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.

She 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, but those give a list of symptoms with no percentages as to how many cats get them so unless the cat matches most of them it's rather confusing.

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 and apparently no placentas, but I think that had appeared first.
3rd kitten was normal size, looked perfect, was dead, was delivered 12 hours or so later.

There were no obvious signs of infection.

My friend took all the products of conception to the 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 (not quite sure which), 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.

She has since been seen by the vet, no sign of anything left behind (the vet felt her very carefully) 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.

Sorry to hear this has happened to you, but it sounds like a classic step G infection. No symptoms in queen is typical. It often causes late abortions, still births and neonate deaths.

A simply course of antibiotics at mating, then in the last 10 days of pregnancy can sort this out.

haven't got time to hunt out all the details now, but I'll look later if nobody's come up with any more specifics.

Emma

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Emma Yeoman
Purindoors Birmans
www.Purindoors.co.uk

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never had any experience of this but the problem with breeding is well look at the persians so over-bred compare it to that of a human line say like the royals used to do you can only mate so much within one line before you are being cruel and rising health issues.

I am not a big fan of breeding i wont slag those off who are but to me i don't think it is quite fair and the problem it is selective breeding so its a bit like cloning a clone.

Im so very sorry what happened and such a shame

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First thing to go through my mind too. The other thing it could be is chlamydia which is becoming implicated in this sort of thing. Might be worth asking the vet for a specific antibiotic before breeding her again - think it's doxycyline (Ronaxan).

OK, these are two new thoughts. I'll pass them on especially since both of them should be treatable.

Doxycycline is for chlamydia and I'm not at all sure it's safe in pregnancy so don't confuse it with the strep G protocol which would be a different antibiotic. If it were me I probably would ask the vet for doxy almost straight away and treat for strep G with the suggested protocol so all bases were covered.

Would also try a different stud - some matings just don't work for whatever reason .....

She's not pregnant so she can have whatever treatment the vet things necessary, and was never ever going to go back to that stud for reasons I can't go into here!

Thanks for the various thoughts, if there are any more...

We have read through and discussed so many descriptions of FCV and FHV and she simply doesn't seem to fit them. Apart from some sneezing (and I don't know how bad that was - she wasn't sneezing much when I saw her at Xmas) she has been really well. Good appetite (actually a vast appetite!), shiny soft coat, much more relaxed and outgoing than usual, as active as usual until the last week or two when she was very large, and besotted (as usual) with her 'fuzzy sticks' - pipe cleaners.