My cat Serena has two beautiful daughters: Silver, the one who stayed here from her first viable litter, and Pastel, the one who stayed here from her other viable litter.
"Serena-Seralina" shows the "Seralini effect": When breeding females (of several species, including humans) are exposed to toxins that build up in the bodies of males or non-breeding females, the body transfers those toxins to the placenta. The female herself shows no reaction to the toxins but, however many months later, she gives birth to stillborn, defective, or at best very weak young. Serena is a big strong healthy cat. She has had many kittens, all apparently with no difficulty for her except when she thinks a kitten can live, tries to rear it, and loses it a few days later. She mourned for those kittens but they have probably kept her alive all these years.
Because Serena is so lively, I tend to forget that she's already older than several of her (probably FIV-positive) ancestors lived to be. At Serena's present age her great-aunt Heather was starting to show what looked like "aging," coming in for long naps. I can remember that Serena used to bounce more and nap less than she does now, but she is still perkier than many young cats.
Silver and Pastel seem to share the "Seralini effect" but they've been less determined to have kittens, and they have shown some reactions to glyphosate vapors. Pastel's eyes look clogged and bleary after exposure (and, thanks to our Professional Bad Neighbor, that's been most of her young life). Silver usually just withdraws--she's a cool-natured, standoffish cat all the time--but apparently part of the biochemical reaction going into her extra aloofness is that, if she has kittens at the time, her milk fails. (Heather seemed to have that reaction too; she tried, but failed, to rear kittens without her sister's help to feed them.)
Silver was pregnant. For two or three weeks she seemed to be preparing to try to be a good mother. Could she have her kittens in the office, where walls reduce the amount of external pollution in the air? I said yes. She'd come in, check her chosen nest site, and go out. Then, earlier this week, she came in, stayed hidden behind some boxes for 14 hours, and came out clean and dry and about half as wide as she'd been when she'd gone in.
That was the only evidence I saw of the kittens. I couldn't see them. I know some of them were born alive because, after a short food and water break, Silver went in and spent nineteen hours mothering her kittens.
But although three teats started to show evidence of possible lactation, none of them reached the size they would reach if lactation had started.
The other time Silver had kittens--one of the four of whom lived to find a home of his own--she failed to lactate immediately after birth. Serena, who had given birth to some non-viable kittens, literally lay down on top of Silver and nursed Silver's babies, ensuring that they'd get some nourishment while they continued to stimulate Silver's lactation cycle. Between the two of them, they kept four kittens alive and growing for varying lengths of time. Each of the three smaller kittens died during a glyphosate reaction.
This time, Serena was not lactating. Pastel was. But, due to the horrific effects of the new multi-chemical version of "Roundup," Pastel's milk is being drained by the smallest of her four kittens, who refuses to eat kibble and doesn't seem to absorb the benefits even of milk as well as the bigger kittens do. Pastel's milk production is slowing down as her kittens' appetites are growing--and her milk wouldn't be optimal for newborn kittens anyway. Pastel did not help Silver nurse her kittens.
After a second 18-hour marathon of trying to mother her kittens, Silver came out with her eyelids drooping in an exhausted way I've never seen on a cat who wasn't in critical medical condition. She must have been very hungry. She showed no appetite for food. She did drink a little water before walking slowly away to be alone. She did not come when called. She did not come back to where the kittens had been. If they'd still been alive, the kittens would have been squirming and squeaking. No squirming or squeaking could be heard.
I have some tiny dead kittens to dig out and dispose of, and one, at best, severely depressed cat to try to keep alive, and of course the two healthier cats and Pastel's adorable kittens to cherish. I have some other distractions from the real world also, some bad, some good, some bittersweet. Distractions that involve other humans are not discussed on the Internet.
The one that's worth mentioning is that a friend whom I'll miss is moving things out of her base in my town. She no longer enjoys driving, and I loathe driving, so who knows if I'll ever see her again once this moving sale is over. Meanwhile, it's public information that the warehouse she's usually kept closed (except when moving furniture in or out, often at night) is being opened for public view while the former renters move and pack. They have stupidphones they use to check the price of things on Amazon before giving buyers a price, and they've been giving people stuff for fractions of what the said stuff was selling for on Amazon. Yesterday I heard one of them sell somebody half of a $30 set of trays for $5. If you are in or can drive to Gate City, you too can take advantage of the owners' weariness as we continue to drag stuff out of the dark corners of the warehouse. I thought most of the chairs were gone...more have come out. Lamps, too. Bed frames. Colored glassware. And there still seems to be no end to the holiday decorations--all the holidays, though this woman was famous for her Christmas decorations. Cartons of decorations have been set out on the sidewalk under a sign that says "FREE," and people keep hauling them off, and we keep dragging more stuff out. Anyone driving down Jackson Street can find FREE STUFF. Some of it's pretty nice FREE STUFF, too.
I'm not exactly "blocked"; in fact I had an outline for today's sponsored but not scheduled post. I am a slow writer and do not want to squeeze in the time to write the post properly. It will be here when the pace of real life slows down.
I just wanted people to be aware of how much damage has been done to these beautiful social cats, and to kittens that people are waiting to adopt, because some people think they have some sort of "right" to poison whole towns' air and most of the Southern States' drinking water...because they are too lazy, too shiftless, too WORTHLESS to lop their own "weeds."
We are not even talking about pests like mosquitoes or Japanese beetles here, although I observe that places sprayed with New Roundup are showing a resurgence of Japanese beetles that's not been seen since the early 1980s. We are talking about useful native plants like boneset and horsemint, ratsbane and wintergreen, wild morels and chinquapins--but fools who want to cover the world in disgusting bermudagrass want to replace them with jimsonweed and Spanish Needles, because, to a fool, anything that is not bermudagrass is a "weed."
I don't have time to sit around emoting about this, but it feels appropriate to sign off this little status update,
Yours faithfully,
DISGUSTED.
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