A HAPPY ENDING FOR THE TINIEST KITTEN

Submitted by Jennifer Langley, Practice Manager, Gasow Veterinary Hospital

I wanted to share a story that we encountered. One of my associates had a cat who was pregnant. We took x-rays to determine how many babies we were to expect. Two days later, mama kitty went into labor. Sadly, the first baby to be born was already gone. Mama kitty had 3 more babies and they all appeared healthy, but my associate brought mama and her babies into the hospital to be checked out. We reviewed the x-rays and believed that 1 or 2 more kittens could still be in the womb. We suspected that the baby or babies would not be viable since mama went into labor the night before and it had been going on 12-13 hours. We decided to take mama into surgery to at least save her life so she could take care of her 3 babies.

We were going to treat the surgery as a normal spay, but the doctor at the last minute decided to C-section the baby out first, then proceed with the spay. The baby was very small and was not moving as we suspected. The technician started to try and stimulate the kitten, and to our surprise, the baby kitten gasped, and then started to cry! We were so excited to see this baby survive 12-13 hours of labor after mama had given up pushing. The baby was stuck too high in the womb and mama would not have been able to deliver the kitten without surgery. The photo of the baby kitten alone was taken shortly after the first cries. We weren’t sure how the last baby kitten would do at first, but this little kitten and the other siblings are now doing very well.  Mama kitty has also been recovering well. She was spayed during her C-Section and is a loving caring mama.