Kitten not drinking water.

Question
Hello, About a week ago, my boyfriend rescued a now 5 week old kitten(Titan) from a stray mother. The kitten was wandering and he tried to return it to the mom but the mom didn't want anything to do with it so we brought it home. I took him to the vet within 2 hours of Titan being in our home. He weighed only 7 oz.( he has since plumped up a little) The vet gave us a little kit to get us started, he is eating Hills Science Diet for kitten, I left the kibble out and used to give him wet food as well. He is beginning to be able to eat the dry food. But this last weekend we had to put him in the animal hospital because he was severely dehydrated. When we brought him home they told us that they had been feeding him baby food (meat) as well as giving him a bottle. I have had much trouble getting him to take to the bottle. He doesn't seem interested in the bottle at all. Now I feed him the baby food, but I thin it down with his kitten formula, which he LOVES.  Since coming home he is acting like I think a kitten should, pretty much playing with anything that moves, all the time. I find him play an imaginary game I call "hunt the prey" where he likes to crouch and hide and pounce on plastic bags.  Plus he loves chasing our feet.

We have 3 ferrets who are current on all shots so I'm not worried about them catching anything the kitten may have brought in. Titan or the ferrets have had contact with each other.

The vet diagnosed Titan with coccidia and a secondary bacterial growth in his intestines. They gave us a probiotic to give him once a day,(which he has now finished like a good boy :) ) they also gave us Pro-Pectalin Antidiarrheal Gel to give him every 8 hours until the diarrhea subsides, and the diarrhea seems to have stopped for now. Titan goes back to the vet on the 21st of Oct I think for some vaccs. and a check up. My question is how can I get Titan to learn to drink his water I put out? I change it every time I give him more baby food( which is around 3 to 4 times a day). I also sometimes feed him water through a syringe a couple times a day to make myself feel better. And when can I switch him back to his wet food, I tried once and he ate maybe 3 bites and it went to waste. I just want to be able to get him switched back to the wet food, and also get his water.

Thanks! I really appreciate your time!

Answer
Hi
well all i can do is to give you my experience which may help.

when we adopted our first rescue cat from the rspca she suffered from terrible urinary infections all the time, we would find blodd spots and urine all over the place. we took her to the vets who told us we should feed her science tinned food. Now at the time we were both very young and very poor and just could not afford to buy science food all the time.

one of the problems was that our cat just would not drink, she would eat her wet food and thatwas it, no matter what we tried. then we had a thought. She is not thirsty because of the wet food but the wet food was not providing enough moisture to prevent the infections. So we stopped giving her wet food entirly and gave her only good qaulity complete nutrion dry food only. guess what she drank after every meal. then of course her infectionms stopped and she never suffered from them again.

this was years ago and since them we have spoken to a vet who agrees with us that if you have a cat that won't drink but needs to for various health reasons, then feeding dry food only and proving fresh water and cat milk is absolutely fine.

This is only my experience but I leave it with you in case this is something you want to try. I know of no other way to make a cat drink other wise. you know the old saying "you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink".

I hope your little guy goes from strength to strength.

best wishes kate