thank you all again. it's a solid comfort to know you're not alone.

Jacinda has been released to home care and she's doing well. She is quite thin, but eats well and drinks plenty and makes solid--poopies. She will be on antibiotic and prednisone for a while, and twice a day i apply warm compresses to her mammary chain, which had a severe infection in it--the specialist vet in Columbus, OH said it is the worst he had ever seen. Her infection was complicated by a hemobart infection--feline infectious anemia--carried by fleas, which release parasites into the bloodstream that destroy red blood cells. The doctor told me that the baby Olmos probably died of the infection that almost took his mother--his young immune system was too overwhelmed. (doesn't help my despair, i can tell you. You're right, Karen--better to live a week and know love than to live 90 years without it.)

i check Jacinda often; as a matter of fact, she stays in her kennel in my office, where i let her out to snooze in my lap while i compute. Jasper is in here, too, but they're not allowed to be together outside the kennels just yet, and both of them are removed from the herd for the time being.

catherine