their own immunity develops. The exception is that blood type antibody that happens with a B-type mother and A-type babies. Those Anti-A antibodies pass through the kittens' intestines, enter the blood stream, and begin to destroy the kittens' blood cells. If you were to pull as sample from the kittens, you'd find that the blood is agglutinating...clumping together because they are being attacked by antibodies.

This happened with the second litter I cared for back in 1995; by the time we knew it, it was too late. The mother was a Himalyan and the father? It's anyone's guess.

However, the rule of thumb is to allow 99% of kittens (especially "mutts") to get colostrum, it at all possible, because the isoerythrolysis is a problem which happens most commonly among purebred queens that "mis-mate" with a non-purebred tom. Blood type B accounts for 7-15% of the feline population, depending on breed and region.

Whew!

What I am saying is that I have a big problem with the title "fading kitten syndrome"...it is dangerously generic, and it's about as useful as saying "crib death". It does not address WHY or HOW it happened. It becomes dangerous when the title is just slapped on to a little one and then to say, "Oh well, this one is supposed to die."

Supposed to? GRRRRRRRRRR!!!

So there.

I don't know how much this rambling letter will help you, but hey, you can always use the information I gave you to dazzle friends, coworkers, and employers. They'll think..."Wow, that Zoe" or "Wow, that Breanna! She's a sharp one. I should give her a raise!! " =o)

In truth, you probably will have a great deal of trouble getting a lot of help from a vet, because some are awfully busy, and some will admit that newborn/orphan husbandry is just not something they're good at... so, expect the answer to be "no", or "maybe" UNLESS YOU KNOW HIM OR HER, and know otherwise. If you have a great rapport, ask in advance if it might be okay to call with questions if they should arise. Let them know that you've got a litter now, so there's a heads-up. Yes, many veterinarians will know that it may be biting off more than they can chew and say, "no, I'm sorry"...but who cares?? YOU ONLY NEED ONE "YES"!!!!

So don't give up!!!

PS: By the way, my daughter is getting close to completing all of her lower division requirements in college and has reached the crossroads...she is giving very serious thought to veterinary medicine...whether it be a vet or a tech, I applaud her! By George, in spite of all I put her and her brother through with all those little kitties running around and sometimes pooping on the baseboards (and sometimes worse than that!)...plus, we never had a dining room because every year it turned into a nursery/clinic...and there were so many times I asked her if she'd mind bottle-feeding a litter so I wouldn't have to take it to work...well, I guess it didn't condition her to dread the word "veterinary".

YESSSSSSSS!!!!