Dinah [redux]

Ron says: Dinah is a remarkable kitty that survived the odds. My wife's nephews discovered her in a storage shed in my mother-in-law's yard and told my wife, who asked me what she should do. I told her to put the kitten in a box with a blanket and hopefully the momma cat would come back and take care of her once the kids had left. She checked on it several times through the evening and the momma cat never came back, so she went to bed worried because it was late September and cold out. At 4:30 in the morning she finally went out and brought the kitten inside, waking me up crying because the kitten was so cold and stiff she appeared to be dead. After we warmed her up with heated washcloths she started moving a little and showing some signs of life. We both had to go to work that morning so my wife bundled the kitten up and took it to her office, where all the ladies took turns sliding her inside their blouses and using body heat to keep her warm. One of the office workers told my wife what she needed to buy and my wife went to the store and came back with kitten formula and a feeding bottle, but Dinah wouldn't take the milk. When I got home that evening I brought a few different types of eye droppers and still it was a struggle to get her to take the milk, though once it was in her mouth she swallowed, so at least she was getting nourishment. I searched the Internet and found out what one needs to provide as far as warmth and feeding schedules for young kittens. We changed our daily work schedules and took turns coming home to feed the kitten every few hours. Then the next problem hit us. As much as I tried, I couldn't get Dinah’s bowels to move. After three days, I was afraid I was going to rub her little behind raw, so I took it to our vet. He was amazed she was still alive. His scales wouldn't read low enough to give us a weight and he told us that she couldn't have been more than seven to ten days old when we found her. He gave me written directions on how to take care of her, his own secret recipe for formula, and had his assistant show me how to get her bowels to move. It took about a week before we could get her to take formula from the bottle and she continued to fight our efforts. She could kick a bottle several feet right from our hands. We weighed her every day on a postage scale and kept a log, as the vet wanted to keep tabs on her progress. When I took her back a few weeks later, he was really tickled to see her. We had another older male cat at the time and we were afraid he would hurt her so we kept them apart for weeks. But Dinah put him on the run the first time they got together. Now three years later, and looking at these pictures, it's hard to believe how little she was.