05/18/2026
How long do I keep trying for a non responsive kitten? For this girl- it was 55 hours before I knew she was gonna be ok.
I was at the shelter dropping off donations when someone brought in two tiny 5-week-old kittens. They were incredibly sick—eyes glued shut from infection, emaciated, dehydrated, anemic. One of them was lying on her side, limp, barely responsive. Honestly… she looked dead.
But I always say... I will at least try because the alternative is guaranteed death.
So I rushed her home and placed her in my incubator. Set up oxygen, nebulizer, antibiotics, subcutaneous fluids, and syringe feed her drop by drop every hour to keep her blood sugar up. For the next few hours, I kept asking myself:
“Is she suffering?” “Should I euthanize?”
Every time I checked on her, I was like "are you still alive?"
And then sometime in the wee hours of the night/morning… she lifted her head just a little and I thought: maybe there’s hope.
So I kept going.
It took 55 hours before she finally had enough strength to eat on her own. A week later, she and her sister were stable enough and graduated out of the incubator. They started gaining weight, playing, and becoming kittens again.
They finally hit 2 pounds and went in for spay surgery. We had to remove one eye that had ruptured… but luckily was able to save the other eye. Now she’s a healthy, happy, one-eyed little spitfire tearing around the house like nothing ever happened. She is completely unaware of how close she came to dying.
I named her Mirabel.
For miracle. ✨
Kittens like Mirabel are why I do rescue.
