About 14 months ago, I got an e-mail from a fellow chat room roomie. Seems she had found a couple of kittens on her back porch and didn't know what to do with them. Since she knew I did cat rescue, I was the first person who came to mind. So, I told her to bring them by - luckily, she only lives about 15 minutes away from me. Now, when she said kittens, I figured "ok, kittens" - about 2 months old or so. When she showed up, she had these two little balls of fur that were smaller than a golf ball in a hermit crab cage. Upon inspection, I realized they were about a day old. I started feeding them immediately and put them in a bed with a heating pad. I told her that I couldn't guarantee anything, with them being so tiny and without a mom.
Well, as the days and weeks went on, these two kitties flourished. We named them Peaches (the female orange & white) and Willie (the brown tiger) after a couple of cats I used to pet-sit for and who were two of our favorites.
I finally get them weaned & going potty by themselves thinking, "great, no more midnight feedings" when I get a call from my sister.....uh oh.....three more kittens. She heard something making noise outside and thought she saw a little black mouse. When she got closer, she realized it was a small kitten and found two more in a corner by her apartment building. *I will elaborate more on the three in another post.* So now we had 5 little kittens!!! Plus the menagerie of the rest of our gang! (I'm not even telling you how many cats I have :) ) **And by the way, I did not pose the picture of the two cats laying together...they were already like that when I took the photo!** We had a wonderful 5 months of kitten-hood. They were all so adorable & funny!

Fast forward to October 2005....Peaches doesn't seem quite right. We needed to have an echo-cardiogram done which showed an enlarged heart. She wasn't given a good prognosis. It could be 6 months or 6 years, but it wasn't going to be good. That same week, my vet went on vacation and I was given the information that she should be okay for some time before she starts showing any signs of getting worse. Of course, as it always happens, she gets sick while the vet is away. Now, being a cat-mom for so many years and working with cats, it looked very much like an upper-respiratory infection. So I just kept an eye on her for a couple of days. Then she stopped eating & started to hide. This was not a good sign.

We rushed her one rainy October night to a different vet thinking they'd give her some fluids and send her home with some antibiotics. That was not to be. The look on his face when he saw this little 6 month old baby told me all I needed to know. He took a blood sample to make sure it wasn't leukemia, feline AIDs or FIP, that could be transferred to my other cats. (Even though we had already had her tested for FELV & FIV a few months earlier, we had to be sure the tests were correct). Her blood looked like pink-tinted water. He ran a test in the office and determined that her body had stopped producing new red blood cells. He didn't expect her to make it through the night.

My husband and I decided to take her home so her brother could see her, along with the other cats. We got in the car where we both started just sobbing. At that point, Peaches started screaming! Screaming like I've never heard a cat scream in my life! So we ran back in the vet's office and had to have her euthanized right there and then. I held her in my arms and softly spoke to her while her little spirit passed away.

I felt so guilty. Why didn't I see this coming? With all my years experience why didn't I notice it sooner??? Of course, all the vets involved said there was nothing anyone could have done anyway. It was a very rare, genetic disease that could not ever be fixed. We could have done blood transfusions, but it would have only been a band-aid. Made her better for a little while then she would have failed again.

That night, I held her limp little body in my lap on the ride home. Still, I wept into her soft kitten fur, still talking to her. We brought her inside and let the other cats see her. They all came up to her, almost as if to say goodbye. Her brother seemed afraid. The other smaller kittens seemed to even understand that she was gone. The next morning, we took her over to the pet cemetery and had a private cremation and got her ashes back. I still miss my little angel. I think about her every single day. I pray that her brother never gets sick. I tell him and the other kittens not to forget her. She is our little guardian angel. She lives in our hearts forever.