3month old ktten has Cat Flu!!!????

We adopted a kitten from the shelter last week.
We took her to the vet and the vet gave her some medication for the flu.

It was nothing serious at the time.
She was eating her food, drinking, playing fine until this morning.
I found her in the bathroom throwing up.
She threw up three times.
We took her to the vet.
The vet weighed her and she has lost 100gm since last week.
So now she weighs 1kg and she's three months old.
The vet said she has the cat-flu and he told us that the cat flu can be fatal.
Then he did a stool sample, but that din't turn up anything.
Then he did a blood test and she has almost NO white blood cells left.
So he put her on antibiotics but she threw those up as well.
So now he has said not to give her any water for a few hours.

So now that she isn't eating what do i do?
The vet said that i should bring her back and put her on a drip if she hasn't eaten by tomorrow.

I will definetly take her back to the vet if she hasn't eaten by tomorrow but what do i do in the mean time? Tomorrow is such a long way away...

Should I feed her baby food through a syringe?
Any suggestions anyone?
Has any one else had a kitten with the cat flu?

If you kitty is vomiting, you should not give her any food, nor force feed her anything. Cat Flu can be fatal, this is true, but force feeding her can also be risky because of the diagnosis. Give her a dark warm place where she can rest. A cat carrier with the door off, that has a lot of padding inside and is covered by a blanket- leaving enough room for a doorway would be ideal. Put her in a quiet room away from the main traffic in the house.

Depending on what stage of cat flu she is in, she can recover, but only with veterinarian intervention. Best of luck, and again do not force feed her or make her take water or food- let her just rest.

Has your vet checked for distemper (panluekopenia)? That illness destroys the white cells and causes diahrea (sp?)and vomiting in some. But it's a fast moving disease, so it may not be the answer. We had 2 kittens with it last summer when they were around 12 weeks old. That's about the age they lose the protection they had from nursing. They will stop eating and drinking and develop a fever and become lethargic. They need sub. q. fluids if they're not drinking. With our 2 it was the 2nd day that the illness really took hold.
Keep us posted and I hope I didn't alarm you. Like I said, distemper is fast and furious in kittens, so yours may not have it. Good luck.

we're going to the vet this morning, in about three hours when he opens...
she's so weak.
is there anything else we should ask the vet?
it's so unbearable to just have to sit by and not be able to do anything.
Surely there must be some alternatives?
I really hope she makes it.

If it comes down to you having to make the hard decision, I hope you know that she would thank you for making it and bringing her out of pain. You want to ask your vet if he knows for certain what she has, then once he tells you he is certain of something, you need to go from there. If she is not eating at all, or drinking or eliminating, then there may only be one thing to do, the most painful thing of all and that is release her to the angels. But allow the vet, the professional to guide you here and I wish you the best and send you my prayers.

Set out a bowl of chicken broth or tuna juice and see if that will entice her to eat. Put a little dab of something tasty right under her chin, or on her leg and see if she licks it off.

It could be distemper...
Because she has only been really ill since yesterday morning.
She was fine two days ago.
She had diarrhea but she was still racing around and eating like a horse.
It was just yesterday morning that she threw up and it's been down hill since then.

Will definetly ask the vet to check for distemper.

Last night she had a bit of milk and then threw it up.
This morning I've given her:
1.5ml of 50%water 50%nutrigel every half hour for the last three hours.
She hasn't thrown up.

well it's almost 9 am.
We're leaving for the vet soon.
I think he'll be putting her on a drip.

I hope she comes through this...
Keeping our fingers crossed.

Keep us updated!

Just got back from the vet.

Her temperature is down from 103 to 101.

He put her on the drip, and gave her two injections.
One with the anti biotics.
And another one...

She's got a bit of jaundice.

Supposed to keep giving her nutrigel throughout the day
and 3ml of water every two hours.

He didn't mention the 'big question.'...
so, i guess there's still hope.

Did he answer your questions? Did he tell you what she has, or what he suspects it is? Is she eating now, or still vomiting?

You can try giving her some chicken baby food mixed with some green beans baby food, warm it up first a little bit, not to hot though and present it to her to see if she wants to eat it.

Good luck with her-

See if you can get a bottle of colostrum powder. That's one thing my holistic vet gave us to help save Enya from distemper. In case you don't know, colostrum is the first milk a newborn mammal gets from its mother. It protects them from illnesses, basically. Mine is bovine colustrum made by Symbiotics and called New Life Colostrum. My vet said to give 1/6-1/3 tsp. daily. She was barely a pound then. It will give a sick cats immune system a boost. We also used homeopathic meds too, which did the most for her. Did your vet check for distemper?
I know how hard what you're going through is. I remember very clearly all that we went through to save ours. We also gave her a lot of lap time, which our vet suggested and that helped too.
Did your vet show you how to test for dehydration? That can be a big help too. You pull up on the scruff of their neck and then let go. If it goes back into place fairly quick, then they have enough fluid. If it tends to stay up on its own, then they're dry and need fluids. Ours recieved subcutaneous fluids every day for about 10 days straight. They put vitamins in the fluid.
I wish you the best. It's hard to go through, so try and get some rest yourself. Let us know how it goes.

i gave her the contents of a whole capsule of colustrum yesterday.
but that was my last capsule.
so we're going to get some this afternoon as soon as my fiancee gets back. (I don't drive)
She doesn't have distemper, but she might be developing a bit of jaundice.
her temperature is down from 103-101

The last time she threw up was last night at two.
Since 6am, she hasn't thrown up any of the water + nutrigel that i've been syringing her every hour or so.
I hope that that's a good sign.
This evening I'll try a little bit of baby food.
She's not too bothered by the feeder so i can use that.
That's a relief.

And she's just walked out of the bedroom as i am typing this.
she got out of her basket and went to have some water on the balcony and then she got into her other basket which is surrounded by chrysanthemums. I think she likes that one better, as it can get a bit gloomy in the bedroom.

have decided not to wait for fiancee, and am taking a cab to the mall to get everything (colustrum/baby food) for my poor little sweetie.

RBG?

What other homeopathic remedies did you use?
I'm very interested to know.

your little kitten sound so sick. I am going to say a kitten prayer for her right now. I hope she pulls through lt. love to you

Enya was jaundiced during part of her battle with distemper. I gave her a homeopthic remedy for it, but I don't recall which one right now. It may have been a tissue salt. If you don't know homeopathy then that made absolutely no sense to you! :>)
At then end of her illness I used Phosphorus and that finally stopped the diarhea. But since homeopathic remedies are prescribed based on the individuals own symptoms, that same remedy won't work on every cat with distemper.
Are you at all familiar with homeopathy? If not I can tell you more about it. I've used it for over 15 years. It's much milder on animals than conventional medicine.
There's a book by Don Hamilton DVM on homeopathy which explains it well. It's a great book. I think it's called Homeopathy For Dogs and Cats.
My other vet gave me an herbal formula for the liver called Liverplex. It's made for humans, but animals can have it too. Just don't give a whole capsule since too much could cause problems too. I think they told me to just give a 1/4 capsule or less, but I don't remember for sure since I was wiped out at that point of her illness. That was during the 2nd week. It was a long 2 weeks! I've never had sick pets before, so I'm making up for it now!
Is the colostrum capsule a human adult amount? I just wonder if they could get too much. See what they say for a person to take and reduce it from that. I'm glad to hear you already knew about it. It should help, even if it is from a cow!!
It still sounds a lot like distemper to me, with the low white count and other symptoms. It would be good for you to rule it out or in because you could spread it to other cats since it's highly contagious. The virus can live a long time off the host too. And if your cat does have it, she'll have definate immunity to it.
Well, I better go check on Enya's eye and see how it looks tonight. She and Blaze just had a good wrestling match, so she's not feeling too bad.
Keep up the good work with your kitty and hopefully it will end soon so you can enjoy the time with her (or is it a him?). They're so much fun at that age. I wish we coul've gotten our replacement kitty at that age, but I didn't think I should chance it since the distemper virus could still be in our house and the young ones are more suseptible. Take care!

What are the signs that she's really not going to make it?
Are there any certainties?

I don't know that there are many certainties. With our cat it was touch and go for the first week or more and I wan't assured she'd make it until she started eating and drinking again. It sounds like our cat was much sicker than yours, so hang on to that thought and give her a lot of snuggle time. She'll feel your love and affection and hang on to her will to live more than if she's left alone a lot, which doesn't sound like she is. Keep checking her for dehydration. Without enough fluids, her chances go down some.
The thing I found odd when our cat was so sick was that she would put up a good strong fight whenever she tried to get away from the vet, even though she was so weak. She was just a little scrawny 1# kitten, just skin and bone mostly at the end of the first week, so I don't know where her strength came from.
Your cat's chances of survival go up with each passing day as long as she doesn't get a lot worse. If she's not losing fluid any more, that improves her chances. When will they do another blood test to see if her white count is improving?
I hope you're getting some sleep. It's a hard wait when you have a sick tiny kitten. They seem so fragile.
I better go. I take our cat into the vet in a couple of hours to see about her eye, which, of course, is looking better this morning.
Hang in there!

we took turns tonight watching her.

she doesn't sleep. she just tosses and turns.
and dozes every now and then.

It's almost 6am.
We're going to the vet again before nine, just to make sure we're the first there.

so is FIP the same as the cat flu?

she's still drinking.

we're taking her for some reiki after the vet this morning.

well, i'll let you know how it goes.

We just got back from the vet and...
The good news is that it isn't FIP!
It's just the flu virus, the upper respitory tract virus.

Nikkie got another antibiotic shot and she was put on a drip for a while.

The vet has said to feed her 1ml of special formula cat food every hour.
He took stool sample, and there are no worms in the stool.
Her temperature is down to 100.6 degrees.... yesterday it was 101

Today is Day 3.
The vet said that day 1 + day 2 are the crucial days.
So, we're not out of the woods yet, but it's a good sign that we made it to day three.

Well we're all in better spirits.
Will keep you posted.

surrya- those Chrysanthemums are they real? Or artificial? If they are real, you need to keep them out of reach, because they are toxic to cats and they could be what is wrong with her if she is nibbling on them or licking them!

oops. really?

well she can't reach them but, i'll move them anyway just incase.
Thanks.