Let me start off by saying that we have a large number of stray cats that hang around our property (people have a bad habit of dumping animals near our house) that we try to take care of, on top of the household pets we have, so I will probably be posting here a lot.
One of the stray mothers (we've been calling her "Gray Mama") had a litter of kittens outside a few weeks ago. We *think* they're about 5-6 weeks old. All but one of them seems to do alright with kitten replacement milk, canned food, and softened solid kitten food. However, one of them has wound up with blocked bowels. We took him to the vet, and the vet gave him an injection of some kind of stool softener, and some fluids. He suggested half a teaspoon of Karo syrup mixed with the replacement milk for a couple of days as well. For a couple of days, the kitten seemed to perk up a little bit, and even started drinking the replacement milk from a dish on his own (we were having to hand-feed him the milk, as obviously he didn't have much of an appetite). Now today he's acting like he feels even worse than he did to begin with. He has used the litter box a couple of times, but didn't manage to pass much, and what he did pass looked like he'd been eating and not digesting dried fruit :/. I'm very concerned at this point, as he's no longer eating on his own, and is losing weight rapidly (it's very difficult to get him to swallow a lot of the milk when hand-feeding him the milk, and I'm afraid to push it too much, because I don't want to choke him or anything). The vet had told us that they didn't like to try to do surgery on young kittens (and he did say that normally that's how they would handle this type of extreme blockage) because they don't handle the anesthesia very well. Are there any other alternatives we can consider before we take the high risk that comes with surgery on such a small kitten? Have any of you encountered a situation like this with any success? We really love this little guy, and I don't want to just give up on him, it just doesn't seem right
. I don't feel like he has a lot of time if we don't do something more soon.
One of the stray mothers (we've been calling her "Gray Mama") had a litter of kittens outside a few weeks ago. We *think* they're about 5-6 weeks old. All but one of them seems to do alright with kitten replacement milk, canned food, and softened solid kitten food. However, one of them has wound up with blocked bowels. We took him to the vet, and the vet gave him an injection of some kind of stool softener, and some fluids. He suggested half a teaspoon of Karo syrup mixed with the replacement milk for a couple of days as well. For a couple of days, the kitten seemed to perk up a little bit, and even started drinking the replacement milk from a dish on his own (we were having to hand-feed him the milk, as obviously he didn't have much of an appetite). Now today he's acting like he feels even worse than he did to begin with. He has used the litter box a couple of times, but didn't manage to pass much, and what he did pass looked like he'd been eating and not digesting dried fruit :/. I'm very concerned at this point, as he's no longer eating on his own, and is losing weight rapidly (it's very difficult to get him to swallow a lot of the milk when hand-feeding him the milk, and I'm afraid to push it too much, because I don't want to choke him or anything). The vet had told us that they didn't like to try to do surgery on young kittens (and he did say that normally that's how they would handle this type of extreme blockage) because they don't handle the anesthesia very well. Are there any other alternatives we can consider before we take the high risk that comes with surgery on such a small kitten? Have any of you encountered a situation like this with any success? We really love this little guy, and I don't want to just give up on him, it just doesn't seem right
