We had another kitten move into our cattery in October. She was an orange tabby that I named Ginger. It took us five days to trap her. She was so tiny that she could walk through the fence and had enough Moxie to walk right inside the cattery building through the pet door. We found her asleep nestled in the middle of our cats more than once. The second she sensed us in the room, she would shoot back out the cat door, through the fence and was gone. She was a lot younger than we thought, probably late in her fourth week or early in the fifth week. Once cold, rainy day I saw her go into the cattery through the pet door. We waited a few minutes, then I snuck out to the fenced area with a pillow. I tiptoed to the pet door and squeezed the pillow up against it. Tom went inside the cattery building. The kitten saw him and tried to run out the cat door, hitting the pillow. Tom was able to capture her, since she could not get outside. Our six cats were letting her eat their food; they groomed her and let her sleep curled up with them. The knotheads, anyway! Ginger was scared of everything. She had worms so bad she could not keep any food in. We wormed her once a week for two weeks. We just got that under control and I heard her cough. I started her on antibiotics from the first cough, but she kept getting sicker. First one lung filled with fluid, then the second. We tried four kinds of antibiotics, a nebulizer, coughaging, and essential oils. She slept on a heating pad. We made chicken or fish broth and fed it to her with an eye dropper. Tom and I checked on her six and seven times during the night but she didn’t make it. Every night when Tom would get home from work he would put Ginger in the crook of his arm and walk around patting her, singing ‘Ginger kitty, Ginger Sweety, Ginger Peachy” to try to comfort her. We both got way too attached to her. Tom buried her in a box with lots of toys. He said she never got to play here on earth and he wanted to make sure she had lots of toys to play with wherever she is now.
