Loss of my 3 week old kitten

About 3 weeks ago one of my boyfriends cats gave birth to around 5 kittens. She took care of them for a couple days until one day we didn’t hear any of the babies crying anymore. We discovered that she had suffocated two and eaten one but left the head right by our door. We were very upset and assumed the other two dead. After a day of grieving we had just assumed that we wouldn’t find the bodies either. Until later on in the evening we heard very weak cries coming from another part of the house. We had been very pleased to find the two kitties still alive but very weak. So we took care of them and for the past three weeks have been watching them grow. One of them is an all white kitty that we named Coconut and we could obviously see was a preemie and the other kitty was black and white and much bigger and stronger than his sister. We named him Spot.

We have been taking care of them in a box lined with very soft wool and have given them routine feedings and they’ve been doing really well until today. Spot would always climb out of the box because he was strong enough and big enough to do so and when I’d see him climb out I’d always make sure to put him back in because I know how dangerous it was and I’d always tell my boyfriend to watch his step.

But today as I was playing with Coconut on the bed my boyfriend and I hadn’t noticed that Spot had woken up from his nap and climbed out and my boyfriend tragically ended up stepping on the baby. When it happened I was so shocked and I’m so much emotional pain. That was one of my babies and I can’t get the image of him crying on the floor spitting out blood and shaking. I screamed and my boyfriend quickly picked Spot up and ran into the bathroom since he was panicking and he rinsed off some of the blood. I told my boyfriend to run to the hospital down the street since our car got stolen about a week ago and unfortunately the one we tried going to was closed so we had to run a few more blocks to another vet.

When we got there they checked his heartbeat in the waiting room and said he had a strong heartbeat which made me hopeful. Then we got into the doctors room and they put him on a heating pad since they told us that his body temperature was low. By the time the doctor came in to see us and she checked his heart she told us there was no heartbeat anymore.

I’ve never lost a cat or any pet actually and this hurts the most because he was so small. He didn’t deserve to die like that and I felt so helpless. Every time I try to get past it all I can think about is everything that happened. I obviously don’t want to completely go off on my boyfriend because he is very upset and he has a lot of guilt. He held Spot the whole time and made sure he was kept warm. But I have a lot of anger I feel like and I feel a tremendous loss. We brought Spot Home because I couldn’t bear the thought of him being alone on that table and we buried him in the front yard by some flowers.

If anyone could offer any advice on coping with this I would greatly appreciate it. I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to keep him safe. Spot was one of my babies and I know he would’ve grown up happy and healthy and big.