Help!

Hey all! So I'm sure I'm starting to sound like crazy cat mom at this point, but today I saw someone advertising that they found a baby kitten on the road and that it was very skinny and couldn't keep it. I told him to see if he could find a litter and that maybe the mom just left him, but he couldn't. So I told him I would come check the kitten out. When we met up I saw that it was not a newborn, I'm guessing 4 weeks. His ears are up and teeth coming in. He has his four main choppers right now. I don't know if anyone has been following my other post, but I rescued a pregnant mama cat from the street months ago and she had baby kittens in June. Those kittens are 11 weeks old now so I wasn't sure how she was gonna take to the new kitten.
The poor baby is starving. I can feel it's poor little bones and it will not stop whining. My boyfriend is off getting all the baby essentials since we threw all our stuff away. The baby will not eat canned food or drink replacement milk out of a shallow bowl so I'm thinking I'm going to have to bottle feed the baby? Mama has dried up and has no more milk although she has taken to grooming him. The other kitties got a wiff and all are hissing and not having him. but that's that for now. At this point I just wanna get something in him.
He did have some flea eggs on him, but I looked thru his fur and no full on fleas. Tips on treating that so he won't infect the others?
Thanks everyone so much! I'm starting to feel like a rescue in this crazy cat house of mine!

Here's a picture of the kitten. And Paisley standing guard over the kitten. She has taken a liking to him

Weighed the kitten and he weighs around 1 pound!

So right about 4 weeks.

Likely has never eaten from a dish, only mom, so weaning shouldn't be long away.

However, you said flea eggs? You wouldn't see flea eggs, you would see fleas or at least flea poop like pepper on the skin.

]These eggs, are they attached to the fur strands, like stuck?

You should never put a new kitten in around the others until it has had some kind of quarrantine period, have your other kittens been vaccinated with at least 2 vaccines? Mom too?

If my suspicions are correct she has lice, from momma, and yes it is contagious to other cats.

Not anything to panic about but a good example of why to quarrantine.

How about if she brought in ringworm? You would be kicking yourself all over town for not isolating her in the beginning.

I said she but chances are with the coloring it's a boy Cute little bug, poor hungry baby!!

The kitten is separated from the others. mama rushed in for a moment, tried grooming, but I grabbed her before she could do anything else. mama got her vaccinations, but the kittens have not. Paisley our dog is just at the foot of the bed while the kitten is in a box away from everyone else. Can I give the kitten a bath to help with the lice? It looks like pepper on the skin but he doesn't have much. I did a flea comb/looking at all nooks and crannis on him and no actual fleas

Ah scratch that, I found two fleas. Glad everyone is separated. Mama and Paisley are both on flea preventative. can I bath the kitten with dawn?

Well you can, but if he has lice that takes priority before being fresh and clean.

Are there tiny off white little eggs stuck on his fur?

If so, he needs treating.

What flea med do you have onhand now?

The biggest reason for keeping him separate is for panleukopenia and the unvaccinated kittens.

It is the cat form of puppy parvo, and is deadly, no cure.

Can't see it or know it's coming.

So while he may look fine, you do not know this for a fact that he hasn't been exposed to it.

It's in parks, on grassy places, lawns, etc.

Well ringworm would be a real pain but it's not deadly, just a complete nuisance.

Thank you for rescuing this baby! While catwoman is advising you on lice, have you been able to bottle feed him any KMR? If he won't take that, try mixing KMR into wet food to make a mush. Poor little guy needs food. Hopefully, once he's clear of lice, etc, Duchess can give him some mama loving!

Awww what a cute kitten. Reminds me of my Dad's old cat,OJ cause he was orange juice colored. Lol

I've no advice, just wanted to say a hello and how kind to take in a kitten.

My son brought in a kitten 2 weeks back from a neighbor who had a stray give birth under her porch. Delilah as my son calls her is about 7-8 weeks old.

Rambunctious is her middle name! She adores my son for sure.

Hope all goes well. Looks like Paisley is a good companion!

Well I have to head out and do my cat route in town, but will be back later on.

If you have advantage it's a weekly dose, revolution is a bi-weekly dose.

This gets the lice gone.

You can't wash the eggs off unfortunately, and he needs his skin oils to spread the med around on his skin, which is why I said to hold off on the bath for now.

So I found out that the poor baby actually had bad fleas, but we're all hiding pretty good!! I got a warm bowl of water and dawn soap and have been sitting running it thru him and picking of fleas. They have been coming off like crazy. I have all the bedding and things I've used/what I was wearing in my washer on the highest heat setting. Tomorow I'll do the same thing but he looks a ton better and the black pepper specks seem to be gone! He is all wrapped up in a soft blanket on a heating pad sleeping whIle I go make a bottle and a bowl of mush. It's back to mama duty again! I just thought I graduated from babies to pre-teens! (The baby kittens I have are gonna be 12 weeks tomorrow)
To top it all off I got an email from the boy who found the kitten and he found a bunch more. I am sure they are in the same condition, covered in fleas and skinny, but I'm not sure if there mama is still out there. Should I tell him to put them back where he found them or now that he has them, I will need to go rescue them.
I swear....I should just open a rescue at this point! That way I could at least afford all the food lol [emoji]128523[/emoji]

DelilahaKitteh said:

Awww what a cute kitten. Reminds me of my Dad's old cat,OJ cause he was orange juice colored. Lol

I've no advice, just wanted to say a hello and how kind to take in a kitten.

My son brought in a kitten 2 weeks back from a neighbor who had a stray give birth under her porch. Delilah as my son calls her is about 7-8 weeks old.

Rambunctious is her middle name! She adores my son for sure.

Hope all goes well. Looks like Paisley is a good companion!

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Aw how adorable! My boyfriend wants to name him Hero from Big Hero Six. We are still in the talks! And yes paisley just adores him. I think she loves having a playmate that doesn't have a mama looming around and hissing at her if she gets too playful with the kittens.

sarthur2 said:

Thank you for rescuing this baby! While catwoman is advising you on lice, have you been able to bottle feed him any KMR? If he won't take that, try mixing KMR into wet food to make a mush. Poor little guy needs food. Hopefully, once he's clear of lice, etc, Duchess can give him some mama loving!

Click to expand...

I tried a bottle and he won't take it, but I've been down this road before so just try try again! I'm going to try mush. I know at some point he is going to be starving and will eat

I think you should rescue them all, and the mom too if possible. It's clear they are living poorly, and you may be their only chance. I know it's extra work and expense, but the thought of all those poor babies out there in such condition just breaks my heart.

Let us know what happens next. God bless you!

And yes, keep offering bottle and mush. He's bewildered, but once he catches on it will be uphill from there. Get some drops of milk in his mouth from that bottle and he'll realuze it's good stuff. If not, try the syringe.

Oh man, it's back to sleepless nights! It is so crazy how different personalities are with kittens when raised outside. You can tell the poor baby has had no human touch or contact and is scared of humans, which is so different from my other kittens who I raised from birtH, having to handle them as soon as they were born and giving them lovings right away. Hopefully with starting to give him lovings now he can come to love humans and human touch. The boy who found them said he has 3 more, so I have talked it over with my boyfriend and we have decided we will take them in. We will be over run, but I believe all kittens should have a chance. At this point I'm going to look for a shelter to help with costs, such as shots/spaying because I can no afford all this on my own!

Good for you! These kittens won't take long to socialize since they are only around four weeks old.

Contacting a shelter and fostering for them is a great idea. They will re-home the kittens for you as well.

You've got a very supportive boyfriend in your life, that's for sure .

Let us know how the other 3 babies are as soon as you can. Any chance of trapping the mom to give her a better life?

I'm hoping to find a good cat shelter around here. The aspca we have is so over run with so many cats and kittens, they don't have much wiggle room. I am hoping I can foster and they won't have them go stay at the shelter. Don't want to risk them being around uri and such. I won't be off work until later tonight so I will not be picking the babies up until 6.
The boy told me that the mom has been a feral for a while now and has kittens almost every year but most either dissappear when they are little or add to their neighborhood cat problem. I am going to give him the number of a wonderful trap and spay program so she won't have to keep going through pregnancies.
The boy is wonderful and sweet and trying to do his best. It was such a coincidence I even found his posting! I usually don't go through Facebook, but I got a feeling yesterday to see what was happening in the Houston pet page (I love looking through just to see) and there was a posting about a small orage kitten someone was trying to rehome for free. I have heard horror stories about people around here getting free small kittens and using them as bait to train fight dogs so I jumped fast before anyone else could get him.
I'm hoping the babies are going to be okay. I'm petrified now that they have an awful disease. I am going to be bringing them in to a vet tomorrow and get them checked out and okay.

Believe it or not, many ferals are exceptionally hardy and healthy, since they live a "survival of the fittest" lifestyle.

With luck, the babies will only need worming and de-fleaing, but you'll find out soon enough if there are any eye indections (I think you have terramycin?), or colds, or URI's. All treatable, of course. It honestly sounds like mom has gotten them this far, and brought them out because she needed help feeding them. They are at weaning age, as you know.

Has the little orange boy finally eaten something?

I do hope the boy will follow through on TNR'ing the mom to put an end to her pregnancies. It must be very hard on her.

I wouldn't worry about them having some awful disease, the only thing to always remember is feline parvo (panleukopenia)

Kittens and cats are vaccinated against this to protect them, but your kids are not vaxed yet and now have zero protection as moms antibodies have all worn off, leaving them vulnerable to herpesvirus, calicivirus and panleuk. 

Herpesvirus and calicivirus are upper respiratory viruses, the 2 most commonly seen, but as I said the parvo is deadly.

The vet is not going to be able to see it either, so just keep them separate for 2 weeks, to be sure they don't pop up with any of these.

The poor mom needs to be tnr'd badly, I always feel more for the adults, so many of them are so young, just a year or 2 ago were kittens themselves, now giving birth time after time, it's so unfair.

So please, please follow up on this to make sure she gets done.

The kittens, well shoot, if you have one you may as well take the other 3 right? Saves them from life as a feral which is so hard, very tough life.

At 4 weeks they will tame super easy, but time is critical here, moving in to 5, then 6 weeks, that fear and feral streak really begins to set in and is harder and harder to get rid of.

Handle them as often as possible, including and especially with more than just you, so they get used to ALL humans being good not only you.

This helps them get homes easier.

If you bathe the fleas off, just make a soapy ring around the highest part of their necks first or the fleas will be all over their faces. Then proceed with the bath. FYI-fleas drown after being in water 10-15 minutes, so take your time

So I got the rest of the kitties! Man are they skinny and covered in fleas. I am so glad I got to them when I did. It was a 45 minute drive home and on the way two looked deathly ill, not whining and just laying there. I thought oh gosh, here we go, I'm gonna loose two already but as soon as I walked thru the door and hero smelled them, they perked up and started yelling at the top of their lungs!! I mean all four going at once. I almost went deaf. I'm bathing all of them right now and got done with the first one. My wonderful boyfriend is warming up bottles.
I have to give him so much credit. He was not a cat person and I had to fight him to let a pregnant stray cat into our home, convincing him she would have like 4 kittens at the most. Instead she blessed us with 9. Of all people. So he wasn't too happy about me taking in 4 more kitties. But now he's loving it. I had to go to work at my clients home and was gone all day so he had to take care and feed Hero, and he did. He got hero to take the bottle wonderfully and was loving on him. I am so blessed.
Well my ten minutes are up and I got to go wash up the baby. I will post pics once everyone is settled in and fed!