Hi all! I am new here and will just give a little bit of background info. I am a cat foster for a small rescue group here in a small town in Utah. It's a non-profit organization that focuses mainly on TNR but also fosters feral cats and kittens and prepares them for adoption. We have 2 vets here, but they deal mostly with big livestock, so we are often "flying blind" when it comes to diagnosing smaller animal's health problems.
I have a "cat room" set up in my basement, and I generally have between 3 and 7 foster kittens/cats. Right now, I have a big number, as it is kitten season!
So here is the story on one of my current litters. The head of the rescue brought me a litter of 4 kittens (2 weeks old, bottle babies). We don't know what happened to the poor feral momma, or what their living conditions were like. At 4 weeks old, 2 of the kittens started to go downhill. They would get severely dehydrated, even with regular feedings, and they would go completely limp and lethargic, barely breathing. Only sub-cutaneous fluid injections made any difference. One of the kittens' abdominal cavities filled with fluid. He saw two different vets (One said hernia, the other said "I don't know"). His body temperature dropped to 94*, and I did get it back up to 101* but he died the next day. We are guessing it might have been FIP, but we really don't know.
The other sick kitten is NOW 7 weeks old, and has been on a health rollercoaster for the past three weeks. We will separate him from the other cats and he will be active, playful, jumping and running for a few days. So I take him back downstairs to join the rest of the kitties in the nursery, and he will CRASH within 4-12 hours. (And by crash, I mean limp, barely breathing, usually dehydrated, too weak to even move his head.) His body temperature always drops down between 95-98* as well. He shivers sometimes and makes awful groaning noises. So I take him back upstairs, sub-cu fluids, wait a few hours, and he will be back up bouncing around and happy again.
Other symptoms are: Watery eyes, extremely skinny, poor coat.
I am not skipping any meals, because he only just barely started eating wet food, and I know he depends on me to make sure he stays hydrated. This has been going on for 3 weeks, and we are just devastated and exhausted at this point. He enjoys life SO much when he is feeling well; he is so active and playful. It is really difficult to see him suffering this way.
So here are the ideas we are juggling around (Please keep in mind that he has seen both of the vets out here, and their answers have been: "Keep doing fluids; we just don't know what happens to these stray cats.")
1. FIP? The vets won't test him for it, because they say there is no test (I have read otherwise, but if they won't, they won't). His sibling's abdominal fluid made us think about this as a possibility.
2. Diabetes? Many of his symptoms match this possible diagnosis, and his high activity level could possibly be from spikes in blood sugar. If so, is there a way I can test for it?
3. Unable to regulate body temperature? Maybe this is why he crashes within the day of being moved back downstairs. It is cooler in the basement than in my tiny bathroom upstairs, and his body temperature does drop when he crashes, but this doesn't explain the dehydration.
What do you all think? I have just bawled my eyes out over this poor baby for weeks, and I could use any advice or thoughts. I would give anything for an answer beyond "I don't know; just give him fluids and wait it out."
Thanks for reading all of this!!!!
I have a "cat room" set up in my basement, and I generally have between 3 and 7 foster kittens/cats. Right now, I have a big number, as it is kitten season!
So here is the story on one of my current litters. The head of the rescue brought me a litter of 4 kittens (2 weeks old, bottle babies). We don't know what happened to the poor feral momma, or what their living conditions were like. At 4 weeks old, 2 of the kittens started to go downhill. They would get severely dehydrated, even with regular feedings, and they would go completely limp and lethargic, barely breathing. Only sub-cutaneous fluid injections made any difference. One of the kittens' abdominal cavities filled with fluid. He saw two different vets (One said hernia, the other said "I don't know"). His body temperature dropped to 94*, and I did get it back up to 101* but he died the next day. We are guessing it might have been FIP, but we really don't know.
The other sick kitten is NOW 7 weeks old, and has been on a health rollercoaster for the past three weeks. We will separate him from the other cats and he will be active, playful, jumping and running for a few days. So I take him back downstairs to join the rest of the kitties in the nursery, and he will CRASH within 4-12 hours. (And by crash, I mean limp, barely breathing, usually dehydrated, too weak to even move his head.) His body temperature always drops down between 95-98* as well. He shivers sometimes and makes awful groaning noises. So I take him back upstairs, sub-cu fluids, wait a few hours, and he will be back up bouncing around and happy again.
Other symptoms are: Watery eyes, extremely skinny, poor coat.
I am not skipping any meals, because he only just barely started eating wet food, and I know he depends on me to make sure he stays hydrated. This has been going on for 3 weeks, and we are just devastated and exhausted at this point. He enjoys life SO much when he is feeling well; he is so active and playful. It is really difficult to see him suffering this way.
So here are the ideas we are juggling around (Please keep in mind that he has seen both of the vets out here, and their answers have been: "Keep doing fluids; we just don't know what happens to these stray cats.")
1. FIP? The vets won't test him for it, because they say there is no test (I have read otherwise, but if they won't, they won't). His sibling's abdominal fluid made us think about this as a possibility.
2. Diabetes? Many of his symptoms match this possible diagnosis, and his high activity level could possibly be from spikes in blood sugar. If so, is there a way I can test for it?
3. Unable to regulate body temperature? Maybe this is why he crashes within the day of being moved back downstairs. It is cooler in the basement than in my tiny bathroom upstairs, and his body temperature does drop when he crashes, but this doesn't explain the dehydration.
What do you all think? I have just bawled my eyes out over this poor baby for weeks, and I could use any advice or thoughts. I would give anything for an answer beyond "I don't know; just give him fluids and wait it out."
Thanks for reading all of this!!!!