Daphne's Page

I was asked if could take in two unwanted queens, both heavily pregnant. Of course I said yes and welcomed them into my home. The girls, Tabitha and Magpie, had to stay separate from my own cats so they lived in the spare bedroom.

A few days after they arrived Tabitha started showing signs of labour. For three nights I sat up until 4am waiting for kittens.... nothing happened. By April 7th I was exhausted and had to go to bed at a sensible hour, so I asked my husband to check Tabitha when he got up for work. Just after 5am on the 8th he came and woke me, he said, 'I think you'd better come downstairs'. I rushed down to see what had happened. When I went into the cats' room I saw two tiny kittens alone in the kittening bed. They were both cold and wet so I dried them and warmed them. But where was Tabitha? I looked behind the big armchair for her. Magpie was there, and something was moving under the small quilt. Gently I lifted the quilt to find Tabitha with three more tiny babies. I moved all the kittens back to the bed and encouraged them to suckle, which they did. In the dim light (I always leave a dim light on when kittens are due) I could see that all five kittens were pale coloured. Definitely two gingers and the other three looked white, but how could they be white when the mother was tortie? I had been told the father was black.

Once the kittens were happily suckling and warm I returned to bed. As soon as I got up I went straight to see the new arrivals. Sure enough, three white girls and two ginger boys.... and very happy mummy and auntie. Tabitha was caring perfectly for her babies, with a helping paw from Magpie.

That afternoon Magpie went into labour. She was very scared and in a lot of pain so I stayed with her just incase she needed help. There was no need. Although Magpie could not cope on her own, Tabitha helped her wonderfully. Magpie first produced a tiny black and white, followed by a black. There was something else attached to the sack surrounding the black baby. At first I thought it was afterbirth, but when both girls ignored it completely I decided to investigate. It turned out to be a perfectly formed dead kitten, very small. It must have died at around the fourt week of gestation. Two more kittens arrived safely.... followed by another stillborn. Magpie's kittens were noticably smaller than Tabitha's, but healthy.

Over the next couple of weeks the girls shared their responsibilities, with Tabitha doing the majority of the work. All went smoothly until I noticed a bald patch forming on the back of one of the white girls. The patch got rapidly bigger and spread to her head. Someone said she looked just like a baby bird. Just a few days after the first signs, the tiny baby was almost completely bald and one of her sisters was affected, though not so badly. It was off to the vet with both kittens, and the third white girl so the vet could see the size difference.

The vet had no idea what was causing the baldness and sent me away with some formula to supplement their diet. I did not use the formula because I did not see why I should feed artificial milk to kittens that were being very well fed by two mothers, instead I put the mothers onto a better quality food to enrich their milk. A couple of weeks later the kittens' fur grew back completely and they looked normal again. But by this time it was too late... I had already fallen head over heals for the worst affected kitten, who I named Daphne.

As Bonnie had died a few weeks earlier I had room to adopt another kitten so Daphne stayed. It was not easy going, far from it. She was very nervous and no matter what I did she did not calm down. Eventually she found the confidence to leave her room, but as soon as she saw my dog she ran back in and hid. This was still happening when she was ten weeks old. I really didn't understand why she was so scared as she had been here since she was born and had known the dog since she was two weeks old. It was a mystery. I started to think that Daphne would never be happy living with a dog, but gave it a few more days before finding her a new home. Luckily Daphne did start to calm down and a few weeks later she had accepted my dog completely.

When Daphne was about four months old she started showing very worrying signs, she would collapse panting after playing. Having just lost Gem I was terrified that I was going to lose Daphne too. I decided not to panic, just to keep a close watch on her and calm her down whenever she played too hard. The plan was to have her heart checked the week before she was spayed. As the weeks passed she stopped collapsing so much, it is now over three weeks since she last collapsed. The time has come for her to be spayed, so yesterday I took her to see the vet. Her chest sounded fine, but the vet decided to do an ECG to be on the safe side. He said that sometimes heart problems can not be detected just by listening to the chest. I left the surgery without Daphne and waited until it was time to collect her. At 3pm I walked into the surgery to meet a smiling vet who said the ECG had not detected any abnormalities. Such a relief, and to add to it the vet informed me that he was not charging anything for the work he had done that day.

Tomorrow Daphne will be spayed. The vet is going to take extra precautions just incase, but it seems that she is a pefectly happy, healthy and very beautiful cat :)

Update December 30th 2000: Daphne was spayed with no complications. She is now happily living with the rest of the Alicats - with no further reoccurence of the suspected heart problems.