24 Hours ago I took an abandoned, wounded, 3 week old kitten into my house while trying to get it to survive over the night so I could take it to the vet in the morning. I asked for advice on this sub since I never took a care of a cat, yet alone a kitten in my whole life ( Original post ). 6 hours ago this little kitten sadly passed away and I would like to share the story of how that came to be with you.
First of all I want to express my appreciation for this sub though. I was very hesitant to post here at first since I thought r/Pets would most likely just be another one of these very generic subs were people just worship pictures of each others puppies. Gladly I was wrong and within the first two hours I received a lot of helpful advice as well as some supportive comments. I would especially like to thank the users u/bletcherouscretin for his/her kind words and u/Partigirl for her tip on white rice which definitely helped the kitten to manage it through the night. I would gladly give both of you reddit silver or gold or whatever immediately if I could. But unfortunately I just had these immense Vet costs to cover, which in the end - resulted in nothing. And with that we are already on the topic.
I was very happy to get Tria (named the kitten Tria because she had three little dots on her nose) to survive through the night. I made sure to warm her up with a heating pad and wrapped her in some cozy blankets and made sure she drank a lot so she wouldn't dehydrate. I made sure to wake up every 1-2 hours to check on her. Her shivering stopped after the first hour and I could get her to drink from my finger within the second. So those were some very exciting results and I could surely tell that she felt a lot better in the morning and I felt confident she would manage the way to the vet. I took a taxi and she slept almost the whole way through. Now as far as I could remember I've never been to a vet before in my entire life that's why I chose the best rated in my area and I trusted the doctor on everything. And maybe that full-on trust was the pebble that would later cause an avalanche of misfortunes. The Doctor observed Trias wounds but did not feel the need to clean them in any way. In fact she advised me not to clean the kitten whatsoever until a few weeks later. Weird, I thought. But who am I to judge a professional veterinarian. She gave Tria a few drops of glucose-water and put her back into the box I carried her in. Then she explained to me that I should remove the heating pad that I had placed below the blankets in the box as it could cause a too high body temperature and could eventually lead to the kitten developing a fever. She also said I should rather try to cool the kitten down instead once I'm home. I was very skeptic of these statements since Tria seemingly enjoyed that heating pad and throughout the night I had made sure that it would always keep a certain temperature. But again I was like "Alright, who am I to doubt a veterinarian with years of experience". She then began to hand me multiple food products and medicine that were, according to her, crucial for the kittens survival. As I mentioned I had no prior experience with cats, cat food, vets, etc. and since the doctor seemed genuine enough and it was the fastest way for me to get food and care for Tria I bought all of it (a quick research tonight showed me that all of the items were heavily overpriced by the way). Along those items was an antibiotic called "Amoxicillin" and the Doctor insisted to give it to the kitten two times per day at a dose of 0.2mg after a meal.
Back home I made sure to make Tria feel comfy and proceed to feed her, stimulate her and then give her the dosage of the antibiotic, just like the doctor told me to. Not a few seconds after Tria happily fell asleep and I was very happy that she was eating and drinking from the syringe since, again according to the doc, it was a good sign. I placed her improvised "bed" next to me and decided to sleep another hour too due to the lack of sleep from the night before. After I woke up Tria was already awake and staring at me. At first glance everything seemed fine and she even started to look around in a curious way. But like 2 minutes later she started to develop some weird breathing which just got worse and worse over time. I thought she might still be a bit dehydrated and so I tried to make her drink again but this time she refused it from the get go. She seemed to be in severe pain, cried a bit and her breathing rhythm started to become extremely fast. So after an hour of observing and trying to calm her down I decided to rush her to the vet once again. This time I chose to the nearest vet-office though, due to her condition. The new doctor started taking care of Tria immediately while placing her on the same kind of warming-pad that I was told not to use anymore. She measured her temperature and it was 34 degrees - well below average. I obviously told her about the other vet appointment we had earlier today and she asked me why the other Doctor did not clean her wounds or gave her any pain relievers. Her assistant then proceeded to put an oxygen mask over her face, while trying to clean out the wounds. Before doing all of this though, they took Tria out of her now heated box on a towel on the cold operating table (no heating lamp, nothing). This seemed very off to me since she just measured her very low body temperature and even though I wanted to speak up once again I kept thinking to myself I never even owned a cat, they are professionals, this is not my place. So I kept on following the procedure. But while her breathing became slower, so did her heart rate and she started to gain seizures. They told me she was too small and too weak to put her on any kind of fluid but they needed yet another (higher ranking maybe) Doctor to check up on her. Before the other doctor arrived her heart rate began too eventually fade away completely and an attempt to reanimate failed as well. I had to let them put her down and paid the second vet-costs on my way out. To me it seemed like neither of the two vets prioritized rescue-pets but that was just my humble, unprofessional opinion.
Now a few hours later I am writing these paragraphs and I feel miserable. I feel heartbroken and also a guilty. Guilty for not bringing her in as soon as I noticed her strange breathing pattern. Guilty for letting her stay outside for another hour initially the night before in hope of the mother cat returning. Guilty for not speaking up at either of the vets offices. After another research it turned out that the antibiotic the first Doctor prescribed actually can have severe side effects. Quote: "[ Side Effects and Intolerance to Amoxicillin:] A potentially fatal type of allergic reaction, called anaphylaxis, is also possible in rare cases and can cause difficulty breathing, low blood pressure, seizures and coma." If you replace Coma with death, then the mentioned side effects are scarily equal to the symptoms that Tria developed after the antibiotics kicked in. While I really don't want to guilt shame the first vet, in retrospective it is really out of my mind how you could prescribe such a strong type of medicine to a weak, three week old kitten without examining her more thoroughly and without knowing about any potential allergies, bacterial infections etc. etc.
In the end I still feel very sorry. Especially considering the fact that I didn't even manage to keep her alive for even 24 hours under my care. And I will probably feel sorry and heartbroken for quite a while now but when it comes down to it I just really hope that the night that I took care of her were at least more pleasant for her, than her short life before. I also wanted to mention that I had this prejudice before on where I thought that stories of people who have to let their pet down at a vet-clinic are always just way too dramatic. I mean it's just a cat right? No it isn't. Unfortunately I had to learn this the hard way but seeing a living creature, that did nothing wrong in it's life die in front of your own eyes is very devastating (even if you only knew her for like half a day) and I don't wish for anyone to experience this. In the end all of this probably came down to human error and bad decision making but with my last sentence and knowing that there are so many lonely Animals out there in such horrible conditions or trapped in shelters I really want everyone to adjust to a "Adopt, don't shop" lifestyle. Thank you for reading.
TL/DR: Found an abandoned kitten and tried everything to have it survive. It unfortunately died ~18 hours later. Don't take everything professionals tell you for granted and sometimes trust your instincts. Please take care of your beloved pets and animals in general. They deserve a good life.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/djq42u/24_hours_later_appreciationreflectionpost/
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