Hi everyone. 

I have been helping cats for years — I have 4 of my own and have rescued many others. 

Just about a year ago, I moved to a property that had cats already living on it. To make a long story short, we noticed 2 pregnant girls on the property in January and decided to let them live in our garage (and care for them) while they were pregnant so we can help find homes for their babies and then get them spayed to prevent future litters. 

To make another long story short, the kittens were born March 11th and we lost one of the boys today to fading kitten syndrome. 

He was the runt so was always smaller, but I didn’t notice any major red flags until recently when I noticed URI symptoms. We took them to the vet Saturday for meds and the vet office didn’t have the proper mg/mL dosage so we had to order them from chewy. By Monday, we hadn’t received the meds and everyone was getting worse so I called the vet and told them they need to figure out a way to get us meds ASAP because I’m worried. They got us the meds we needed. 

Yesterday I noticed this little guy was a little more lethargic than normal, but I honestly thought he just wasn’t feeling great from the URI and would be okay in a couple of days. I was WRONG! I noticed today I hadn’t seen him nurse at all so I tried to offer him KMR and he wouldn’t eat.. I hoped that he had just eaten and wasn’t hungry, but I gave him a little syrup on his gums to be safe and place him on the heating pad. A couple hours later I went to check on him and he was very lethargic. Rushed him to the emergency vet and he was diagnosed with FKS, had lost weight, low temp, etc and was basically no longer moving. After some efforts at the vet office, the vet recommended we euthanize. I was there for hours because I couldn’t give up on him but there wasn’t anything more we could do. 

The point of my post is, I am DISTRAUGHT. I have never lost a kitten before in all my previous rescue efforts and have only ever lost one other cat and that’s because he was hit by a car and left on the side of the road when I found him. 

I genuinely don’t know what to do with myself as I’ve never experienced this. I feel like I failed him and I can’t believe this happened. I’ve been sobbing for hours and I feel like I shouldn’t have agreed to euthanize or I should’ve just done more to begin with… :(

How do you guys handle foster losses? I am an absolute disaster.

Fading Kitten Syndrome