First of all, if you don't know me in real life, you should know that I LOVE animals. Hunter and I both do. I have had either a cat or dog or both pretty much my entire life, and I consider pets to be 100% a part of the family. I prefer cats, and we had a cat named Misty from the time I was in kindergarten until she had to be put down because of a brain tumor when I was almost 19. That was a terribly sad day. Hunter and I have two 6-year-old cats that we raised since they were tiny kittens.
My brother and sister-in-law recently got a kitten that they named Basanti. A week or two ago they decided that they think she's pregnant - they didn't even realize that she was old enough for that yet. Hunter and I were at their house last weekend and I felt her belly and thought to myself, silly as this is, that it was kind of neat to have something in common with this cat and be pregnant at the same time. Yeah, I'm weird, I know.
Today I found out that Basanti lost her 4 kittens. They were born too soon. Apparently her body wasn't old enough yet to handle the pregnancy. I am so sad for sweet Basanti. Now I think back about my silly thought last weekend and realize that I have even more in common with her than I ever wish I did. Does she know what happened? Does she feel the devastation that humans feel when this happens? My sister-in-law said that after Basanti delivered one of her kittens, she put her paw on its tiny little head during its few minutes of life.
This is Basanti as a kitten
3 comments:
Oh my goodness, poor thing!
But, I've been there!! My cat delivered 4 kittens by emergency c-section, and lost 2 of them. They had all been doing great, but we got home and lost 2 witin a week. I remember sitting there with one of those kittens in my hands, crying, looking at Abby as she went about her business. I too wondered if she had any idea what had just happened, and I wondered if she felt sad about it.
I looked at her and thought to myself, "I know how this feels..."
It's crazy when something like that happens to animals, and suddenly, we find ourselves identifying with them.
We had a cat do something like this a few years ago. Well, it wasn't our cat, but one someone dropped on us. We had fed her trying to get her to know us, and she would never really come to us all that much. Well, one night, I heard mewing on our front porch, and she had dropped one of her dead kittens on our front porch. She did it with three others, all dead. She knew we could help as we had been trying to help her for a while.
So, yes, I think they can feel the pain.
Oh my goodness. That breaks my heart. I am positive that, while much less severe, she hurts over those lost kittens. That is sad.
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