July 8th

Momma Odie (named after Princess and the Frog) has been a wonderful mother to her babies. She went to the vet last week with her baby (Prince Naveen pictured below) for an exam and booster and the vet worked very slowly with her to make sure she was comfortable. She did wonderfully and continues to open up day by day and slowly let down her guard-leaning in for rubs, rolling over for attention and meowing for more.

Early one morning about a week and a half ago we went to check on her and found that her other little baby (of whom we called Evangeline) had passed. She was showing no signs or symptoms the night before, nursing often, and then the next morning she was gone. We had noticed that she wasn’t growing as quickly as her brother although she was alert and gaining weight just the same as we were weighing and tracking their progress. Her eyes were fully open, she was walking and meowing often. Fading kitten syndrome, which happens between birth and weaning, can happen quickly and without warning. There can be a variety of reasons-difficult birth, low birth weight, birth defects/underlying health conditions, for many reasons that are still yet unknown…but for whatever reason no matter how hard we try…they just fail to thrive.

It never occurred to us until after she passed and she was peacefully laid to rest that she was literally named Evangeline: after the evening star. We made sure to let Momma Odie lay with her so she would understand that her baby was no longer with us. It brought tears to our eyes to know that her beautiful soul was not meant for this earth…her sweet little soul, unknowingly to us, had always been meant to live among the stars.