Help! Need advice!! Unknowingly adopted a SICK kitty from shelter!

Brought "MOSES" home today from the shelter. He has diahreaah every hour or so. He was so stinky I had to bathe him because his feet and butt were poopy. He ate a little then threw up 5 min. Later Don't k ow what to do. Vet is closed tomorrow and Monday is Xmas I didn't know shelters adopted out sick animals! I adopted hi. For my 3 year old and she wants to see him but he just hides u der the couch. Wheni get him out hepurrs and seems happy. PLEASE HELP. NEED ADVICE! !

Some vets are open Saturday night. Is there one near you? I don't think you want to wait until Tuseday.

Try to keep him hydrated until you can see a vet. Add extra water to canned cat food or see if he will drink tuna juice mixed with water.

I hope the shelter you adopted him from is open tomorrow. Call them and ask what to do, they should help you', If they don't ask them to give you the vet they use or ask for a 24 hr vet they can recemmend . Also , keep in mind a cat has been in a small ,cubicle & then moved to your place, so he is a little freaked out. Not to mention he is sick too, I would just let him come out from under the bed on his own, not forced unless it's to the vet. He is also probably scared of your child , unless you
Have her using her inside voice and super gentle to the touch , he'll take some time to warm up.
Also, I would ask the shelter to pay for the vet. I am sorry this is your experience with the shelter, usually they are very good about keeping the ill cats in isolation until they are better. Good luck to you and I agree that Tuesday is not soon enough for a vet appt.

A lot of shelters may not know the kitty is ill, it depends on the shelter and the nature of the kitty's illness. Also cats are creatures of structure. Just like toddlers, they need a routine, they depend on routine. And many of them become extremely stressed when they go to a shelter and when they leave the shelter to go to their new home. Many things can affect their health- different food from what they are used to, fabric softener or scented detergent on their bedding (which they get on their fur and then have to lick their fur to clean themselves), poisonous plants like pointsettas. It goes without saying they should never be given milk or anything like that because it causes extreme diarrhea. 

I have brought many many kitties home from shelters to foster them, only to have them break down within hours after coming to my home and become desperately ill, even though they were perfectly fine at the shelter just hours before :-( :-(. It is almost as if they were waiting for a safe place to collapse, augh!

As for the purring, small cats will do that to make themselves feel better, depending on the behavior that accompanies it, it doesn't necessarily mean they are happy. It is just as likely they are purring and extremely frightened :-(.

In this same vein, how old is this kitty? The age will tell you a LOT about how to treat the kitty. For example, very young kitties, like babies, are much more likely to have gastrointestinal issues as their GI systems are still forming, while older cats are more likely to get upper respiratory infections when going to a new home. So it would be helpful to tell us his age :-)

You were saying you adopted him for your three year old. Based on his current physical symptoms, as well as his hiding, I think for now you need to put him in his own small room, in a quiet place away from your 3 year old. Give him a warm towel like his mommy would feel warm to him and let him be in a darkened area, since he is hiding in a darkened area :-( :-(. Introductions should be very slow and monitored. The cat is just as much of a baby no matter what age- as your own baby, and the cat needs a mommy (you) to protect it as much as your own baby. I hate to say this, but all the noise and commotion of the holiday coming, he should be kept away from this as it is all off-schedule and too much for him right now :-(. Maybe you can put him away and distract your three year old with something more exciting like Santa? Making the kitty the center of Christmas is just a bad idea with this particular kitty. 

For diarrhea with cats, you can buy some canned pumpkin (just plain pumpkin) and take a finger-ful and wipe your finger off on the kitty's tongue from the side. do that a few times and the kitty should get enough in to help the diarrhea. And for the throwing up, you don't mention the age of this kitty, but if it is a kitten, you need to be very concerned about dehydration because they can die really fast from not eating and/or vomiting and having diarrhea. You can tell if he is dehydrated by pinching the skin on his neck. If healthy, it should fall back loosely, if dehydrated it will stay rigid and not fall back loosely. 

There are recipes on line for "kitten glop" which is meant to replace mother's milk or to help kittens or cats having trouble eating regular food. Did they give you food at the shelter that he is eating already? If so, you should stick to that and do the pumpkin thing. Only use kitten glop if he is not keeping anything else down. Here is the link to various recipes. http://www.hdw-inc.com/glop.htm . 

It is important if you are giving the glop, to also do the pumpkin on the finger, wiping on the tongue. Don't expect the kitty to lick it off your hand like a treat LOL. You can let the kitty lick a tiny pat of butter after the pumpkin as a reward. But overall, for this kitty, the fastest way to health is isolating it, doing the pumpkin, quiet area, dark, warm towel, structure, same food as what he had at shelter, no christmas noise or a million people holding or petting him. Distract your human child so the fur child will not get sicker for now and also you have no idea if the kitty has micro organisms causing the diarrhea so you don't really want your child exposed anyhow. Last but not least, check your adoption paperwork, very often they will give you a name and phone number to call if there is an emergency, unless this kitty is from the city pound. I would definitely look for that before taking him to a vet on your own. 

First of all, do you have a largish closet, tiny room or extra bathroom you can clean up and use as a "safe" room for Moses right now? In my opinion, he should not have the run of the house yet and should not be able to hide under couches. He needs a small safe space to live in while he recovers from the ordeal of moving to a new home, and for his own safety. You don't say how old Moses is, but kittens have a 25% mortality rate until 3 months of age and are not really sturdy until 6 months (important to know if you have other pets), so it's important that he has a safe room right now. I have a dog who loves cats, but I still don't let the kittens I adopt to be out of their safe room unsupervised until 6 months of age (their room is pretty sizable). You'd be shocked to know the number of ways a kitten can find to kill itself, so make sure his safe room doesn't contain anything but his own things, and any dangerous objects (toilets, cabinets with cleaning products) should be locked down. A safe room would also confine his diarrhea to that area and make your situation much more hygienic. If you have other cats, they can catch whatever he has from traces of his feces, so you should be quarantining him for now anyway. Routinely clean the floor of his safe room with bleach, as he can reinfect himself through his own feces. Since he'd be by himself in this room you can make him feel more comfortable with a stuffed animal with a heartbeat. This is one I found in Target; the Cloud b Sound Machine Soother:


As long as you can get Moses to eat and drink something and he is not listless it's probably not an emergency yet; just schedule a vet appointment as soon as you can, because it can quickly become one. BarbB's advice on feeding and hydrating is so good I will not bother to repeat it, but will add that while you should try pumpkin, it did not improve the diarrhea issue for one of my kittens. If you find the same there are a couple of other things you can try. Fortiflora is a probiotic that can clear diarrhea in some cats, but you would probably have to order and wait for it. In the end, the only thing that worked for my kitten was plain, mostly cooked chicken breast meat and nothing else. Chicken by itself is not a balanced diet, but you can try it for a couple of days to get Moses's diarrhea under control and until you can see a vet. If he can't stomach plain chicken then something else is probably going on, probably a parasite like Giardia or Coccidia. The day of your vet appointment, bring a stool sample.

Also, if Moses is reluctant to eat, try sitting down with him and talking to him when you give him his food. Two of my kittens would refuse to eat at first until I'd sit with them; then they'd start purring and dig in. 

Unfortunately I also agree with BarbB about your 3 year old... Maybe it's not such a good idea to let her play with Moses unsupervised. It sounds like Moses is scared of your 3 old and that's why he's been hiding; kids that young don't usually know how to respect a cat's boundaries and their sudden movements and grabbiness is scary to a cat. If you let your 3 old unknowingly terrorize Moses, he will probably grow up to be one of those cats that doesn't really interact with the family and just hides under the bed. He'll become a mostly ignored and somewhat resented forever-visitor, someone you have to feed but seem to get nothing in return from, which I'm sure you don't want. If you make this transitory period as easy on Moses as possible, he'll reward you and your daughter with a better relationship. 

Everyone has good advice. I just want to mention that if you clean the floor with bleach rinse it very well and don't let him near it until it is completely dry. Some cats will lick bleach. I stopped using bleach when I got cats.

I hope he's feeling better soon.

I wouldn't use bleach to clean the floor, instead use vinegar and water. It's non toxic and vinegar kills germs just as well as bleach!

smitten4kittens said:

Everyone has good advice. I just want to mention that if you clean the floor with bleach rinse it very well and don't let him near it until it is completely dry. Some cats will lick bleach. I stopped using bleach when I got cats.

I hope he's feeling better soon.

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Just to clarify, I do rinse down the floor with soap and water after using bleach. I would use non-bleach products, but after going through a case of wet FIP I've become very paranoid about the spread of infectious diseases...   Sorry if bleach was bad advice; vinegar is safer and probably works too. 

When we adopt out cats, unless they've already been through the typical URI, I tell people what to watch for and what they need to go to the vet for.  Without keeping a cat in isolation for 3 months, you have no real idea what he might have been exposed to or what might be dormant, waiting for stress to fire it up.

However, on this kitten, I would see the vet and have it checked for intestinal parasites, such as  giardia and coccidia.