Need tips on how to fatten up a kitten quickly

My little 9-week old has lost weight the last few days. He had a stomach bug on Tuesday and wouldn't eat for a full day. He was given fluids and Clavamox by the vet and was fine the next day. He has been, seemingly, eating fine since but I weighed him today and he's lost weight. That's not good. I suspect that I know what the problem is though. I just changed the cat's diet to a better food and he clearly doesn't like it and as a result I think he's eating less. The other cats are also eating less but they are adults and will do fine. The kitten is also getting wet food twice a day, as much as he wants, but it's clearly not enough for him to gain weight.

Now we have yet another problem. He hurt his paw pad last night (he has a cut on it) and is not feeling too well because of that. He can't walk on it and is just laying around. I tried to give him three different foods this morning and he wouldn't touch any of them.

I'm going to go get the old dry food, some Fancy Feast and some KMR today to get him to eat as much as possible but I wanted to see if someone had any other suggestions for what to give him that is palatable and high in calories to put weight on him quickly. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Change him back until he is gaining weight, then gradually change over again, take a week or more over the change.  I would take him to the vet to his paw looked at.

He needs to be on a high calorie, high nutrient kitten food like Royal Canin.  You can leave dry food down for free feeding, but he also needs to have 3 or 4 canned kitten food servings a day.    We used to feed our kitten wet food morning, noon, evening, and just before bedtime when he was that age.  Dry food was left down for him 24/7 since he was in a room by himself (with a screen door on the doorway).  When we took the screen door off, we offered him dry food every hour or so.
 

When I had an underweight and sick (bad URIs) kitten my vet gave me a liquid supplement with vitamins that helped him a lot. I can ask my vet what the name of that is if you'd like, maybe your vet carries it.

You could also add some liquid KMR to the wet food for a bit to get some extra nutrition into him.
 

I'd make sure the wet food is the extra stinky Pate' type so he can't resist it. I've rarely met a kitten who can.

bigperm20 said:

I'd make sure the wet food is the extra stinky Pate' type so he can't resist it. I've rarely met a kitten who can.

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Very, very true!! :lol3: