As some of you might know, I took in a very young kitten a couple months ago from a lady who brought her into the shelter that runs adoptions at the pet store where I work. Evelyn was only about 24-36 hours old at the time, born on Memorial Day. One of my coworkers remembered that I had rescued kittens before (the shelter was full and didn't really have anyone to take her in, apparently), so they brought me down, and I simply couldn't refuse her.
Evvie was a fighter. Beyond a fighter. She overcame having improper feeding/heating for probably 12 hours within her first day of life. She overcame a respiratory infection at a few days old. She overcame the absolute worst case of coccidia I've ever seen that hit at about 4 weeks old. It took her a week and a half to get over it.
we unfortunately had to say goodbye to her at about six weeks old. She was just getting over the coccidia, just eagerly eating and drinking without a syringe. I noticed one morning that he seemed a little "nasally" breathing and figured that we would have to watch to make sure she didn't have any sort of respiratory infection again (she's accidentally tripped and tumbled face-first into her water bowl a couple days before). By afternoon, her breathing seemed heavier, so my brother took her to the vet's while I was at work. They did x-rays, and the results were not good - Evvie had no lung problems, but she had an unusual mass in the x-ray that the vet said was one of two things - either an enlarged heart or a herniated diaphragm. She ordered an ultrasound machine to be driven over to their office and scheduled another appointment for us the following morning. Evelyn didn't even make it that long...
By the time I got home from work, her breathing had gone from heavy to labored, and she was wheezing a bit. We decided around 7:30 pm that things were getting too bad too fast, and we took her into our local emergency vets. It turned out that they had an ultrasound machine there, they just lacked someone board-certified to give official disease diagnoses. They did a check, and again, the news was bad - the herniated diaphragm was the correct diagnosis. Basically, Evvie was born with a whole in her diaphragm, which a part of liver liver had come through. As she grew and became healthier, the hole was closing and healing...around the liver. The circulation to that part of the organ was partially cut off, building up toxins and mucking up her digestive system, blood, and breathing. With the size of the hole required for the liver to poke through, a surgery was essentially out of the option. It would've stretched the diaphragm too much, and she was already in a frail enough state that she likely wouldn't have made it through the surgery. We chose to have her humanely euthanized instead. My brother and myself were there, and I held her the whole time.
The unusual thing is that, while we were with her at the vet's our older kittens (about a year old now) went to a spot in the basement where their brother had been sick a few days before he passed away and started crying. They'd never even met her, as she was kept basically quarantined in my room since her origins were so uncertain.
We received her ashes a week later, which are now in my room. I figured I'd wait until I'd "calmed down" about all of it to post something, but now here I am, bawling like a baby again, just writing about it. The whole family feels like a child or infant's been lost. Evvie needed so much intense care that it really felt like having a kid. I think I just try not to think about it too much, because it's still really hard for me even now.
RIP Evvie-Ev-Ev. I love you still, more than I can say or anyone else can know.
