Found a kitten with severe tail injury, recovery questions

A week ago today, my younger sister saved a small kitten, 8 or 9 weeks old, from certain death in the road. Her tail was in terrible shape, with no movement and much of it necrotic. We got her to the vet immediately and the tail was amputated. She was wormed and tested for the standard diseases and came back clean. There was apparently some nerve damage done, as she has been fecal and urinary incontinent since we brought her home, and likely before. Aside from that, today she is thriving and eating like a little horse, but we have to wash her several times a day due to repeated bouts of diarrhea. We also express her bladder several times a day.

In the days since the amputation, she has shown interest in using a litter box, but nothing ever happens for her. At first, she passed no urine at all unless we expressed her with great difficulty, but now she occasionally dribbles and has no trouble being expressed. This brings me to my question: how likely is it that she'll recover control of her bowels and bladder? I'm already thoroughly committed to caring for her regardless, but it would be nice to know if there's any hope. 

I think your Vet would be the one to answer that question, as they should know the extent of the nerve damage.  It may be to more than just her tail . 

Are you keeping her back end shaved short for easy clean-up?  Also, they make pet diapers that will help contain any "spillage", however, that won't help with needing to express her bladder.

Bless you for taking this little one into your home

She's still shaved from the surgery. It would be lovely if there was a way to keep urine from running down her legs when her bladder leaks, but the main problem is the diarrhea. I've been mixing some probiotics for kittens into her food, but she still has some messes every day. Every day seems to bring something new, though, so hopefully she'll get through that part soon. 

As far as the extent of the damage to her tail, the vet never mentioned anything about it. He just warned us that there might be nerve damage. I'll probably be taking her to a different vet soon to see what they can tell me.

There was recently a thread about a cat with severe Manx Syndrome where they actually had to keep the cat on laxatives all the time because he didn't have enough nerves in his back end to force stools out, so he had constant diarrhea.  Just saying this to let you know that if there IS permanent nerve damage, you may need to manage his diet to keep his stools pretty soft so he can expel them.  If he were to get constipated, he might not be able to get them out by forcing them, if that makes sense.

On the other hand, he might just have issues with stress from the accident, a change in foods, the deworming, etc and it might all settle down.  Sometimes when they first start probiotics it can even result in diarrhea at first, then help.  I think probiotics are great though...my cats get them every day.

Fortunately it seems like her bowels still keep everything moving just fine. I feed her Wellness canned kitten food, so hopefully there's enough moisture in that to keep everything soft. She's a very sweet, affectionate little kitten. I'm hoping her youth will give her a good chance at healing her damaged nerves. Either way, she's going to be well taken care of. 

Thanks for your replies!