Kitten Urgent Help! Drastically underweight for her age!

Hello,

Me and my partner recently bought a kitten. She was 8 weeks at the time, she is now 10 weeks old.

She was the runt of the litter, only weighing in at 400g when we got her at 8 weeks!
At 11 weeks she has dropped to 380g's!!!!!!

Shes been suffering from diarrhoea for the past week.
We've been regularly taking her to the vets who can find nothing wrong.

- Shes up to date with her worming treatment
- Blood tests show nothing
- Her temperature is fine
- Her heart beat is regular
- In general shes still a happy kitty who still enjoys playing with her toys
- She eats and drinks a lot!

Im not kidding she eats nearly 100g's a day!!

For the past week we've been feeding her 100g's a day of Royal Canine kitten gastro intestinal recovery food given to us by the vets.
We've also been giving her an intestinal paste called Promax in attempt to stop the loose bowel movements (the paste is actually for dogs up to 10kg!)


To give you a bit more of a back story...
- we got her at 8 weeks at 400g
- she was absolutely fine for the 1st week
- week 2 she began to get diarrhoea, her weight dropped drastically to 370g
- we took her to the vets who gave us the promax & recovery food, throughout this period her poops became more solid. Her weight increased to 420g
- Week 3 she came off the recovery food, we moved her onto James Wellbeloved kitten food, at this point the diarrhoea started again and the weight started dropping.
- back to the vets, nothing found, now back on the promax
- This morning i weighed her & she was 400g, ive weighed her this evening and shes down to 380g! Despite eating another 100g pack! And some boiled chicken!! But lots of messy poop! The intestinal promax no longer seems to be working!

If the diarrhoea hasnt stopped in 2 days time we are to go back to the vets with stool samples so further tests can be carried out.
The vets told us its possible she made need to stay on the recovery food if the diarrhoea doesnt stop.


We are looking for advice as we are worried sick. I know for her age now she should be at least 1kg.

She eats 100g a day, how on earth does she only weigh 400g?!?
Are we over feeding her???


I think what worries me the most is when i read other stories online... I read in one forum that her 10 week old kitten only weighed 1.1kg's and im thinking 'My little kitten doesnt even weigh half that'!!!

Please can someone tell me they had the same problem but everything will be fine???

Im just desperate for her to put some weight on! She doesnt look underweight at a glance although people wont believe how old she actually is when we tell them as shes so small! (We know shes actually that old, we take her to the same vets who first wormed the whole litter she was from, the vets remember her)

She still loves playing, is very happy and still eating and drinking fine, but why wont she put weight on??

Her names Cleo, i'll post some pics.

Im terrified we're going to lose her! How can we help her put weight on?

Thanks guys

could it be a tapeworm?  I had a kitten who lost weight.  They found something in the fecal to indicate tapeworm but lots of times it can go undiagnosed unless a piece of the worm segment breaks off into the sample.  Regular wormers do not work for tapeworm - you have to get something specific to tapeworm.  It cant hurt to treat it as tapeworm...I gave the whole litter the treatment even tho only one had the symptoms (diarrhea and losing weight but eating a ton)

Good luck!

peacE, Maria B

Thanks for your advice Maria,

U may be correct, ive been worming her with Panacur whith doesnt cover tape worm.
I'll pick some treatment up today

good.  please report back  

My little foster, Tobi, was the biggest of his litter at first but after the tapeworm, was lighter than the runt!  It was horrible!  But as soon as treatment was administered, he gained his weight back beautifully - and was once gain the biggest

Peace, Maria B

She was only 400 grams when you got her at 8 weeks? That's extremely tiny! I would guess there was something wrong before you got her, that was preventing her from growing. Did you see her littermates? How did she compare with them? And did she seem healthy at first?

You say she eats 100 grams of food each day, but is that dry or wet food? If it's wet food, 100g actually isn't very much IMO. My guess is it's the diarrhea & possibly not eating much (if you're talking about wet food) that is making her lose weight.

I think doing further tests to try and find what's causing the diarrhea and stop it is a very good idea. Tapeworm, if she has it, could be helping to keep her thin but I don't believe it can be the whole problem.