3 Month Old Female Kitten With...discharge

[TobiDaDog]

Hey all! Newbie here with a question about female kittens. Do you guys ever experience discharge from their 'lady parts?'

I found Reese outside of my house about a month ago in pretty sorry shape. She had a UTI, a leaky bum, she was urinating blood, she was starving...ultimately she needed to have fluids pumped into her twice daily, antibiotics, and she had to be force fed while her organs began shutting down.

Many hopeful nights and several emergency vet visits later and she's a happy, wild spirited kitten who likes to launch herself from the furniture, terrorize the dog, and wolf down any food in sight.

She also fetches and plays under the shower!

But...ever so often, even weeks after she stopped acting sick, she still 'leaks' from time to time. A little drop of whiteish goop from her private regions.

The vet ruled out pyometra with an ultrasound on our first visit, and I have to find a different vet if I want to have her spayed before 6 months.

Is this normal? Or am I just an overly paranoid kitten mom?

Thanks!

Pictures: (which i think are showing sideways darn it)

 

[Daisy6]

Welcome to TCS. Thank you for rescuing and caring for a loving feral kitten. She's a cute kitty.

Wow, Reese has been through a lot. She is a miracle cat and you are wonderful to save her life.

Ugh, I hate it when vets say kittens should not be spayed until they are 6 months old. Nothing bad happens at 3 months that can be avoided simply by putting it off and some kittens go into heat when they are only 4 months old. I am sure there's a vet in your area who spays and neuters younger kittens.

To answer the question, you ubviously want to get this cleared up ASAP and have no problems on spay day, so if you are not happy with your vet, don't wait for the spay to look for a new vet. Pyometra is not hte only problem a vet should look for because other things can cause leaks on her back end.

 

[TobiDaDog]

Welcome to TCS. Thank you for rescuing and caring for a loving feral kitten. She's a cute kitty.

Wow, Reese has been through a lot. She is a miracle cat and you are wonderful to save her life.

Ugh, I hate it when vets say kittens should not be spayed until they are 6 months old. Nothing bad happens at 3 months that can be avoided simply by putting it off and some kittens go into heat when they are only 4 months old. I am sure there's a vet in your area who spays and neuters younger kittens.

To answer the question, you ubviously want to get this cleared up ASAP and have no problems on spay day, so if you are not happy with your vet, don't wait for the spay to look for a new vet. Pyometra is not hte only problem a vet should look for because other things can cause leaks on her back end.

Thank you, she is a miracle kitty! He told me that he wasn't comfortable or experienced performing surgery on a kitten her size and wanted to wait until she was bigger. I'd much rather find a vet that feels totally comfortable with it if he isn't honestly. Sorry, I mentioned pyometra because I assumed it would be a common guess. The vet checked for several things:

Pyometra
Parasites
Leukemia
Kidney function
her UTI (he thought it was a probable cause for the leakage, but she had so much coming from everywhere at the time that it was hard to tell)

 

[silkenpaw]

She’s a beauty! Thank you for saving her.

Is she being worked up for all the problems mentioned above? Has anyone looked at the discharge under the microscope or sent it for culture?

Please keep us updated on what happens.

 

[TobiDaDog]

She’s a beauty! Thank you for saving her.

Is she being worked up for all the problems mentioned above? Has anyone looked at the discharge under the microscope or sent it for culture?

Please keep us updated on what happens.

She was cleared for everything mentioned, but the discharge hasn't been cultured. Since the vet thought it was the UTI causing it, he gave me some antibiotics. She hasn't been back to the vet since the antibiotics were used up. Since she's been otherwise perfectly happy, I've been holding out hope up to this point that it was just the last of that infection being flushed out.

To note, before she started the antibiotics she was totally unresponsive and refused to play or even stay awake for very long. Now my living room is an obstacle course, so she's definitely turned around in that aspect.

 

[silkenpaw]

And she hasn’t had the discharge since she finished the antibiotics? Hopefully, that’s all it was, though that looks awfully opaque for urine. I hope that’s the last you see of it!

 

[TobiDaDog]

And she hasn’t had the discharge since she finished the antibiotics? Hopefully, that’s all it was, though that looks awfully opaque for urine. I hope that’s the last you see of it!

She's still having it, but it happens just enough to alarm me. Just every other day or every third day or so I'll notice that she's got a little bead back there.

 

[silkenpaw]

Weird. Does your vet know about it?

 

[Daisy6]

I think the vet should have taken a culture of whatever was leaking. A urinalysis - expression of urine from the bladder to send to a lab - is the standard method for diagnosing a UTI. If Reese had this done, the vet had to know if the leak was bad urine.

 

[TobiDaDog]

Weird. Does your vet know about it?

He knew that she was having this problem when I took her in for all of her other issues. Since giving me the antibiotics for it I haven't taken her back, so he doesn't know that she's still doing it.

 

[TobiDaDog]

I think the vet should have taken a culture of whatever was leaking. A urinalysis - expression of urine from the bladder to send to a lab - is the standard method for diagnosing a UTI. If Reese had this done, the vet had to know if the leak was bad urine.

She had a urinalysis to diagnose the UTI a few weeks ago. Would she need another?

 

[Daisy6]

Was it sent out to an IDEXX lab? They can do a more complete test than the vet's own lab factility.

 

[TobiDaDog]

Was it sent out to an IDEXX lab? They can do a more complete test than the vet's own lab factility.

I'm not sure. He sent me home with her and we had to wait for him to call with the results. About a day?

 

[Daisy6]

I'm not sure. He sent me home with her and we had to wait for him to call with the results. About a day?

So yes, he did send it out to a lab. An in-house test can be done in 20 minutes.

 

[silkenpaw]

How was the urine to diagnose the UTI collected? With a syringe or from the cat urinating? If the latter, you may have been collecting that discharge instead. In any case, I would call the vet and let him know that’s still happening. If it’s an infection that’s being treated with the right antibiotic, that discharge should have stopped after a few days. However, some parts of the body are hard to get an antibiotic to, perhaps due to the number of blood vessels in the area, or other local conditions, so some infections need to be treated for longer or with higher doses.

 

[TobiDaDog]

How was the urine to diagnose the UTI collected? With a syringe or from the cat urinating? If the latter, you may have been collecting that discharge instead. In any case, I would call the vet and let him know that’s still happening. If it’s an infection that’s being treated with the right antibiotic, that discharge should have stopped after a few days. However, some parts of the body are hard to get an antibiotic to, perhaps due to the number of blood vessels in the area, or other local conditions, so some infections need to be treated for longer or with higher doses.

They tried two different antibiotics on her. The first one was an injection and it didn't seem to help so they sent me home with an oral application that perked her up.
He couldn't get her to urinate, so he used the needle through the belly/bladder method.(not sure what it's called) I'll call him up today and see what he thinks and maybe send him a picture of it.

 

[TobiDaDog]

Good news! The discharge seems to have stopped on its own. She hasnth had it since I posted here. Thanks guys! Never did figure out what it was, a call with the vet assumed it was just residual from her infection.

 

[talkingpeanut]

Glad she is doing better! That's definitely not normal.

I would push for the vet to spay before 5 months.