🚀 go-pugleaf

I've just had a couple of 5 wk old kitten die from what seemed to be
pneumonia.

The onset was very sudden. On Fri evening I found one kitten outside
(where she'd been playing) sitting "limp" next to a wall. She subsequently
refused food and drink. She seemed active for a while.
Overnight I put her on an electric blanket, suspecting she had a "chill"
(it had rained heavily a couple hrs before I got home).
Looking at her overnight she seemd just to want to sleep.
Breathing seemed normal.
But around 6 am things went bad. Breathing became laboured, eventually
ending in short breaths.
She lasted a couple of hrs like that but then had a couple of back-arching
spasms and died.
Total apparent duration of disease was 10 hrs.

Her brother seemed fine during the day (Sat). 
Everything seemed fine until 3 am this morning when he ran out to the 
kitchen and then seemed not to know why he was there.
He wouldn't touch a saucer of kitten milk or fish mash.
I hoped I was wrong. I put him on an electric blanket for the rest of the
night.  He seemed otherwise fine when I checked a couple of times.

But around 9 am I picked him up and he was limp, like his sister had been.
My local vet is closed Sun, and I don't drive. But as it turned out,
that didn't matter.

He didn't want to sit on the blanket, but I made him lay on
a hot waterbottle wrapped in a cardigan. He wanted to squat in
the characteristic "hard to breath" pose. I tried to follow the
emergency "hot poultice between the front legs" strategy using
the waterbottle.

In the next few hrs his breathing got worse. He died around 1.30 pm.
From start to finish it was around 8 1/2 hrs.

Other things to note -- I have had some kind of flu for the 
past 8 wks or so. It's not unusual for me to have long bouts
of flu. I don't usually get it, but when I do it tends to hang on.

Finally, the kittens' mother is a local stray about 6 m old when
they were born. I helped deliver her 4 kittens. They were all
small from the start. One ginger was a breach birth and took a bit
of effort to deal with. (Mother was injured in process but
both seemed to recover). 

Within 24 hrs of births one died of a chill and a 2nd one "disappeared". 
The mother did not take very good care of any of the babies at any time. 
When they were living in my laundry she only seemed
to drop by 1 or 2 times a day, and play outside the rest of the time.

She seemed to run out of milk really quickly. And when the kittens 
tried to suckle she would only let them drink for 30 sec before wantering off
after a squeak.  I suspect they were biting her a bit -- they
certainly liked to nibble at my fingertips and knuckles if they got
the chance.

My remaining problem is -- is there a possibility any of other
kittens/cats  could pick up an infection from the bedding or
other things these 2 touched in the past 48 hrs?

I suspect the male caught some infection from the female, since
there were together when the female first started showing signs.

-- 
R Kym Horsell <kym@kymhorsell.com>

They said it was only luck. But the more I practised, the luckier I got.
  -- Gary Player [and others]