Any thoughts on what could cause the following are most welcome. I posted this somewhere else and so far have two replies - "the pedigrees didn't mix" and "something very similar happened to me and after a repeat mating I have a litter of healthy kittens".

A friend of mine has a queen who has just had her first litter. Sadly there were no live kittens. I wasn't present at the birth so this is my friends account. I was not there and so far as I know there are no photos of the products of conception.

The queen went to stud twice, in each case very well-known boys. The first time was supervised matings only and she refused. The second time she ran with him, did lots of mating and pinked up at the right sort of time.

She was well during pregnancy with a huge appetite, and delivered on the 66th day. She was sneezing in the later stages but never had a temperature or any other signs of illness. Certainly she didn't match any of the on-line descriptions of a cat with FHV or FCV.

1st kitten was big and dead, and had odema all along his tummy.
2nd kitten was normal size, looked perfect, was dead.
Next was what sounds like a placenta without a kitten.
Then two sacs each with a minute apparently perfect kitten inside.
3rd kitten was normal size, looked perfect, was dead, was delivered 12 hours or so later.

Mu friend took all the products of conception to her vets who had never seen anything like it before, neither had the other vet at the practice. The vet contacted Glasgow Vet School who were very excited and wanted to do a PM or some tests, but would charge £300, the breeder insurance refused to cover it and my friend doesn't have £300 to spend.

At least one kitten was alive a couple of days before deliver as she felt a movement when we were on the phone, and the queen was the right sort of size for 5 kittens - pretty big!

She has since been seen by the vet, no sign of anything left behind and she's been given a long-acting antibiotic shot 'just in case'.

She also had a personality transplant during pregnancy becoming far calmer and more outgoing. If it stays that will be the only good thing that has come from this.

I'd suspect some kind of infection, but it's impossible to know what kind of infection without doing a post mortem or at least some bacterials swabs from the kittens and the mother.

You might want to inform your friend about Group G Strep since few vets know about. If the problem would re-occure.

Siamese Kittens For Sale on Siamese Planet. A website for Siamese Cat and Siamese Kitten Lovers from the United Kingdom and all over the world. We have an extensive Siamese Kitten List with Siamese Kittens for Sale and have a Siamese Cat Chat Forum.
Group G Streptococcal Infections in Kittens

Iseem to remember strep G and chlamydia were both mentioned on your other thread, so you have had some possible ideas.

A low grade infection is the most obvious reason for things like this to happen, horrible but treatable in later pregnancies.

If it is found that infection was the problem the breeder needs to inform the stud owners, both from the point of view that the queen could have gained the infection at the stud owners premises, and that she could have passed it on to the studs.

__________________
Emma Yeoman
Purindoors Birmans
www.Purindoors.co.uk

Infection from the decaying first kitten that then spread to the others and killed them. I have seen this twice. Just try again.

Liz

No decay in the kittens.

And apologies for double-posting. I sent my friend some URLs about Strep G which she passed on to her vet. I gather the vet felt like us - we don't feel convinced by the FCV / FHV idea.