In June 2010, I was asked to foster a mamma kitty and five one week old kittens. I picked them up on a Friday after work and by the next day, one of the kittens was obviously having difficulty. An upper respiratory infection (URI) had taken hold and he was congested and had very little appetite. I tried supplementing him with some kitten formula but he was having difficulty breathing which made it hard for him to nurse. By Sunday he was dead. It was very hard watching him struggle for breath. I even tried taking him into the bathroom and running a humidifier to see if that would help ease his breathing. Towards the end, I think he knew his time was up as he kept crawling away from the rest of the litter to be by himself.
Unfortunately, that was not the last tragedy faced by this litter. A week later, a second kitten took ill. I brought her into the shelter to see if they could help her. They put her into the nebulizer for a bit and tried giving her subcutaneous fluids. Despite our efforts, she perished less than 24 hours after getting sick. Unfortunately, they were all too young to be giving the normal antibiotics that are given to cats with URI. Because they were so small, it took very little for them to succumb to the infection.
Fortunately, the remaining litter mates survived and eventually went on to be adopted. So did their mother who was a very friendly girl. They already had names when they arrived. As is often the case, they had a "theme". The mom was named Hawaii. There was a little female calico named Lanai, a black and white female named Maui, and a black and white male named Oahu. The two that died were Kona, a black and white male and Honolulu, a tortie female. Apropos of their names, the shelter also ran a Meow Luau adoption promotion event shortly after I took mom and the kittens home.