The story behind Loddenhøj`s Fighter

7 weeks old

Ingjalf became a father on Monday night, but with a lot of drama to it! The mother (Blanka) started to go into labour Monday, at her 58th pregnancy day! She`s an 8 year old lady, with no previous history of having problems regarding pregnancy, giving birth etc.

She went to the hospital, about 11 pm Monday night. She was not responding to anything, was sleeping, not eating or drinking. A blood sample was taken and the vet also listened to her heart beat and suddenly he got very "busy". She had an acute lack of calcium and that made her heart starting to show signs of being strained. She was given calcium and they tried to stabilise her. When they felt on her stomach, the kittens was still very much alive and they had her scanned to see if the kittens was of a sufficient size to be able to survive, even though this was only the 58th day of her pregnancy.

An emergency cesarian was performed, right after she was stabalised, and 4 living kittens came into this world. Their weights ranged from 101 - 117 grams, which is okay, ESPECIALLY when you consider that they were born at least 5 days early.

Blanka stayed at the hospital and was picked up by her owners on Tuesday morning, but already a couple of hours before, they had picked up the kittens, because she wasn`t able to take care of them at all.

When the vets checked Blanka in the morning, her values was so good that everybody was surpriced, so she was released from hospital to her owners tender care. The kittens was placed on a heating pillow and the owners toke turns in getting up and feed them all Tuesday.

I came in Tuesday evening to see them and at this point it was evident that Blanka didn`t want to have anything to do with her babies. Jan & Jane had already tried to get a nursing female to their babies, but no such luck. On the other hand my Quota had 2 babies, 2 weeks & 3 days old, but that would be better than nothing, so I toke the babies home with me yesterday. As it is evident from the picture below BOTH Quota and her babies has accepted these new, smaller, brothers and sister in their life.

Quota doesn´t have milk for them, yet, but I hope that she will. The kittens are very much alive and I have taken over the feeding job:-) They get their substant milk every 3rd hour and the 3 of them eat between 3-5 ml each time. The one with most color eat between 5-7 ml each time:-) There are two black/white boys, one looks like a bicolor, with 50 percentage black and 50 percentage white, and one is like a harlekin, including 4 black spots on the back:-) There is also a black mackerel tabby/white van boy and a black/white girl "painted" just like him:-) They all have ruler straight profiles, very nice chins, long bodies and the boning looks fine as well.

The black mackerel tabby/white male became weaker during Thursday, so on Friday I toke him to the vet. He had developed pneumonia and was euthanized because he was so weak:-( It is unfortunately common to see pneumonia in handfeed kittens, at least when they are as young as Quota`s fosterchildren. On Saturday one of the black/white boys died of pneumonia and the girl died later on, from what we don´t know:-( On a brighter side one of the kittens are still a live, a black/white boy, and he is at amazing 170 grams today. Being a week old it might not seem a lot, but to even get him this far is very impressive indeed! We hope that we will get him through this ordeal, no matter the odds! I must admit that it is far more time consuming than I had imagined when I began this "project". I really appriciate that Jan & Jane, the owners of Blanka, is also helping me out, cause this job is 24/7! I also appriciate the fact, that none of my females has ever needed this kind of involvment from my side, when they had kittens, but simply toke care of them on their own. What a truly terrific job they do!

On Thursday October 10th, I saw that the last surviving kitten was eating at Quota`s milkbar, for the very first time! And was overjoyed with happiness! He ate well and everything looked fine.... until Friday, where he sarted to show signs of having diarrhea:-( On Saturday we had the vet phone in fluent Synolox (antibiotics) at the pharmacy. We had to give this to him twice a day, with approximately 10 hours interval. The dosage was only at 0.05 ml and that is obviously not a lot. Futher more he also needed Zoolac, which is a product that resemblance the cats natural sybstance in the intestines. We believe that because he suddenly had access to the milk from Quota, instead of the KMR-milk that we had been feeding him all the time, that that is why he got such a bad case of diarrhea, because his system just couldn´t manage such a change.

On Wednesday October 16th, his diarrhea still wasn`t under control and I therefor contacted a vet, not the same as the first one though, cause he simply lived to far away for me to travel with such a small kitten. Vet nr. 2 thought that the kitten hadn`t gotten the right amount of antibiotics! Even though the there is a table on the synoloxbox that clearly says what amount a certain animal at a certain weight is going to be adminnistered, nr. 2 vet told me that it is "normal" to give a small animal, such as a kitten, an overdose". Sigh! IF only vet nr. 1 had known this, we might would have been spared a lot!

Well I just had to start over again, so now he was given 0,1 ml instead for the 0.05 ml. Later that day I saw some fresh blood coming out of his behind! Even though it was fresh blood, I became very concerned! At first vet nr. 2 felt that there was nothing more he could do for the kitten, that I wasn`t already doing, but I kept pusshing him and I was allowed to come and show the vet my kitten. The vet thought that he looked fine and explained to me that IF he had felt the kitten wasn´t worth trying to safe/help, he would have said so, but he did look fine, apart from the fresh blood of course. He was given an injection with antibiotics, B-vitamin, because that is often something kittens will lose during a diarrhea, plus something that would make his upset intestines calm down.

And hurrah it worked!!!!!! Already on Thursday he gained 10 grams, almsot entirely on Quota`s milk. He is still on zoolac and synolox twice a day, plus KMR-milk, just to be on the safe side.

Today he has got an upset stomach again, but this time I`m suspecting that he has had his "nose" in "the big" kittens feedingbowl, because it looked more like "normal" stools as suppose to how stool from a diet on milk looks. Time will show if he is over the worst part, but he has eaten cod roe directly from my fingers today, with great enthusiasm, so I think that things are looking brighter now.

Since he has become 3 weeks old, we have chosen a name for him:-) I have called him Fighter all the time, so that will be his name, Loddenhøj`s Fighter, very appropriate if you ask me:-)

Fighter keeps gaining weight. He is 5 weeks & 2 days old and is weighing 510 grams, not a lot compared to other kittens his age, but he is steadyly getting bigger and stronger, which is what is most important right now. The other kittens are fighting with him now, because he is getting stronger, and that is also having an impact on him of course:-)

Now he has become 7 weks old, is a nice looking boy and naugthy! Runs around all the time with the kittens from the Ø-litter, so it will be hard on him when they soon leaves home. He weighs 700 grams and that is a little on the thin side of what he "aught" to weigh. On the other hand he is a very lovely kitten when you feel him and by that I mean that he feels good, both weightwise and doesn´t feels "sickly" or anything, which I had imagend that he could feel like, given his previous history. He is of course lacking a strong immunesystem, because he didn´t get any of the first milk, when he was newborn from his mother which is so important for a kitten, but it doesn´t seem to bother him at all. And I have decided to keep him with me for ever! I don´t think that I could part from him now, after all there has been between us, we are simply to close to be parted. To be truthful I couldn´t care less wether or not he will grow up and be a good breeding og showcat, because he has a very firm grip on my heart:-)

Today Fighter is 9 weeks and 2 days old and weighs 1025 gram. And that is not to bad considering his past history.