Thing is every thing seemed ok. It had fed just before the wife noticed it being on the blanket. We did hand fed all of kittens last week as we thought mum was being hostile towards them but it was all good and didn't need to again. The fact it meowed more at the time a few days ago didn't trigger any issue as they all meowed and where all mobile and playing with each other. The breathing slowed down and it passed within the hour of us noticing the issue. I had to go to work before it passed. All this happened in an hour maybe a few mins longer from noticing it lying on blanket after a feed. So we didn't have days or hours to take it to the vet unfortunately.
Edit: I see why uyou thought we had hours as I put hours in my OP not hour.. Edited op to reflect this,
Edit2: We kept an eye on it since we realised it was smaller than the rest, maybe from a week old as the others grew faster but considering it was feeding and playing etc nothing suggested anything other than it was just smaller. It was only yesterday that something happened and it happened quick
Sorry for the loss mate!
A friend sent me this article the other day by some columnist. I was in the pub when I read it. There I was, a grown man, weeping into a pint in a packed pub.
I think losing a pet must be so hard - i appreciate this was a new kitten, so a little different in your case, but man..... the feels.
I still had the mud on my boots when we took you to the vet, for the last time. I had dug your grave that morning. It didn’t take long, in the rain, as you were very small.
You were always just a very small, very silly cat – you were not very clever at all. It was just as well you were beautiful, with your tiny white paws, and perfect tabby stripes, and huge eyes – like foreign moons. That was definitely your strong point. Your beauty.
“That’s the stupid cat,” we would say, in the beginning, when visitors came round, and you went purring up to them. “She’s got all the looks – but none of the brains. She’s dim as a box of hair. Gorgeous – but simple. It’s like living with a beautiful-but-duh Hollywood starlet.”
Because you were so stupid, we didn’t know you were ill. We didn’t know! You always came and stared at us, intently – like Mog, being confused. You stared at us a lot. That’s what Hollywood starlets do! And so we did not know when you stopped staring at us because you were confused – and started staring at us because you were ill, instead. As it turned out, it would have been a long time.
“I’m so sorry. She’s got days, at most,” the vet said, when we took you. “These organs have been failing for a long, long time. But you never can tell, with cats. They hide it.”
In your cage, you blinked at us – shaved; eyes blasted from morphine; a drip in your leg. You sat up very straight – trying, I think, to look dignified.
“Take her home – say goodbye to her,” the vet said, as the girls held her and cried onto her small, confused head. “Bring her back tomorrow, and we’ll … let her go.”
We all cried, in the car home – four people, and a tiny parcel of bones and fur. We carried you like you would carry a grail or a crown – you small, silly cat. By then, we knew how important you were.
Because we didn’t think you were important, when we got you. Two kittens in a cardboard box, from Battersea – two tabby sisters, with Wedgwood blue eyes. We just thought of you as … a delightful treat.
“A cat is a luxurious thing for a house to have,” I thought, as we opened the box, and you and your sister tiptoed out, the size of a purse or glove. “I will have you here and feed you – and you will lie in front of the fire, and have all the naps I cannot have. You are my lazy decadence proxy. All you have to do, lovely kittens, is be pretty. I ask nothing more of you than I would have a bunch of flowers. Simply – be beautiful. That is your purpose. You are the delightful ornaments of our lives.”
And, of course, you were. You were beautiful, luxurious things.
But a family cat is not just a beautiful thing – as I learnt, over the years. Cats are made of fur because fur absorbs secrets. You can cry into fur. Fur, draped across the heart, will opiate your melancholy. Fur will make you happy again.
Humans need fur, it seems – for all feelings are allowed around fur. Perhaps this is why we buy fur coats – to wear to parties; to feel hot. It’s a way of taking our pets, and their kindness, everywhere.
The kindness of pets is the thing. You were very kind, little cat. Sad toddlers would pick you up – often upside down – and be happy again. Angry nine-year-olds would scoop you and take you to their bedroom – to confide their fury. Teenagers – exhausted from GCSEs, or heartbreak, or hospital – would drape you over their faces, or wear you like a stole, and gradually decompress into happy children again.
And the tired parents, at the end of the day, would lie on the sofa with you – you lantern-eyed, unblinking, small, household god – and sigh, “How has your day been, mate?” and stroke the perfection of your paws.
And I didn’t realise what all that meant until I was digging your grave – you watching from the window, like a ghost. To call you “stupid” was a total misunderstanding of our positions, and the workings of the universe. To call you “stupid” showed how stupid I was. Your entire existence was exquisitely engineered: for a cat is a place where you put all the feelings you can’t share with humans.
That’s what we have in our houses. Another species that lives with us, and absorbs our sadness, our loneliness; our anger and excess love – as simpatico as the tiny birds who pick meat from the teeth of crocodiles. They clean our hearts, these tiny cats. We store all our unspoken words in them.
When the vet injected you, and you immediately collapsed – “She’s gone” – I thought how much you had carried around, and yet never once complained.
“You were not stupid,” I said finally, as I put you into the roughly hacked hole at the bottom of the garden. “You were as clever as love.”
[email protected]
You were always just a very small, very silly cat – you were not very clever at all. It was just as well you were beautiful, with your tiny white paws, and perfect tabby stripes, and huge eyes – like foreign moons. That was definitely your strong point. Your beauty.
“That’s the stupid cat,” we would say, in the beginning, when visitors came round, and you went purring up to them. “She’s got all the looks – but none of the brains. She’s dim as a box of hair. Gorgeous – but simple. It’s like living with a beautiful-but-duh Hollywood starlet.”
Because you were so stupid, we didn’t know you were ill. We didn’t know! You always came and stared at us, intently – like Mog, being confused. You stared at us a lot. That’s what Hollywood starlets do! And so we did not know when you stopped staring at us because you were confused – and started staring at us because you were ill, instead. As it turned out, it would have been a long time.
“I’m so sorry. She’s got days, at most,” the vet said, when we took you. “These organs have been failing for a long, long time. But you never can tell, with cats. They hide it.”
In your cage, you blinked at us – shaved; eyes blasted from morphine; a drip in your leg. You sat up very straight – trying, I think, to look dignified.
“Take her home – say goodbye to her,” the vet said, as the girls held her and cried onto her small, confused head. “Bring her back tomorrow, and we’ll … let her go.”
We all cried, in the car home – four people, and a tiny parcel of bones and fur. We carried you like you would carry a grail or a crown – you small, silly cat. By then, we knew how important you were.
Because we didn’t think you were important, when we got you. Two kittens in a cardboard box, from Battersea – two tabby sisters, with Wedgwood blue eyes. We just thought of you as … a delightful treat.
“A cat is a luxurious thing for a house to have,” I thought, as we opened the box, and you and your sister tiptoed out, the size of a purse or glove. “I will have you here and feed you – and you will lie in front of the fire, and have all the naps I cannot have. You are my lazy decadence proxy. All you have to do, lovely kittens, is be pretty. I ask nothing more of you than I would have a bunch of flowers. Simply – be beautiful. That is your purpose. You are the delightful ornaments of our lives.”
And, of course, you were. You were beautiful, luxurious things.
But a family cat is not just a beautiful thing – as I learnt, over the years. Cats are made of fur because fur absorbs secrets. You can cry into fur. Fur, draped across the heart, will opiate your melancholy. Fur will make you happy again.
Humans need fur, it seems – for all feelings are allowed around fur. Perhaps this is why we buy fur coats – to wear to parties; to feel hot. It’s a way of taking our pets, and their kindness, everywhere.
The kindness of pets is the thing. You were very kind, little cat. Sad toddlers would pick you up – often upside down – and be happy again. Angry nine-year-olds would scoop you and take you to their bedroom – to confide their fury. Teenagers – exhausted from GCSEs, or heartbreak, or hospital – would drape you over their faces, or wear you like a stole, and gradually decompress into happy children again.
And the tired parents, at the end of the day, would lie on the sofa with you – you lantern-eyed, unblinking, small, household god – and sigh, “How has your day been, mate?” and stroke the perfection of your paws.
And I didn’t realise what all that meant until I was digging your grave – you watching from the window, like a ghost. To call you “stupid” was a total misunderstanding of our positions, and the workings of the universe. To call you “stupid” showed how stupid I was. Your entire existence was exquisitely engineered: for a cat is a place where you put all the feelings you can’t share with humans.
That’s what we have in our houses. Another species that lives with us, and absorbs our sadness, our loneliness; our anger and excess love – as simpatico as the tiny birds who pick meat from the teeth of crocodiles. They clean our hearts, these tiny cats. We store all our unspoken words in them.
When the vet injected you, and you immediately collapsed – “She’s gone” – I thought how much you had carried around, and yet never once complained.
“You were not stupid,” I said finally, as I put you into the roughly hacked hole at the bottom of the garden. “You were as clever as love.”
[email protected]
They report back to Santa who has been good or bad 
blackone
