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cats and kittens

18 14:40:34

Question
i have a cat with a litter of 4 kittens of 2 months age and 2 kittens of 6 months age. All of them feed on her milk as well as animal meat and occasionally the mother gets them rodents and squirrels to eat. Sinc e 3 days one kitten, 2 months old has become lethargic, with head drooping, does not eat, and does not excrete. Now her eyes look as if she has conjuntivitis. I showed her to the vet 2 days ago. The vet got an X-ray done, and diagnosed that she has a full bladder. He guessed that this could be due to some injury. He took out urine from her bladder. And since then we have been through syringe giving her antibiotic and digene. We also tried to give her liquid food. Feeding her is very difficult as she does not take anything and keeps her mouth shut. She is not able to suck milk. She  has lost skin tone, skin elasticity and is very weak. She has urinated twice in the past 2 days, a large amount, but it seemed as if she could not control her bladder.
I stay in India, and vets here do not know much about cats, only about dogs.
Some other kittens have been vomiting but i cannot make out which one. Today I saw one older kitten vomit, and in the vomit, which was black in colour I saw a live worm, white in color, probably a round worm. None of the kittens have been dewormed. The mother had been vaccinated, but not dewormed recently. since the number of kittens have grown, I have made litter tubs, which they share, and the last month or so it has been raining here and therefore very humid. I am worried for all the kittens, but for the one who is ill. First I thought she will die, but she is surviving and very weak. It is urgent, because she may develop complications and have a lot of difficulty later. Please help. I have searched several sites, and cannot seem to understand her problem

Answer
This is pretty complicated Doey and I am not a vet, but a vet tech. There are many thing that can be wrong with the kitten, from having leukemia to being so full of worms that she is dying from them. Rodents and squirrels are full of diseases that I would not want my cats to have let alone have them near you. My cat eats rats that are not like the rats there but I still don't like it.

You are not feeding this cat any balanced foods. She cannot be giving her kittens very good milk and two month old kittens need to be weaned and eating solid food by now. Milk is not a good food for cats unless it is the dam's milk and as I said, past two months they need to be on solid food, such as Science Diet.

You might consider that this kitten is not going to do well and put her out of her misery at this point. I know you have tried hard to save her but if the antibiotics are not working then there is something else going on. She is surviving but not really "alive" at this point if she won't eat, is weak and she is that dehydrated already. If you could give her some under the skin fluids from the vet (sub q) then she might have a chance.

All these kittens need to be wormed. They will not thrive until they are. Piperazine is a cheap but effective method of worming them. You might try to get some down the weak kitten as well but it sounds a bit late for this kitten already.

You can re-post this to one of the vets in here and they might have more suggestions for you. I don't know how many vets are in your area but you could call around until you find a vet that treats cats. I know they are out there.

Good luck with this little one and get them some regular food to eat and round wormer as soon as you can. Get the Momma cat spayed as well so she won't have to go through this again.