Socks and Her Kittens (Part 3)

For a few awful moments I had stood there ready to give in.  Socks was in a carrier on the counter. She looked from one to the other of us at eye  level and at that moment I realised I could not face her if I left her kittens there.  To be killed.  Euthanised. Put down. Whatever you like to call it.

So I picked up her carrier and that of the kittens and walked out.

It felt like wading in to the ocean when you can't swim.  It was not possible to take time off work and now I was doomed.  We all were because I would have to watch them sicken, suffer and die.

A full time job and a Sunday taken up by these dramas, leaving many chores undone for the week.  Returning  home with a tragic situation to face, predicted to end in the severe illness and deaths of the kittens.  Should I take them to our vet? what if he supported what I had been told?   and where was the money coming from?  I vented all the way home with intermittent silences filled with dark thoughts.

John had further upset my equilibrium by responding to my raving  by saying that he thought the fellow was quite good in how he handled the situation, that he tried to be fair in what he said, that he could see I was very upset and there was no easy answer and that he must know what he is talking about.
So then I felt as if I had behaved unfairly and had revealed myself to be 'difficult.' There seemed to be nothing going right that day.

We stopped at the chemist to buy some infant Pentavite.  A desperate measure if ever there was one.  The chemist woman questioned me on who I was using it for and I said 'kittens..'  Ha ha what kind of nut case was I?

Oh no, she said, I don't think you can give this to kittens.  Yes I said, I have used it before.  A doubtful expression and some kind of self preservation intervened and she let me have it.

At home we emptied the family into the rabbit hutch. I bathed the muck from their eyes and gave them a dose of Pentavite and waited for the end to come.; waited for the sneezing, the lethargy, the temperature.  It did not come that day.  Nor the next or the one after that.  I still did not know what to expect but within a week their eyes were clear and they seemed happy and dared I believe? healthy?
The only method I had was to bathe their eyes two to three times a day and dose them with Pentavite in that first week.

Being summer when this occurred, we used to take the hutch out into the garden in the afternoon and all day on the weekends so they could have fresh air and  a change of scenery.

All was going well until two more kittens turned up, not quite a week old, having been abandoned by their mother.  And of course it was a Sunday afternoon once more.

I can still hear that little eleven year old girls voice....

                            'Excuse me, excuse me, we found two more kittens.'

To be continued....

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