[Warning: Not all stories end like fairytales]

Tuesday

Despite the mountain of work that Matt and I have on it is incredibly hard not to be distracted by the knowledge of the tiny and super vulnerable little kittens. Seems that grumpy cat left the kittens around 9/9:30am and hasn’t been since. About 10:30am we had a quick search and couldn’t see her so went round to see what was happening. Four of the five are definitely still breathing. We’re not sure if the first one was stillborn as it’s been on the bottom of the pile since we stumbled across them yesterday.

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1pm: Still no sign of grumpy cat and the nest is still in the shade. Temperatures aren’t bad in the sun but it’s not warm in the shade and they have no way to keep themselves warm. They should also be being fed every 2 hours but we’re now at about 4 and no sign of when, or indeed if she might be back.

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It’s very difficult to work while keeping a constant eye on whether the cat has returned. We checked the wildlife camera which confirmed that she’d been on the nest all night but left around 9am and hadn’t been back since.

Grumpy cat has been back to the garden and we’ve given her a couple of feeds so that she can stop going hunting and return to the kittens. Sadly no such luck. She remained in the garden but watching them from a distance of 5-25m, that’s not going to feed them or keep them warm (or indeed alive). Once work was basically done for the day we decided that the best thing we could do was walk down to get some advice from the local vet.

We’d printed out a short summary of what had happened and duly waited in line. The receptionist was very kind and informed us that the vet was busy but asked us to wait. It was nearly the end of surgery and she was soon out to provide some advice. She quickly read the paper we had prepared and then confirmed what language we spoke. Turns out that the local vet speaks pretty impressive English, which was a bit of a relief (I really didn’t want to get this translation even slightly wrong).

As we’re already acutely aware, it’s really a bit of a toss up and there is no good answer. The likelihood is that they will die. If she doesn’t go back to them they will get hypothermia and die, or they will starve and die. If we do step in to feed them, she might return and look after them but she also might not. If we decide to take them into the house, then we will have to feed them every two hours and they probably still won’t survive. It’s a bit of a no win situation so what one does for the best is anyone’s bet. So we do the only thing we can do based on this advice, and that’s to buy the powdered kitten formula and get some feeding syringes and be prepared.

Back at the house and she’s still not been near them. Since they’ve not been fed since 9am at the latest the best thing we think we can do is to feed them (wearing gloves as the vet suggested). Matt says that they are very cold, so we’re not optimistic and one of them has already passed away unfortunately.

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After feeding we resign to give it another couple of hours in case she comes back. It really would be the best thing to happen. But there is no sign of grumpy and it’s getting really cold now. We’re resigned to taking them in and what we’ve just committed ourselves to. In the house we have the bed, blankets, hot water bottle and syringes already made up.

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Time to get them heated and fed. [We’ve learnt a lot in the past few hours about how we should be holding them and which way up they should be – FYI it’s tummy down when feeding them but we’re doing our best. We also know what you need to do to encourage them to pee/poop…] We’ve also created a feeding chart of how much each of them has taken and when as well as weighing them – squeaks, 65g; stripes, 59g; other, 64g. (Don’t judge me, they are so small and unresponsive at this stage that they don’t have any characteristics yet by which to name them better!)

[Technically Wednesday]

About to prep the last feed before we go up at 12:30 Matt checks on them and ‘squeaks’ has passed away. No motion at all, we try some gentle rubbing with a baby wipe but she’s gone 🙁

We get a little food into the other two but no where near enough or even close to what they should be taking. They’ve had enough though and so we can’t do much more than reset the hot water bottle and get them comfortable. The heater has been on upstairs for a little while to warm up the ambient air and the cardboard is a good insulator. As I’m trying to finish my work I get a message from Matt that there’s constant squeaking so I’m done with this and head up to help. Seems he’s getting pretty good at the syringe feeding, it’s not easy, particularly when you know that they don’t have a gag function and you could kill them – God, this is going to be a long night!

Once I’m in bed I’m suffering the same as Matt, every little squeak makes me anxious. We both settle in for the night with the kits. Matt is incredible. He’s somehow made a silent alarm and I only know he’s up as I can see/feel him around me looking after them. I do my best to try to participate but he’s clearly got this.

I tried, I set my next alarm for 10 mins before I thought Matt’s would go off. It was super loud and probably woke the neighbours too. I don’t think I’m good at helping. Around 7:30am Matt’s trying another feed. They’re not taking. Serge (full name ‘Sergeant squeaks a lot’ – he earned that name during the night) got about .5ml and stripes only took maybe .1ml. This is not good. They’re not even responding to the p/p rubs and they’ve always wriggled at that. But they don’t want anything more so back to the box with another fresh bottle.

Matt’s up at about 9:15. Despite hearing squeaks from the box about half an hour earlier, they have both passed away 🙁

It’s not a great start to the day but not unexpected.

We felt it was appropriate to have a little funeral, putting them back where they were born. Family pets are usually buried shoe boxes right?! So we manage to find a little box and, since the other two kittens were still in the grass clippings, we thought it best to bury them together, back in the location and grass clippings they were born onto. Matt helped dig it while I found some flowers, a nice primula with 5 flowers (one for each of them). We also put in some wildflower butterfly seed, we figured they’d rather play with butterflies than bees.

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It was sad. Who’s not sad when burying something (other than as seeds of course). But we did everything we possibly could for them knowing that it would likely end in failure. And I have to raise my glass to my ever incredible, caring and immensely good mother cat stand in. Matt, you were incredible and I love how you got up every two hours without complaint or argument to look after them as best you could. You continue to amaze me every day with how you take everything in your stride and are eternally calm and relaxed. ? xx

[23 and 24 March 2021]