Ode to Milk of Magnesia

1iora

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Ok, I admit the title is misleading.  I'm not writing an ode.  It's probably still a little longer than you want to read, though.  If so, there are photos at the bottom.  You might want to just scroll down there.

But the feral kitten I rescued last week, who's had a HUGEEEEE belly since I first saw her (and tried unsuccessfully to catch her) wandering outside before the Fourth of July, was worrying me with her girth.  I thought that her stomach should be at least a little smaller after the first round of dewormers and a week of good, wholesome food.

She was using the bathroom and eating.  In retrospect, her little poops did seem dry.  I didn't know they weren't supposed to be that way at the time, though.

Also, she wasn't very active and mostly just stayed where you put her, but when the temptation was too much she was active.  Eg, the cats raced past her yowling and she needed to follow them, and once my pencil was just too intriguing for her (other toys are scary moving ones make her run away. and she didn't even touch her toy mouse that was small and stationary and therefore not scary).

So I was worried about her.  She seemed alert but didn't want to play, even with toys that were held far from me, and her tummy was big giant unripe grapefruit when it should be small juicy orange.  It was so roly-poly she looked like a little mini pot belly pig. I was afraid she had some other condition (which would, naturally, be both deadly and highly contagious to the other cats).

I do plan to take her to the vet, and to the clinic for the second dose of the dewormer, but I didn't consider it urgent since she was acting reasonable, though mellow, and didn't have any respiratory symptoms, and since I could keep her separate from the other cats.  I wanted to try to help her on my own first because I don't have a car.  There's a clinic in walking distance that can do shots and deworming, but no vets nearby.

So I read in one post on this site, which was only vague on the matter, that milk of magnesia can help kittens after deworming.

So I bought some plain, a little irked that it was $5 and the didn't have any cat-sized bottles g5ii (here she climbed on the keyboard).  And I gave her a quarter teaspoon (1ml).  And then I checked on her a few hours later, a little worried that I'd left her in too large and carpeted of a room for having given her a laxative of questionable dosage.

Once I convinced her to come out from under the bed (using my cat as bait... clearly I'm not so concerned about contagions as I thought I was), I noticed, from afar (little weirdo will stay close once I grab her, but until then she doesn't want anything to do with me), that her stomach was deflated!  And a couple minutes later she went to her litter box and let loose quite a large (though still solid) deposit.

What's more, she's started being a normal annoying kitten - scratching things, attacking a pair of pants that were hanging from a knob, running from me faster, playing with toys that don't move/scare her... pouncing on my toes as I type this.... the usual.

It bothers me that I'm not sure whether it was bloat or constipation the milk of magnesia helped, and I can't seem to figure it out... but I'm glad she's feeling better.

This photo is from the other day. I know it's not the best shot, but you can still see her stomach ballooning to the side.  This is how she looked when I first saw her at the start of the month, which is part of the reason I thought she was a rat and not a cat -- she was so low to the ground.  She had the same disproportion until this morning, and waddled around all awkward.  Poor kitten was a good 3x as wide as she should be at that part of her body:


From this evening, six-ish hours after 1ml of milk of magnesia:


Milk of? More like Miracle of!

I wonder if this would work with my belly too...
 
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my-boy-jasper

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Nothing to add.....just admiring what a sweetie she is
 Glad to hear she is annoying you with her kittenish ways. Mine has a knack for turning off the wireless every single time he jumps on my laptop
 
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