Kittens and Rabies, My N=2.

 

Raffles, 4 months old

Twice in one career. Ok, let's put it all out there, twice in under 5 years. It shouldn’t happen. The odds are staggeringly not in my favor, well, at least for anything else. Perhaps in the very high density, over-crowded, collection bins of the shelters, it might happen, but, me, little home town vet me, well, surely it couldn’t happen to me?

And here I am. Just notified that one of the kittens I was taking care of, the second kitten I have ever taken home to spend the weekend in my bathroom, is positive for rabies.

The staff had named him Scrapple. One of three we had been given custody of to try to find homes for. The finder of the litter is a wonderful long time client of ours had humanely trapped, vaccinated and spayed their mom. She had also decided to keep the other little tortoise shell kitten sibling named Kali.  

Scrapple

We do a lot of this. We do a lot of helping out when a client finds themselves with a stray pet (or four) on their property. While I recognize most other vets would simply point to the local shelter for the answer to their "not my problem" dilemma, the shelters are burgeoning with too many unwanted animals already. Further these little ones would be at great risk of euthanasia due to space constraints or acquire a respiratory infection from stress, overcrowding and inability to be vaccinated fully before their arrival. This is a client we have known for decades. If she is willing to step up and help these cats I am happy to assist her. It works like that, a compromise for the sake of the animals involved. Jump in, be compassionate. Make a difference. Live your purpose, all of the things we veterinarians came into vet med to do,, and then conveniently dismiss as "no good deed" comes along.

Scrapples story began as a simple kind gesture for the sake of need and ability. He needed us and we are more than best equipped to help. So we do. Period.

But, Scrapple had a past that preceded us. That past is what the "no good deed" and it's "punishment" brought.

He had been with us at the clinic for about 2 weeks. He and his two bouncing, bigger, buoyantly bubbly calico sisters. The little black Scrapple was always smaller, more subdued and quiet. On Wednesday (2 weeks into his stay with us) he started limping. By Thursday we took an x-ray. He had an old fracture of his femur. It was healing (as all kittens do), but why was he limping now? The fracture must have happened many weeks ago. He was about 2 pounds,, so at around 1 month old? Why would a kitten have an old fractured leg? Probably fell? There were no wounds ever evident on him. 

There are patients who step into our clinic that are so sick, debilitated and distressed that they require 24 hour care. Within a few days of his arrival Scrapple started to look, and act sick. He was too quiet, too small, and not looking like his thriving sisters. In vetmed he would be called "a kitten failing to thrive." In reality he is a kitten with a mysterious disease that would have gone undiagnosed had he not landed here with us. When it became obvious that he was still declining in spite of our sq fluids, antibiotics and TLC we needed to make some decisions. For Scrapple to go to the ER for the degree of care that he needs would be about $1,000 to $2,000 a day. I estimated that if he was going to survive he needed at least 5-10 days of this. So, I took him home for the few days I hoped he would need to get better. He did after all look like this;

Scrapple and his sisters had been dewormed and microchipped at their arrival to us. They had also gotten their first feline FVRCP vaccine. They were too young to have been vaccinated for rabies. Their mom was spayed, dewormed, microchipped and vaccinated for her FVRCP and rabies.

Within two days Scrapple was just lying around. Barely walking, barely eating, and he was separated from his sisters. By Thursday night I was very worried about him. Based on his unknown outside history and rapidly declining status I was worried about him dying, and I was worried about rabies. I took him home to minimize the exposure to the rest of the staff if he declined like the last rabid kitten I took care of did.

The last rabid kitten was Mauna. She had become an angry, exorcist-needy demon over 4 days. It was a Hyde from Jekyll. It was a change so intense and awful that I wish I had captured it on video. In the last two days of her life she only did two things; slept and attacked. When you woke her she used every tiny minutia of energy to kill you. She was a piranha possessed demon just alive to bite you. She was a virus nestled in her brain to pass on her disease. It was almost impossible to kill her. There was no way to euthanize her. There was no kindness or compassion or ethics in what I had to do. I was not able to hold her, restrain her, or be what I inherently am. She bit me twice in the last moments of her life. I had to stand in the room with her watching her violently attack me and ask myself how I was going to be able to euthanize 2 pounds of terror trying to kill me? I had to put her in a pillow case, tie it tight around her, wear thick leather gloves and inject a monumental amount of barbiturate's into whatever part of her lay under the case. I had to repeat it 4 times. I got my second round of post exposure rabies vaccines a few days later when the lab called me to say that she had been positive for rabies. This is a clear example of the "furious" form of rabies. Scrapple, turns out, had the "dumb" form.

Scrapple declined to a comatose state. He was still eating his syringe fed meals like a monster. Turns out that rabies virus is just that.. very convincing to the host to keep it alive, even when the host can no longer carry to its next victim.

It has been over 2 months since Scrapple died. It took a lot out of me to have to put him down. I will tell you that as a veterinarian you often have to separate yourself from your emotions and do rally hard things. You have to have some pretty excruciating internal dialogues about reality, civic duty, compassion and allowing death to be a part of a life you live even when it is absolutely unwelcome. Putting a kitten to sleep that weighs less than 1 pound via a needle into the heart so that you aren't going to be bitten and further jeopardize your own life, and then go to the ER for post exposure rabies injections to the tune of a couple thousand dollars, is a stark reminder as to why the saying still sticks. No good deed can be punished.

When the health department called to notify us that Scrapple was positive they required that the remaining kittens, and their mom all had to be placed in quarantine also. Mom was sentenced to 2 months, and the kittens four months. Our client decided that she wanted to keep her bunch and has them quarantined together in a spare bedroom. The calico kittens had an adopter who decided that they didn't want them, nor to wait four months, so they adopted elsewhere. When the Health Department asked me what we were going to do with the calico's we had I told them I would keep them for as long as they needed me. They were shocked. They had never had another vet do anything other than euthanize and move on. Learn their lesson and let the future kittens in need be someone else's problem.

Birdie and Raffles

They have names, Birdie and Raffles. They live in my spare bedroom at my home. And I love them to pieces. For whatever time we have together there is love, there is kindness, bustling thundering playing above my kitchen, and a reminder that life isn't supposed to be easy, it is supposed to remind you that you have choices to remind yourself who you are, and what you will be remembered by. It is about acta non verba.