Waiting 24 hours Saved Our Cat Bleach

I am not sure if I will ever forget that sound I heard at 3am one Weds morning. A pitiful yowling from one of the tiny kittens we were fostering. They were all 5 weeks old. Her name was Bleach, named because her coloring looked like someone spilled bleach on a gray sweater. Her two brothers (Earl Grey and BB (black bear) sat quietly in the corner of the kennel looking at her with much concern.

Bleach seemed in terrible pain even though we could find nothing physically wrong with her other than a distended tummy. I called a fellow foster parent who was more experience than I at the time and tried to diagnose the problem over the phone. You can really tell a cat person; she didn’t mention once what time it was. She could hear Bleach crying in the background and suggested we called the 24 hour Vet used for our foster group. We bundled Bleach up in a warm blanket for the 20 min drive to the Vet. All the way to there this tiny creature was crying at the top of her lungs. My daughter and I talked about what the options were if it was something serious. Our rule is not to get attached to any of the bottle baby fosters. We give them food, water and lots of love, but after many years have conditioned ourselves to be able to let them go after they turn 8 weeks old. This one was tugging at both our hearts.

The Vet was very kind but wasn't very hopeful after putting Bleach on the floor and watching her go backwards in circles. Checking her over she speculated that it could be neurological or a case of coccidia, and on and on about what it could be, all the while Bleach is pitifully crying and continued circling around backwards.

After much discussion the Vet recommended we euthanize Bleach to put her out of her misery. Because this happened so fast and we weren’t really sure what the problem was we decided to wait 24 hours, letting the Vet know we would be back if there was no change in her condition. We wrapped Bleach back up in the blanket and headed home.

I had to leave the next day on a week long trip. I felt pretty bad leaving the kitten with my then 20 year old daughter. I gave her the instruction to warm up blankets in the dryer, wrap her up, try to “burp” her and massage her tummy as that is where it seemed the discomfort was. Around 9 am I stopped at a gas station to call for an update. My daughter reported that Bleach had settled down but still seemed uncomfortable. I called again at 11am to hear my daughter say in a laughing tone “she is ok now, she burped then she farted then fell asleep.” We both started laughing then realized we almost had a kitten put to sleep because of “GAS!”

Bleach came through the “gas” scare with flying colors. In 3 weeks we were ready to take the kittens for adoption. As you can imagine there was a lot of discussion on whether or not to keep her. My daughter had just lost her cat of 17 years and I think was feeling the loss. Bleach had inched her way into our hearts so there was no way we were going to let her go. She is now 4 years old (5 in September 2012) and is the baby of our family.