5 month old newly adopted kitten

Welcome to TCS & Congrats on the new addition! I'm sorry she started off sick, she's been through a lot recently - getting fixed, new home, all those stressful things for a kitten!

Sometimes it just takes a different antibiotic to lick whatever infection may be running rampant in your little babies body. I would talk to the vet again ASAP to see if they'll prescribe a different med - is she getting her Clavamox in the full dose close to every 12 hours? (Generally speaking, my vet says you should see major improvement of URI symptoms w/in 5 - 7 days after starting antibiotics.)

A vet will be able to help you and your kitty

She definitely needs to go back to the vet. Is she eating, drinking, and using the litter box properly? If not, she may not be taking in enough nutrients to fight the infection and liquid to keep her hydrated. Definite signs she needs to be seen ASAP (as in emergency vet if you have one). When we adopted Hannah, she was either at the vet or I was calling the vet almost every 3 days because she wasn't getting better. I can't tell you how many medications we went through!

The dry heaves looking thing is called exaggerated swallowing and it happens when there's excessive drainage (snot). To help your girl, you can either put her in a separate room and run a vaporizer 24/7 (that's what we had to do) or you can periodically steam her throughout the day in the bathroom. Get the bathroom nice and steamy from the shower and close the door. Take her in the bathroom and sit with her until the steam dissipates. This will help clear up her nasal passages and help the snot drain from her sinuses.

To entice her to eat, warm up canned food in the microwave for a few seconds. Add a few teaspoons of water to make it the consistency of oatmeal. Warming it up will help enhance the aroma and entice her to eat. You can also add tuna juice from water packed tuna. As a last resort, you can try meat & gravy baby food. It's very bland, but has about 30% protein in it. I've even taken a chicken breast, boiled it in plain water, shredded it with some of the broth and used that to get my cats to eat.

It's so important that she remain hydrated. You can pinch the skin on the back of her neck. If it stays up like a tent, she's not getting enough fluids. If it snaps back, she's okay. You can get plain pedialyte from the store and give that to her to supplement her liquids as well as provide some nutrients.

Do you have a syringe so you can feed and give water that way? If not, you can get some from the pharmacy. Just be sure to ask for the kind without a needle. You can also use a baby medicine dropper in a pinch. Just water down the canned food so it'll go through the opening of the dropper.

Just an FYI, coughing in a cat is NEVER a good thing. I'd get her back to the vet, even if it's to an ER vet (emergency vet clinic) today. You might want to also ask for an appetite stimulant and something called Enisyl, a paste of lysine. Or, you can get lysine tablets at the store in the supplements section, crush them up and mix into the wet food. This will help her immune system.

Call the vet, tell them what's going on, and they'll give you a different medicine, hopefully that will help.