How to rescue a kitten(?)

[Frosty]

First off, thank you for taking the poor thing in!

Canned food is actually better for cats than dry, they can't process the corn and don't need the carbs. As far as getting kitten food goes, as a vet once said, 'where are the kitten mice?' Even canned Special Kitty (Wal Mart) will be fine. I have had some kittens get really thin (mama brought some out and their eyes were stuck shut and they were very thin), I let them eat as much as they want and feed them every time they ask. Eventually they slow down... I have seen little kittens eat 1/2 of a 5.5 oz can. Just hoping that the liver function is ok, they can get Hepatic Lipidosis (fatty liver) from not getting enough to eat.

For worms, you could see if the vet will give you ivermectin, if it has ear mites it will take care of that, too. If you do get the ivermectin, I would go topical instead of injection, it can sting when injected and some of my cats freaked when I did that and kept biting at the injection site. Some seemed to not notice. The vet gave me tuberculin syringes to pull the ivermectin, for a kitten it was like .02 cc I think? An adult cat gets .18 CC for 10 pounds. So you need a syringe that can handle the tiny doses.

Does it look like a broken kitten tooth or adult tooth? If it's a kitten tooth, it will be replaced before long.

The fur... It could also have been singed. I had a cat run under the grill and some sparks fell on him. I freaked because he had glowing embers on his fur, and he ran. He showed up again and was fine, but his fur looked like it had chunks cut.

You really might want to think about keeping it away from your other pets for a while, besides the diseases mentioned before, kittens have been known to have rabies.

 

[LittleChocobo]

justbugged, I don't think she can eat the dry food -- some of her teeth are broken (I don't know if they're adult or kitten teeth, I was too young to remember that clearly when my cats were kittens). I mixed it in with her wet food and she would pick up the dry, kind of gnaw for a second, and then spit it out. My landlord suggested that she may have an exposed nerve ending in one of her broken teeth, so that biting is painful. I don't know.

Frosty - it's not like I can just let her starve to death! The family of the girl who found her basically all said, "Uh, we're so not taking in a cat. Sorry," and kicked her out onto the back porch until my friend went to get her. She was still lying there when my friend went to get her a bring her up north. About the food, though -- I was looking at the ingredients list (force of habit - I'm semi-allergic to soy and try to avoid it) and it doesn't have any corn in it. I didn't know they couldn't process corn, but I guess that makes as much sense as the cow milk thing. I didn't see any mites in her ears, fortunately. She's very calm about letting me poke around and inspect her, which is a blessing, but I'm nowhere near comfortable enough to give her an injection of something. I don't know if her liver's ok or not but she seems to be fine.
I don't know what kind of tooth it is, but I'll look up how to tell the difference. If her fur was singed, it was singed all across her back and ribs. It kind of reminds me of my 6-year-old cousin who tried to give herself a haircut..

According to the label, the food I have has:
12% crude protein, 4% crude fat, 1.5% crude fiber, 78% moisture, and some ash and taurine. I knew ash was in fish food, but I didn't know it was in cat food.

Late last night I started finding what looks like human spit on the floor. I can only assume it's coming from her, but I don't know which end it's coming from. Also, she's been hiding under my bed (but she comes out when I look for her) and digging around like she's in a litterbox, but on the table (she doesn't try to poop or anything, she just scratches around), and I'm not sure why.

 

[Frosty]

If you look at remaining canine teeth, are they straight or have a bit of a curve? Kitten teeth have a bit of a curve and are like needles, very pointy. Adult teeth are straight and not as pointed on the tips.

You don't usually see corn in canned food, but most dry food has it.

Is she eliminating ok in the litterbox? Pee and poop? If she is, some cats just like to paw at stuff or sometimes they smell something and seem to be trying to bury the smell. Some also paw around and try to bury their food.

Is her food staying down? She isn't throwing it back up somewhere? The clear stuff like spit sounds like someone could be throwing up a little. If she is eating ok and not just picking at the food, she probably doesn't have fatty liver.

Another cause of bad haircuts... I have seen dogs that look like someone took scissors to the fur and find that another dog chewed the fur off. Or like you thought, it could have been somebody with scissors but the question is why? Unless with the longer fur maybe there were burrs in it? Then you have to wonder who? Strange...

 

[LittleChocobo]

I'll look at them when she comes out from under the bed. She's spent most of the day there.

She was eliminating fine yesterday but I haven't seen her do it yet today. I haven't smelled or heard her vomit, and she's had a good appetite, so I'm really not sure at all what it is; or rather, if she's throwing up, it's so clear I couldn't see it on the linoleum flooring, and it seems to me that she's eating regularly enough that there should be some color in it from the food. She's pawing around the food, so that burying the food thing sounds right.

Based on her reactions with things in the house, we think she was raised for a while by some family who then found out they were allergic. I.e., comfortable around strange people, calm during car rides, associated bathroom faucet with unhappy-making water, and using the litterbox. My friends and I decided that we were going to go with the least heartbreaking idea we had for her fur, which was that either it was really hot out (it's been in the low 100s, unusually for Oregon) and someone caught her to make her more comfy, or that she had burrs and tangles, and her previous people trimmed them out without much skill.

 

[Mrsfoote]

Another good thing my Vet said to do I got a kitten told he was 8 weeks well guess what he had barely gotten his teeth in so he couldn't chew on the hard food the doctor said chicken or turkey baby Gerber. Helped fatten him right up. He loved it! He got sick one time and thought we were going to loose him about a year ago gave him the baby gerber and it helped.

 

[Rammy]

I used to work for a vet and you can give her plain yogurt mixed with her food. You can mix it in with dry and moist and add a little water to make a gruel. This will soften up her dry food so she can eat it. You can also mix in meat flavored baby food. This will give her protien. Make the food so its very wet so she "drinks" the food. I would get her to the vet as soon as you can and if she does have worms take care of that soon. Any worms will slow down her being able to gain weight. I would put in a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel for her to curl up with or you can put her in a box with a heating pad covered by towels but make it so she can move away from it if she gets too hot. Sounds like your giving her a fighting chance so just hang in there.

Rammy

 

[Sierra pachie bars]

I resently rescued kittens, They were covered in fleas. So I used dawn and bathed them. For still nursing kittens you can buy bottles and formula at the petstores. Use a heating pad under a blanket for warmth. Out here where I live someone dumped newborn kittens in a trash can and left them for dead. So they got hand fed and then got homes once they were weaned. They all did really well, and were so sweet. If they are babies remember to stimulate their bottom like their mom would.

 

[justbugged]

I would check out the the Wellness brand of cat food. It is considered a dry food but it is softer than most dried. It has salmon oil in it. I would also wet it with the kitten replacement milk. I have done a lot of rescues also, and the canned food often seems to create diarrhea in very young kittens. I would be concerned about diarrhea. If the kitten doesn't have diarrhea then canned food is fine for now. A 12% protein is great for canned food.

I agree with the others on the baby food. I would look for a pure meat food.

I really hope that you succeed. Kitten like yours make the best pets.

They always seem to act like God sent them to you so that they can rescue you.

 

[Mrsfoote]

Yea My cat really liked the chicken and turkey flavored I got it at walmart and even the organic kind isn't that much more expensive then the regular and you can refrigerate the left overs so it lasted a while now my cat is a big healthy pain in my behind

Thats my Wren cat after eating his gerber.....terrorist I tell you

 

[WhiteMountainsRanch]

Hi there. if you'd like to PM me your email addy I can email you a couple good packets of kitten info that we use in our rescue.

I also completely agree 100% about using the food called Wellness. We use it in all our rescue animals as well as my personal ones and it is just the best food ever- I have never had animals THRIVE so well as they do on that.

I also agree take to vet as soon as you can. She will need a fecal testing and de-worming and frontline for sure at the very minimum.