Lucky Memorial Service

From the start, Lucky was really slow. He seemed to have trouble catching on and moving his butt. We thought it might be that he was sick, but he improved after a few weeks. He meowed the loudest. He played. He wasn't the last one to get to nursing anymore.

Then we got the call yesterday afternoon: "Lucky's not doing so well. He's just lying in his crate and won't go out to play."
When my friend and I went to the farm a few minutes later to ride her horse, we checked on Lucky. He wasn't moving. He felt ice cold to the touch. Dead.
I wasn't totally shocked. I'd buried three cats already. None of them mine, but still. A dead kitten wasn't shocking to me.
We rode the horse for a few hours. Then at about three, we put the horse in the pasture and went to bury Lucky.
I saw him twitch.
"Oh my god! He moved! He's alive!"
I grabbed him and felt him over, watching him carefully. I didn't imagine it. He twitched again. But he was so cold.
TheJazzPony called the emergency vet clinic. I took Lucky outside in the sun and held him, rubbing his body to get him warm. Oh god, he was so cold.
TheJazzPony's vet was swamped with animals and couldn't see him. They said the one clinic they knew might be open was an hour's drive away. We dug through the yellow pages and found something local.
As we drove to the vet's, he started meowing. We gave him water drop by drop by dipping our fingers in it and put it to his mouth. He squirmed a little and meowed more. He couldn't retain body heat and had to be rubbed constantly.
The vets said it was pretty much hopeless. He was severely dehydrated. His core temperature was so low, it didn't even register on the thermometer. They asked us if we wanted him put down. We decided to fight.
He was given antibiotics, a clean blanket, and had special fluids injected. The vets also gave us a can of food to mix with water and feed him.
We set up a little, quiet area in TheJazzPony's house. Every 20 minutes, we gave him water and the special food via syringes (without the needles that is) and an eyedropper. We heated up towels and wrapped him up.
He improved.
After four hours, his temperature was at a healthy 102 degrees (healthy for kittens his age). He kept eating and drinking more. He opened his yes and his pupils were normal. He meowed, squirmed, even crawled around on the blankets. He'd do that for about ten minutes then go back to sleep until we woke him up for feeding and water.
We had hope. He was going to make it.
At about nine o' clock, we woke him from his nap. I held him while TheJazzPony fed him with the syringe. He swallowed the food. I held the water dropper to his mouth, but he wouldn't take it. I put a drop of water by his mouth and he didn't respond. His stillness scared me. The JazzPony took him and listened, but there was no heartbeat. We tried rubbing him, giving him water, checked to see if he had choked or something. Nothing. He was just dead.
We buried him under a very pretty tamarack tree in TheJazzPony's backyard. The two of us were crying a lot. He was just so tiny, all wrapped up in the snowflake blanket the vets gave us. He was so peaceful, like he was sleeping.
I spent the majority of today sobbing on and off and eating my way through several boxes of popsicles. Suffice to say, I am very depressed.

That's all for now, minions. Sorry for such a sad post. D: