I have an orphan kitten that the vet has confirmed is blind. She's about 4 or 5 weeks old at this point, I've had her almost 3 weeks now. The first thing that struck me as odd about her is that her eyes are not blue. They are completely dark.
She's missing a hind leg, but it appears to have been removed in some kind of accident/trauma as opposed to being born like that, as the end was open when I got her. It has since closed up and healed. Now that she's finally walking (she seems to be quite behind in terms of development, as compared to a healthy litter of orphans I raised a couple years ago) it appears that her intact hind leg isn't formed exactly right. It's got a serious bow to it.
When I first suspected she was blind, I immediately did some reading on taurine deficiency and found that it can cause hind end deformities (such as the intact hind leg that doesn't look right?) and developmental problems, as well as blindness (which I already knew).
Both my vet and a cat rescue that I have volunteered at in the past think her blindness is a result of the respiratory infection that she had when I got her. I'm thinking it wasn't that bad of an infection, as all symptoms were gone in less than 24 hours on Amoxicillin. Actually I gave her the first dose around 6pm and her eyes were clear the next morning. If she'd had a severe enough infection to cause blindness, I'd think it would have taken longer than 24 hours for ALL the gunk buildup to disappear and the sneezing to go away completely (I did, of course, continue the antibiotics for 14 days even though she was fine).
Anyways, even though the vet and the rescue said it was a waste of my money, I bought a taurine supplement at the health food store. I really couldn't find any information online for dosing, so for the first few days I gave her half a capsule (powder in a plastic capsule, I just pulled it open and sprinkled it in her forumla) a day, and now I give her half a capsule every other day. It's an amino acid, I'm not sure if I could overdose her or not.
Anyways, I've noticed in the past few days (after about 2 weeks on the taurine) that her eyes are starting to have a noticable iris and pupil, where it used to be all black. Her iris is now more of a dark gray, but there is contrast between that and the pupil. Also, my husband was wiggling his finger the other night, not making any noise with it, and she pounced on it! She also will follow motion if you wave your hand back and forth. I don't think she can see all that well, but I think she can see some now.
She also took a really long time to get to eat canned food. I feed all of my cats Felidae dry and canned. At first she'd only eat a bite or two and cry for her syringe, but now she will happily eat her meals from a bowl. The litter I raised before were about the same age as she was when I got her (eyes just opened) and ate formula (the kitten glop recipe you can find online) from a bowl from the start. I've been mixing the glop with the canned Felidae for Tres (Spanish for three, pronounced "trace") and she's been eating it well for a couple of days now. I'm pretty much only using the syringe to give her formula when I want to give her a dose of taurine, to make sure she gets it all.
That got kind of long, I hope I caught all the typos, I'm about ready to go to bed! Anyways, I just wanted to get your thoughts on this since it's something I've never dealt with before. My theory on how she ended up deficient is that maybe her mother was a feral that was getting most of her food from garbage cans, which would contain mostly cooked meat. Since cooking destroys the taurine, she became deficient which in turn affected the kitten.
Oh the capsules I got are 500 mg, so she gets about 250 mg per dose since I open the capsules and give her half at a time. She's also not been back to the vet yet, so I can't confirm if the vet thinks she can see. It just happened the other day and i don't see the point in taking her in if there's nothing wrong. Either she can see or she can't, and obviously the vet doesn't think there's anything that can be done about it. My original plan was to raise her and find her a good home like I did with my orphans before, but we've decided she's just too special and we'll keep her, 3 legs, blind, and all!
She's missing a hind leg, but it appears to have been removed in some kind of accident/trauma as opposed to being born like that, as the end was open when I got her. It has since closed up and healed. Now that she's finally walking (she seems to be quite behind in terms of development, as compared to a healthy litter of orphans I raised a couple years ago) it appears that her intact hind leg isn't formed exactly right. It's got a serious bow to it.
When I first suspected she was blind, I immediately did some reading on taurine deficiency and found that it can cause hind end deformities (such as the intact hind leg that doesn't look right?) and developmental problems, as well as blindness (which I already knew).
Both my vet and a cat rescue that I have volunteered at in the past think her blindness is a result of the respiratory infection that she had when I got her. I'm thinking it wasn't that bad of an infection, as all symptoms were gone in less than 24 hours on Amoxicillin. Actually I gave her the first dose around 6pm and her eyes were clear the next morning. If she'd had a severe enough infection to cause blindness, I'd think it would have taken longer than 24 hours for ALL the gunk buildup to disappear and the sneezing to go away completely (I did, of course, continue the antibiotics for 14 days even though she was fine).
Anyways, even though the vet and the rescue said it was a waste of my money, I bought a taurine supplement at the health food store. I really couldn't find any information online for dosing, so for the first few days I gave her half a capsule (powder in a plastic capsule, I just pulled it open and sprinkled it in her forumla) a day, and now I give her half a capsule every other day. It's an amino acid, I'm not sure if I could overdose her or not.
Anyways, I've noticed in the past few days (after about 2 weeks on the taurine) that her eyes are starting to have a noticable iris and pupil, where it used to be all black. Her iris is now more of a dark gray, but there is contrast between that and the pupil. Also, my husband was wiggling his finger the other night, not making any noise with it, and she pounced on it! She also will follow motion if you wave your hand back and forth. I don't think she can see all that well, but I think she can see some now.
She also took a really long time to get to eat canned food. I feed all of my cats Felidae dry and canned. At first she'd only eat a bite or two and cry for her syringe, but now she will happily eat her meals from a bowl. The litter I raised before were about the same age as she was when I got her (eyes just opened) and ate formula (the kitten glop recipe you can find online) from a bowl from the start. I've been mixing the glop with the canned Felidae for Tres (Spanish for three, pronounced "trace") and she's been eating it well for a couple of days now. I'm pretty much only using the syringe to give her formula when I want to give her a dose of taurine, to make sure she gets it all.
That got kind of long, I hope I caught all the typos, I'm about ready to go to bed! Anyways, I just wanted to get your thoughts on this since it's something I've never dealt with before. My theory on how she ended up deficient is that maybe her mother was a feral that was getting most of her food from garbage cans, which would contain mostly cooked meat. Since cooking destroys the taurine, she became deficient which in turn affected the kitten.
Oh the capsules I got are 500 mg, so she gets about 250 mg per dose since I open the capsules and give her half at a time. She's also not been back to the vet yet, so I can't confirm if the vet thinks she can see. It just happened the other day and i don't see the point in taking her in if there's nothing wrong. Either she can see or she can't, and obviously the vet doesn't think there's anything that can be done about it. My original plan was to raise her and find her a good home like I did with my orphans before, but we've decided she's just too special and we'll keep her, 3 legs, blind, and all!
