Ella, welcome to the family.

On August 25th, 2019, we added a new furry member to our family. However, technically our new kitten did not yet belong to us. Here's the emotional story of our sweet Ella.

On April 30th, 2019, we said good-bye to our 16-year cat named Smudla. Karel had a really difficult time moving on from the loss of his long-time companion but the sight of any kitten would quickly bring a smile to his face. While nothing could replace the love that he had for Smudla, it was in early July when Karel brought up the idea of getting a new feline family member. I was a bit hesitant as I wasn't sure how Campy and Madison (the seniors in the house) would feel about this new addition.

One day in mid August, I was texting with an athlete/friend of ours who lives outside of Atlanta Georgia and fosters kittens. I mentioned to her that when we get back from Kona, we would like to adopt one of her rescue kittens. Karel was interested in a grey kitten and when I mentioned this to our friend, she replied back that she has a grey female kitten right now. Of course, we needed a picture immediately.

At that moment, we fell in love. Although she was 2 months old, she was only the size of a 4 week old. She was found outside with her litter mates, without her mother. Our friend said that her and her simblings were so sick when she got them that she didn't know if they would make it.

Of course, that story made us love her even more. It wasn't until a few days later that we named her Ella.

We were told that she was not up for adoption until she was older and heavier - at that point she could get spayed and could then be placed up for adoption. With strict adoption rules from the foster organization, we were so sad that we couldn't adopt her right away. Ella was being fostered with five or six other kittens and she was certainly the runt of the group. She was struggling to put on weight because she was so active and lively. She would nap hard and play hard.

After another week or two of getting regular updates on Ella, we had a phone discussion with the lady in charge of the foster organization and she agreed that we could take home Ella under two conditions.

1) She was not officially ours until we got her spayed. In other words, we were only fostering her.
2) We had to foster two kittens - Ella and another kitten - so that they could both interact and learn from one another.

While we were only interested in Ella, we quickly fell in love with the orange kitten that our friend was also fostering. We named him Felix and decided to welcome them both into our family.

When the fostering paperwork was complete and the medication/vaccine protocol list was put together, Karel made the 3.5 hour drive on Sunday August 27th to pick up our new "not yet official" family members. I was unable to go with Karel as I was finishing the manuscript of my third book with my final deadline on Monday the 28th.

While Karel was making his 6+ hour round trip, I fixed up our spare room to be a safe and welcoming "kitten" room. When Karel returned to our house with two adorable and tiny kittens, I was a bit overwhelmed with the love that I had for both of them.  Ella was extremely tiny and looked so fragile whereas Felix was vibrant and healthy. Ella was still a bit sick so we had to put medication in her squinty eyes. Feline herpesvirus is a very common viral infection in orphaned and immunocompromised kittens. During a flare up, the kitten may experience an upper respiratory infection including sneezing, nasal discharge and decreased appetite. Other signs include eye discharge, swelling and squinting. Most kittens can recover from this infection in 1-2 weeks.

At the time, we didn't know any of these symptoms but just assumed she had a little eye infection. Our friend was taking exceptionally great care of these kittens and as she mentioned to us before, they were all very sick when she received the kittens (she fosters the most scary/difficult rescues).

In the morning of our first full day with Ella and Felix, I received a call from my mom that my Grandpa Joe passed away at the age of 96. I was very sad that my grandpa was no longer just a phone call away but also grateful that my grandpa could live such a long and happy life. Later that evening, I booked a flight to travel to Ft. Wayne Indiana for a memorial service with close friends and family. I traveld to Indiana on Tues afternoon, stayed there all day Wednesday and traveled home very early on Thursday. Althugh it was a very emotional time for me, I new that I had two adorable kittens to warm my heart when I returned home from my trip. I also had plenty of photos of Felix and Ella as Karel could not stop sending me pictures of his two new loves (don't worry, our senior citizens Campy and Madison were still getting a lot of attention).

Thursday was a very busy day for me. I squeezed in a lot of work and workouts and our weekly educational FB live chat with our team and I was so ready to relax with the kittens at 8:00pm. I noticed that Felix was acting a bit lethargic when we brought them downstairs from their room. He was also showing signs of labored breathing. I texted our close friend Joey (cat mom) and after Facetiming with her to show her Felix, she suggested that we take him to the Animal Emergency Clinic. We left Ella alone in her room and took Felix to the emergency clinic. As soon as we arrived, the tech at the desk took Felix from us to start a nebulizing treatment on him since he was open mouth breathing. At this point, I was so exhausted from everything. Karel and I stayed positive and hoped that it was nothing serious. When we finally saw the doctor, she told us that he has an upper respiratory infection and that they will give him some medication and we can take him home. We were relieved that we were able to take him home as we felt like this was a sign that he would be ok.

Ella was happy to see her buddy when we returned home around 11:30pm. We had a restless night of sleep as we were worried about Felix and when we woke up in the morning, we went right to the kitten room to check on Felix. Of course, Ella sprints out of the room full of energy and ready to eat but Felix was still very lethargic on his bed, still struggling to breathe. At this point, we were scared. So we rushed him to our local vet (5 miles away) and they quickly put him back on the neubulizing therapy. They wanted to keep Felix all day to see how he was tolerating the therapy and if he wasn't showing signs of improvement, we would need to take him back to the Emergency Clinic. Around 4:30pm, we received a call from the vet that Felix was doing worse than before and he needed to go to the Emergency Clinic. We picked up Ella and took them both to the clinic so that Ella didn't have to be alone. Felix was rushed back into the neubulizing area and we waited and waited and waited. They asked if we were ok to take xrays as it would be risky on such a sick little kitten but they also explained the pros and cons of the situation. We agreed to the xrays and it showed pneumonia. We kept Feliex at the Emergency Clinic over night and just hoped and prayed that he would be ok.

We had scheduled a long bike ride with three out of town friends and we barely made 90 minutes into the ride before we had to turn around as we couldn't think straight and we had no mental energy to be on the bike. We played with Ella when we returned home (I asked my mom to watch Ella while we were biking) and texted back and forth to the organizer of the foster group to explain about Felix's situation (we had kept her in the loop through it all). Although Ella was our biggest worry when we brought her home, our strong, vibrant and playful Felix was struggling. On Saturday, just 6 days after we brought home Ella and Felix, we received a phone call that Felix was not going to make it. The foster organizer gave the doctor permission to humanely put Felix out of his discomfort.

We were heart broken. And still are. Did we do something wrong? Should we have waited until they were older? But what about Ella - if we didn't take her in, would she have survived? We ask ourselves questions over and over as we are still so heartbroken about the situation. But Ella has shown us that she is a fighter. She is a fantastic eater, sleeper and pooper and all around fun and entertaining kitten.

As for the rest of September, what was suppose to be an exciting time of peaking for the 2019 Ironman World Championship, we spent at least one day a week for the next 4 weeks at the vet for Ella. We were so close to cancelling our trip to Kona as we had no desire to race in what was suppose to be a fun event for us with so much heartache, drama and stress. Anytime Ella would sneeze or cough, we got scared that something was going to happen to her. If Ella was unusually tired, we started to freak out. She received more medications and vaccines in the month of September and we were on high alert for the next few weeks. We even decided to fly in Karel's mom to watch over Ella to make sure nothing happened to her while we were in Kona for two weeks. The vet staff was falling in love with Ella as they saw her regularly for the month of September. Ella had a few more health complications but everything was treatable.

I hesitated to write this blog for many reasons and we are still so sad about Felix. We also didn't want to talk much about Ella until we knew she was officially ours. At the age of 16 weeks and just tipping the scales at 4 lbs, Ella was spayed on 11/21 and now we can finally officially say that Ella is part of our family.

Although we were expecting a happy and joyful experience of adopting a new kitten, this doesn't change my feelings about rescue animals. It all started with the kindness of our friend who was fostering Ella (and Felix) - which is not an easy job. Every foster/rescue organization relies on donations and animal lovers to help feed, medicate and provide for deserving animals in need of a forever home. She gave Ella a second chance at life and now Ella is living the life with us and big brother (Campy) and sister (Madison). There is an overpopulation of cats and dogs and we must break the cycle. In order to do so, I encourage you to adopt don't shop.

Ella loves her crinkle toys with feathers, boxes, tissue paper, strings and anything loose that she can toss around. She is curious about water, naps all afternoon, loves to go into rooms that she is not suppose to (workout room), loves to eat, likes to play with Madison and Campy (neither of them are overly enthusiastic about the situation but are accepting) and loves to attack moving objects. She is loves to jump and discover new things. She sleeps in our bed at night - usually on top of one of us.

Thank you for reading her story.

from Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition https://ift.tt/2OGg6Oy