Bee-sting Derbyshire kitten lucky to be alive

It took a skilled emergency team three days to win their battle to save four-month-old Cher. Pets can suffer anaphylactic shock just the same as humans and swift treatment can be the difference between life and death. The kitten’s owner Ann Clark, who lives on a smallholding in the Chesterfield countryside, hand-reared Cher and her two brothers Kaiba and Pax after finding them in a haystack, with their parents believed to be from a nearby farm. The sting drama began after Ann spotted Cher collapsed and looking poorly just outside her kitchen. “She was very drowsy and stunned looking,” said Ann. “We’re well off the beaten track, so we thought she had maybe fallen out of a tree. The thought that she may have been stung by a bee or a wasp didn’t even occur at the time.” Ann rushed Cher to the Charlesworth Veterinary Surgery in Chesterfield from where Vets Now provide emergency out-of-hours care. “Her pupils were really tiny and they couldn’t get them to dilate, which seemed to really ring alarm bells,” said Ann. "It was only a little later that my children remembered that we suspected she had been stung a few weeks earlier. “That time her chin had swollen up, but she was otherwise fine. We were told we could give her an allergy tablet and she was okay the next day. “This was obviously much worse and while the information about the sting helped the vets with a diagnosis, they said the prognosis wasn’t looking good. We really didn’t expect her to make it through the night.” Natalie Tate, senior vet at Vets Now in Chesterfield, said: “Cher was extremely weak, dehydrated, hypothermic and suffering from laboured breathing and low blood sugar levels. “It became clear, following discussions with another senior vet, that she’d suffered anaphylaxis. We gave her medication and fluids and very gradually, over the next three nights, her condition began to improve. “It’s likely the previous sting she’d suffered had sensitised her to the toxins and this had caused her to have such a severe reaction.”