About 3 weeks ago, a feral cat that I had been feeding vanished.  A
couple of days after that, I heard something mewing underneath an
abandoned utility trailer in the next yard.  Upon closer inspection I
found 2 baby kittens maybe 3 weeks old underneath crying for their
missing mommy;  one a baby silver tabby and the other a fluffy long
haired black one that looked maybe part persian; both boys.  They did
not look like brothers.  Prior to that moment I never knew that the
feral cat had had kittens.  

I left them there until dark thinking that maybe their momma would
return but she didn't and they just kept on crying.  So I went to the
store for some canned food and sure enough... the little guys were
famished and crawled all over the plate and ate the food.  I still
thought maybe their momma would come back, but the next morning they
were still crying under there, so I took them inside and went back to
the store for some cat milk to mix with the canned food for them.  I
named the tabby Einstein because he seemed very smart, and the fuzzy
black one looked just like a little bear, so I called him Bear.  They
both ate like little piggies and seemed fine for nearly two weeks.  By
then they had begun to run and play together.  

Then without warning Bear started to act somewhat listless.  While I was
holding them one evening I noticed that Bear seemed a bit warm.  It was
aFriday night and there are no vets in this rural area that work on
weekends.  I fell asleep on the couch holding them, and when I got up,
only Einstein was still snuggled on my shoulder.

I found Bear huddled on the floor by the refrigerator shivering.  I
thought maybe he fell off the couch and couldn't manage to climb back
up.  

When I tried to feed them, little Bear started turning around in circles
and did not eat until I held him still with a spoon full of food near
him.  He would not stop turning in circles though, so I fed him like
that all weekend and put a heating pad in the box with enough space for
him to get away from it if he wanted to.  When I brought him to the vet
that Monday morning, his fever was 103 and one of his eyes was dilated.
I thought maybe he had hit his head on the linoleum floor from falling
off the couch, but the vet said that it was coccidiosis and gave me some
medicine for both of the kittens to take for a week.

At week's end, Bear stopped eating.  I drove him an hour away to the
nearest town with a vet on duty.  The vet said he had a neurological
disorder and told me to feed him a mash of pedialite and a special vet
food with a syringe:  9 cc's twice a day.  I got one meal down him, but
then poor Bear died a few hours later.  I still don't know whether he
hit his head falling off the couch, or whether it was coccidiosis that
made him turn circles and go downhill.  He was soft and beautiful but he
is dead now and I am very sad... and his brother is so lonely.  

Callie