Did Not Survive by Ann Littlewood Read Free Book Online Page A

celebratory cookies.
    â€œShe’d better not blow it,” Linda said. “Not after all this.”
    Dr. Reynolds shook her head and fingered her hair. “We’ll keep the area quiet around her. She’s got another den to move them to if she gets nervous. She’ll be fine.”
    â€œShe’s a timid cat,” Linda fretted.
    â€œNot like she was when she first came,” I reminded her. “She settled in a lot.”
    â€œMaybe we should have waited to breed her, given her more time…Never mind, I’m wound up,” Linda said. “It’s just that these cats make every step so hard.”
    â€œI’ve raised house-cat kittens,” Kayla said. “It wasn’t that hard.”
    A little silence fell. We all knew that wild felines sometimes kill their young if they’re disturbed, sometimes even if they aren’t. First-time mothers are especially likely to fail. It happens in the wild, too, not just zoos. All our worries were shifting this direction.
    Dr. Reynolds had a small edge to her voice. “We could hand raise them, and we might have to, but I prefer to have her raise them if at all possible. They need to nurse to take in colostrum. That will provide some protection against disease until their own immune systems start to work. They’ll also behave more normally if their mother raises them. We’ll pull them only as a last resort.”
    I knew all about colostrum from the pregnancy books my mother had piled on me. It’s the first milk a lactating mammal produces, watery and full of antibodies. Eventually I would be churning it out myself.
    Kayla persisted. “You’re the boss and all that, Jean, but couldn’t you let them nurse and then pull them? I mean…what if she freaks out and kills them?”
    She didn’t seem to realize that she was poking at a sore spot. Linda stayed current on the latest in clouded leopard management, and the latest from other zoos said that hand rearing looked like the best way to go. Aside from protecting them from mommy dearest, hand-rearing resulted in cats that were calmer and more tolerant of changes in their environment. Linda was all for pulling the cubs and Wallace had been amenable, but Dr. Reynolds was firmly on the side of mother rearing. With most mammal species, everyone would have agreed with her. But clouded leopards were a tough species to manage, and conventional methods didn’t work as well.
    Dr. Reynolds said, “We will start out giving Losa every—”
    â€œAnother one!” Linda said. “Three! Three! Hot damn!”
    We watched until it was time to start work. Losa behaved perfectly, cleaning the three cubs and lying still for them to nurse. The babies were totally incompetent, inching around in the wrong direction, tangling up with each other and with Losa’s legs, exhausting themselves in futile struggles to find sustenance. I wanted to grab them and stick each one on a nipple. It’s a wonder that any creature survives without human help. But by the time I had to leave, all three had been attached at least briefly.
    I stood up to go, suddenly stiff and aching. Linda practically skipped to the white board on the wall and wrote down the date and time. Underneath, she wrote “0.0.3
Neofelis nebulosa.”
    â€œI’ll bite,” Kayla said. “I know the Latin for clouded leopards, but not the number stuff. We didn’t use that in the clinics I’ve worked in.”
    â€œThis is the first significant birth or hatchings since we started here,” said Dr. Reynolds. “The first number is males in the litter or clutch, if it’s birds. The second is females. Since we don’t know the sexes yet, we can only put the litter size in the third place.”
    Linda wrapped her arms around me in a brief hug. “We did it. I am so happy for us,” she said in my ear.
    I grinned all the way to the Commissary to clock in. No