As many others here have said, it was NOT your fault. The kitten was simply too young to survive a terrible disease such as feline distemper.

Now, it’s possible it was the *pet store’s* fault, or maybe the breeder. The mother cat should have inoculated against feline distemper. It sounds as if she probably wasn’t. Or, maybe the pet store or breeder allowed the kitten to be exposed to another cat who had distemper. Unless the kitten was a feral kitten that the pet store was giving away free, it should not have had any chances to be exposed to distemper. Someone messed up — they failed to immunize their cats like they should have — but it wasn’t you.

A friend of mine had something similar happen. She adopted a kitten that seemed healthy, but about 10 months later it developed feline leukemia and died. While my friend had her cat, it had never been exposed to the feline leukemia virus, so it must have had the virus when she got it. My friend was really grief stricken. But, it wasn’t her fault.