u/KatetheGreat721

After a few days of checking up on him, I noticed my baby wasn't looking much better. And unfortunately, yesterday I received a call from the shelter that my sweet boy had passed away from the disease. I am extremely saddened by the news as I had grown attached to him and was waiting for the call to be able to take him home.

However, im so beyond grateful I got to know him for those few days and get him out of the shelter, even just for a bit. While I wish I could've given him a lifetime, I gave him as much as I could in the short life he had. He may never have grown into his giant eyes or his comically big paws, but he knew the warmth of a freshly washed blanket. He knew what it felt like to lay on a warm windowsill and fall asleep purring. He knew what it was like to be kissed on his tiny orange forehead. He knew what it was like to have some silly college girl dottle over him and love him more than life itself, ready to spoil him if he ever came back home. And even though he never did, I hope wherever my little stinker is now, he is more warm and cozy than he could be with any blanket I could've given him.

I want to thank this community for the love and support i've gotten in the past few days. Fostering is not for the weak, especially whenever it starts with losing your first kitten. But im excited to say that getting to know my sweet boy has made me fall in love with fostering. Whenever I finish taking time to myself after this, I will happily continue to foster and give more cats a shot at living a long and happy life. For my little angel Jasper, who will never leave my heart no matter how many more cats come into it ❤️

Hi all. I have recently been fostering an incredible 2 month old orange kitten. You might have actually seen my post here about him a few days back! I was so excited to begin fostering and he was the most rambunctious kitten I had seen. An absolute sweetheart too. If he wasn't getting zoomies and running circles around the bedroom, he was whining at the door if I left for even just a second or he was purring curled up on my chest.

During the car ride home, he vomited in his carrier. I didn't think much of it, just that he was stressed and might have gotten car sick. First night of having him, I noticed he had diarrhea. I worried a bit, but read online that it could be from stress of moving to a new environment. He seemed like his sweet rambunctious self but I kept an eye on him though and stayed up monitoring him. The next day, his diarrhea continued but had blood in it. He was meowing with every bowel movement. At this point I was concerned but couldn't call the shelter as they were closed until the next morning. Later that night, I noticed he had tapeworm segments in his stool and figured that was the cause. I got him some dewormer before staying up again to watch over him. I noticed he seemed sluggish, and was worried he was dehydrated from the diarrhea so thankfully I got him to eat some wet food.

I called the shelter first thing in the morning. Thankfully, they were already planning on calling me as his siblings all weren't looking too hot. They told me bring him back so they could get him on antibiotics. When I went, I showed them the pictures of his stool, both blood and worms, as well the dewormer I had fed him. They told me they'd watch him and they'd give me a call back in a few days.

Fast forward to now, about 3 days have passed and I decided to swing by on my day off to see how my kiddo was doing. I knocked on the glass, called his name and he barely moved. His siblings looked at me but he didn't. He just stayed curled in his bed. I asked one of the workers how him and his siblings were doing and was told there was a Parvo outbreak and that his litter was one of the worser cases.

It was heartbreaking to see my sweet boy go from being the loudest in the shelter, clawing up the cage just to get attention to not even stirring when I called his name. I'm praying he makes it through this. I was hoping to foster into adopting him and now my heart is shattered. This was also my first time ever fostering a kitten. Does anyone have any advice on how to cope with this? I've cried so much today thinking about my sweet baby boy and how much I want him to make it through but seeing how bad it was, as well as the shelter telling me they had already lost kittens to it? I'm at a complete loss. Thank you for reading, kind strangers of reddit 🫶