Cobweb's Story |
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Snugglebug's Cobweb
As told in the story of Willow's second letter, after three weeks all the kittens became infected by chlamydia and suffered a lot before we got the infection under control. Three of the kittens were worse affected than the other two. Cobweb had the worst of it followed by Moonshine and Quince. Cobweb was also the worst affected by a secondary herpes infection. The treatment was hard on the kittens as I had to give them medicine three times a day and at the same time clean their faces of the mucus and pus that affected their noses and eyes. The eyes needed the most attention as their eyelids stuck together and there was a buildup of mucus behind the lids which became pus if left for too long. The only way to clean them was to bathe the eyes after pulling apart their eyelids, followed by squeezing ointment in to combate the infection directly and keep their eyes open. Hard for me and even harder for them. We had to delay looking for homes for them so they were all still with us until January 2006. By then we had decided to keep Cobweb as the damage to her tear ducts we thought would involve too much aftercare for most potential owners. Around about May 2007 her right eye was giving her a lot of trouble and I had to give her more medicine and cleaning treatment. Eventually in July Kirsten recommended that the infection was becoming untreatable and recommended that the eye should be removed completely before the damage could spread. That was done on the 17th and when we brought her home I reported to a friend "When I brought her home she had an Elizabethan ruff. I took it off straight away and she has made no attempt to scratch, so that is OK. The second thing was that she shouted "I am HUNGRY!" Although she could hardly walk, she tried to stagger into the kitchen to jump up for the food! I carried her to the worktop and gave her some food that she ate so fast, she promptly vomited it all up. But ten minutes later she wanted more, and that was fine." On the 18th I wrote again that "Today she can jump properly to the top of the kitchen cabinets and even straight across the kitchen from one worktop to the other. We think that she had been learning to manage with one eye for a couple of weeks." so all seemed to be well. It came as a great shock when a week later she suddenly lost control of her walking and after an emergency visit to Kirsten it was discovered that the old infection had come back and affected her brain via the optic nerve. Sadly there was nothing to be done and our happy, brave, little girl was euthanised on the 25th at a couple of months short of her second birthday. |
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