Ever feel insensitive to animals' needs?

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Do you ever feel like you're not perceptive enough of animals' needs and that you're prone to hurt them unintentionally or not care enough about them?

I have cats of my own, and sometimes I feel like I don't catch on quickly enough to things they need or things that might be wrong with them. I remember, when I was little, being cruel to animals either deliberately (I had a parakeet I resented, and I'm deeply ashamed of how I treated her) or unintentionally (I trimmed the toes of my pet praying mantis as a kid because they seemed uneven, I'll go after cats' acne or mats in their fur even if they clearly want me to stop).

In particular, I feel terrible because I was cat-sitting some very, very young foster kittens for a co-worker once and worry that I did all the wrong things and inadvertently killed/let die one of the kittens.

On the first day, I noticed that one kitten seemed lower-key than the other. I didn’t think this was a problem, since I had no baseline for her behavior.

On the second day, she was congested. I took her to the shelter that she came from so they could look at her. This is where I started making the choices that make me feel bad. I didn’t think to call the coworker and ask if there was a closer vet to take her to, I just went by the contact numbers she’d left on the fridge. So I hauled this poor baby across the city via bus and subway, in the heat, to get care. (Turns out there was a closer vet.)

The second day, I forgot to gave her the supplement in her food that they’d given me to give her (I’d remembered the previous night). And then I went out to enjoy the day, since I’m rarely in the city and since I thought, well, I can’t just watch her all day, that won’t help her.

The third day, she was wheezing and dehydrated and obviously in terrible discomfort. Again, instead of calling my coworker, I took her back to the shelter. On the way, it was clear she was in critical condition. I cried and tried to give her water through a syringe.

They said she was ‘failing to thrive’—read, dying. Again, I didn’t call my coworker but let them put her down. I held her while she died. She was so tiny, and it made me feel horrible that that was all the time she had, all the life she got.

This was when I called my coworker. She was very understanding. She didn’t seem to blame me for anything. But in retrospect, I blame myself horribly. I have a very hard time calling people and reaching out to them for help; I tend to think I shouldn’t bother people, because half the time, I feel like I’m asking for help that I shouldn’t need or behaving bizarrely and it’s better to ‘just cope’ by myself. I protect myself by not asking for assistance. And often, I don’t even think to ask. I pick a course of action and don’t think to explore alternatives or change from it. At the same time, I love being around animals and desperately don’t want to hurt them.

I feel like I wasn’t sensitive enough to the kitten, like I spent too much time away from her and let her die, wasn’t perceptive enough or caring enough about her condition, stressed her too much by moving her too far to get her care, and shouldn’t have let the vet put her down. Maybe she would have survived, even as horrible a condition as she was in. At least I should have called my coworker, instead of assuming that ‘fostering’ as opposed to ‘owning’ meant it was not as big a deal if I made care choices for the kitten as it would otherwise have been. At least I should have called to see if there was a vet closer by with more resources.

So I still feel like I killed this kitten, and it's shaken my faith in my ability to care for anything at all. I feel like it would have survived if someone else had been taking care of it.

Depending on the age of the kitchens, it can be a crap shoot if they will survive.

They might simply have been to young to survive without a mother.

If you gave them water, and food, and took them to medical care, you did everything you could.

Oh, and cats actually have a very high temperature tolerance. Cats actually enjoy 100+ temperatures and don't become uncomfortable until about 125 degrees.

It sounds like you tried your best to do the responsible thing, and you shouldn't beat yourself up!

Weirdly enough, I'm very sensitive to animals' needs, but I have no empathy for human babies. They cry and scream and I just think 'ugh I wish it would shut up' – whereas if a baby animal cries, I see it as a poor helpless thing, and want to make it feel better. (This is why I have a hamster and not a human child! )

I think you sound like you were VERY concerned about the kitty and you took actions to help.

Thank you so much, everyone. I really needed to hear that I probably wasn't responsible for it dying. I keep telling myself that that was so, but, since I do have a history of missing signals and not being certain if I've overdone or underdone something, I also keep doubting. Even if I did everything right with the kitten, I'm making a bigger effort now with my own pets to try to be more perceptive and deliberately compassionate towards them. Especially since I've got an old lady cat with kidney disease now--she's spent a good long life with me and deserves to have as much more of it as she can! I say, as she sits beside me on the sofa and I pick at a mat in her fur...

@thewhtrbbt I didn't know that about cats and temperature. Good to know! I do know these two lost their mother young and were far younger than they would be adopted out at. Old enough to be quite mobile but still young enough to feel like nothing but fuzz and bones.

@Ashariel My baby exposure is pretty low, so I have yet to know quite how I react to them. But I do know that, at least on a photographic basis, almost all baby animals win out over baby humans.

I probably go overboard but think people should be very careful to treat any pet, or animal in their charge, with great care. Even as much as you would treat any other person.

But not all are skilled or motivated well enough at first to do this properly. Mistakes are made by practically everyone. Your remorse speaks well of you, and if you wish to continue with pets the thing is to come up with compensations that will correct any innate weakness you have that might affect the animals welfare. It can be something like a feeding or medication schedule posted somewhere you can not avoid (I use the ledge where I make my Tea and Coffee), or buying a good pet care reference book, or online source to consult when questions arise.

Its not what you have done, but what you will do.

Cats are descended from african wildcats, well adapted to live in the heat. There kidneys are so efficient they can drink and hydrate from salt water. If you ever have cats, watch them on a hot day, you'll find them most likely laying in the sun.

Keep in mind, this is not true of dogs. They can easily overheat.

Sound like you went above and beyond what most people would do. After growing up on a farm I can assure you that even if you did everything perfectly there is no guarantee the animal would still not have died. It happens from time to time.

@ToySoldier That's what bothers me most about how I treated the kitten. I definitely sorted her into a different category than if she were 'owned' by another human as opposed to 'just' being fostered, and, of course, into a different care category than if she had been human. One, I would never have offered to babysit a human infant (then again, I would have wondered about someone who left their infant with their apartment while they went on a trip and let a coworker care for it!) because I'm not sure my skills are up to par. And, two, I never would have left a human infant alone for part of the day when it was quite sick.

One of the only things that makes me feel a bit better: I watch a series of YouTube videos from a veterinarian, and it's clear that empathy for animals, even for NTs (assuming that all of his clients aren't on the spectrum) is a partially learned characteristic. People regularly bring animals to this vet that they claim to care about (and do care about enough to bring to a vet) that they've allowed to deteriorate to awful conditions. And many of those conditions just require someone to take a few minutes every day to avoid--no big money expenditure, no odd techniques--so it's not a question of not having the money to give care. Having the time, knowledge, emotional resources, and cultural training to give empathy to animals isn't necessarily entirely 'natural,' even for people without hyperfocus and decision-making difficulties. It's a skill and a way of thinking that people can develop and choose to prioritize or not.

It still makes me feel horrible that Aurora (the kitten) died under my care. It's strange to realize how little, in general, people sometimes know about the care of creatures they've grown up around. Another time I felt awful was when I realized cats' claws, without enough chance to scratch, are like rodents' teeth--they'll keep right on growing, right into their footpads! I've grown up around an NT mother who takes good care of pets, and even she didn't know this. We both had to take cats to the vet for claws grown into their footpads around a year ago.

In good news, I'm now much more careful with my own cats now, though less than I want to be. I watch my kidney-disease-having old lady cat's diet; I get both her and my new kitten the good wet food that should help them avoid dehydration now (though I still feed them dry now and then--they like it, I have some left over, and, I admit, it's quicker to throw in a dish than the freeze-dried add-water wet food I use. I should really chuck it out so I'm not tempted to feed it to them). I've got three scratching posts for them, and three litter boxes (the good number--one more than the number of cats). I give my old lady a Vitamin D supplement two times a week. I should really buy her some cat stairs, since jumping is hard for her and she has to struggle to get up on my bed. I groom my old lady now, and I'm careful not to overdo it and antagonize her, and I've started grooming my kitten (even though she doesn't need it) just so she's used to it if she ever does need it. I still have to learn to brush her teeth! And they could both do with a few more things to climb on and hide in, so they're not stressed by sharing too much territory.

Being compassionate is hard Also, owning pets is hard. People don't understand how much compensating you have to do once you make a creature a pet and remove it from its own independent control of its life. In a perfect world, where I have business sense, I would own a cat cafe that modeled best practices for cat care and connected people with adoptable cats.

@thewhtrbbt I do know about dogs and heat; I've grown up with a few dogs, and, boy, can you tell when they've had enough. Sometimes I watch people dragging their dogs around in the city on hot days and wonder if they have any idea.

@Sherlock Thank you.

Crearan, Your obviously doing a super job trying to be a really responsible pet owner. Pet care is not necessarily intuitive as their needs are not always the same as ours. But it doesn't matter whether they are a cat or bird or frog, they are lives in your hands and they feel something, in differing ammounts. I don't think you lack empathy at all, and are just learning those needs and differences, and more seriously then most, which I admire.

I messed up too. Once I saw a baby bird in our fenced yard and it approached me and I even fed it a bug or something. It couldn't fly. But not wishing to interfere I left it and found it dead the next morning having fallen to a predator. I was really crushed about having let it happen and cried about it. Next time it happened with a different bird, I put it in a box in a safe place for the night and released it back in the morning. Some times the parents took back over, and sometimes I had to take on full orphan care (which sometimes succeeded and sometimes did not)

But I learned something about animals and about myself and so even if I can't go back and undo the error, I can make sure I remember it and not make a mistake like that again. Its not so much what happened in the past as being ready to step up and make damn sure it doesn't happen again. That is what you are now and you can be satisfied with that.

Oh, baby birds are so hard. I brought one in once (a mother bird made her nest on my mother's front door wreath. Smart mother, that one. A predator attacked the very-obvious nest one day) for a night. And put it back out because its mother was calling for it the next day. I'm still not sure if it made it. They're much harder than kittens, I think! If you've managed to nurse some through to surviving without parents, I take my hat off to you. That's very hard work.

It is tough to say if they make it, but the chances are fair. If they are capable of leaving the nest they are usually capable of hopping up up branches in bushes, which is what the parent will try to get the fledgling to do by luring them with calls and food. And that happens very quickly, often immediately after they leave the nest.

But yeah, birds are very fragile. Though some species have suprized me with good resilience, like Robins and Pigeons. About half the time with baby birds it turns out they are ill and you mostly just do a kind of hospice. Just give them a safe warm place with bedding, water and a little food and they pass peacefully.

They healthy ones are not too hard to feed usually though it can be icky with bug eaters and with ground feeders you can actually help teach them how to find food. Sometimes you have pretty humourous situations. Like crawling on all fours with a Robin on your shoulder overturning leaves, rocks and sticks looking for bugs. Another time a white pigoen we nursed back from a wing injury imprinted on the Guinea Hen flock that was on the property. It was funny to see them all sitting on the roof with the one small pideon among the much larger Hens.

But the actual transition back to wild is very tough and I have found it works best when you have other people helping you at different stages. Like in one case we brought the bird to being able to fly but it had imprinted on us and had ne fear of humans. Luckily we knew a lady naturalist who lived out in the country five miles from nearest neighbor (so no prowling cats or dogs). We released the bird there, and she left a food supplement on the covered porch but never touched and more or less ignorred the bird. It worked perfectly. Before leaving the area we visited the lady and sat on the porch and called to it. The bird came and sat opposite a little while observing us curiously and then flew off. Fortunately too we were far enough south so that the bird did not have to migrate.

But something I thought about for you concerned forgiving yourself. There's differnt kinds of course but the most basic model for successful forgiving using people as an example goes like this: The person that wronged you is genuinely sorry, but more then that makes the changes necessary not to do it again. Under those circumstances one can most easily forgive.

With Aurora, you are obviously sorry it happened, but how would you answer this question? If it happened today, would you do it the same way, or would you change things and be more proactive and careful. If you would do it differently, you have completed the cycle and can forgive yourself finally.

Aw, your baby bird stories are adorable. It sounds like you definitely go above and beyond to help them out!

You're right, about Aurora. I would do things differently if I was in charge of small kittens again, and am doing things differently with my own cats because of my experience with her. Honestly, that's the hardest thing about life I've found, so far. That learning usually comes from making mistakes, and sometimes learning the most comes from making the mistakes that impact others and oneself the most.