Good morning!☀️ Meet the new kids!
These two were pulled from Chicago Animal Care and Control by @foreverfortunatefelines last night after being brought in as strays. They’re around 3 weeks old based on the fact that their incisors are just about to come in and they’re right around that 300-gram weight. Chonky babies.
It’s strawberry season, so it was only fitting that I named them after strawberry varieties! The little house panther is named Charlotte and the well-dressed boy with a lot to say is named Alpine.🍓 @windycityfosters said.
Good morning! Charlotte has been dealing with some really horrible diarrhea these last couple days. Her formula has been diluted and she and Alpine are both getting probiotics and dewormer. I might also make up their formula with Kitten Lyte by @revivalanimalhealth to prevent dehydration. My first thought is that the diarrhea is caused by diet change, but parasites and viral infections are also at the back of my mind so they’re under strict quarantine—gloves, constant bedding changes, and disinfection twice a day. Thankfully appetite and energy levels are great! Keep your fingers crossed for this girl.🤞 @windycityfosters said.
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We’ve got ear wiggles, but also a loose latch? kitten Alpine and his sister kitten are right at that “I don’t want the bottle anymore because I have pointy teef, but I also swim in my wet food” phase so this is as good of a latch as I’m getting right now!
These kitten babies are a handful and kitten Alpine is currently a victim of genital suckling, so he’s being separated from his sister. We’ve also got on and off diarrhea. SO fun. Just the best.🙃
But at the end of the day I am in LOVE with this boy. He purrs and he plays and his little mews melt my heart. I can hardly remember his hissy days! @windycityfosters said.
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I’ve been away from these two kitten for like four days and I already miss them somethin’ fierce! Can you blame me? kitten Alpine’s lil white ear tufts and Charlotte’s bear cub face…😍
This video makes me SO happy!!!🙌 Something I neglected to post over the holiday weekend is that Charlotte crashed while she was with her temp foster. She began to have bloody, liquid diarrhea and within a day she had no energy, no appetite, and lost a fourth of her weight.
On Monday her temp foster, me, and some other experienced fosters from the rescue messaged back and forth coming up with a treatment plan…bloody diarrhea could be coccidia so give her ponazuril. White stool color could be infection so give her metronidazole. Probiotics, B12, pedialyte, and fluids twice a day to keep up her energy and hydration. Treating diarrheal ailments in kittens this young is a race against time. On Tuesday, her temp foster thought she was surely going to die and my heart was broken.
But on Wednesday, she perked up. She started to purr, she started to take pedialyte from a syringe, and she stopped losing weight. Yesterday I picked up a thin but alert 5 week old kitten who’d been to hell and back just a couple days earlier.
Today she wolfed down breakfast and second breakfast and lunch. She is up a whopping 30 grams since her weigh-in last night. Her stool is still loose, but not bloody and somewhat textured (that’s an improvement).
She’s still on supportive care, lots of medications, and she’s separated from her brother for a bad suckling habit but she’s alive and I hope it’s nothing but great appetites and solid stool from here!
Also—serious props to her temp foster, who had only fostered once before, for handling the situation so incredibly well.♥️ @windycityfosters said.
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This video makes me SO happy!!!🙌 Something I neglected to post over the holiday weekend is that Charlotte crashed while she was with her temp foster. She began to have bloody, liquid diarrhea and within a day she had no energy, no appetite, and lost a fourth of her weight.
On Monday her temp foster, me, and some other experienced fosters from the rescue messaged back and forth coming up with a treatment plan…bloody diarrhea could be coccidia so give her ponazuril. White stool color could be infection so give her metronidazole. Probiotics, B12, pedialyte, and fluids twice a day to keep up her energy and hydration. Treating diarrheal ailments in kittens this young is a race against time. On Tuesday, her temp foster thought she was surely going to die and my heart was broken.
But on Wednesday, she perked up. She started to purr, she started to take pedialyte from a syringe, and she stopped losing weight. Yesterday I picked up a thin but alert 5 week old kitten who’d been to hell and back just a couple days earlier.
Today she wolfed down breakfast and second breakfast and lunch. She is up a whopping 30 grams since her weigh-in last night. Her stool is still loose, but not bloody and somewhat textured (that’s an improvement).
She’s still on supportive care, lots of medications, and she’s separated from her brother for a bad suckling habit but she’s alive and I hope it’s nothing but great appetites and solid stool from here!
Also—serious props to her temp foster, who had only fostered once before, for handling the situation so incredibly well.♥️ @windycityfosters said.
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It’s the baby squad! Bluebell, Alpine, and Charlotte passed their 2-week quarantines, so once they finished their diarrheal medication they all joined forces! I’ve been keeping an eye on Charlotte to make sure her genital suckling habit isn’t coming back, but so far so good.
All three of them are completely off the bottle and on a wet food:formula:pedialyte slurry three times a day. My scruffy little rag tag team of mush babies.♥️ @windycityfosters said.
@windycityfosters
After 8.5 difficult hours of fading kitten protocol, Alpine passed away early this morning. I know this may come as a surprise considering I recently made a post describing how great he was doing. It comes as a surprise to me too.
Yesterday morning Alpine went from having normal stool to uncontrollably leaking bloody diarrhea and quickly losing weight. Diarrhea kills, so I immediately started urgent care—B12, subq fluids, PenG, calorie booster, Ponazuril, and a simple diet of chicken baby food and pedialyte to give his system a break. He was also SNAP tested for panleuk due to the concerning appearance and smell of his diarrhea…negative. I checked on him every couple hours throughout the day to give him a dextrose:LRS solution as a way to combat a blood sugar crash.
At 2:00pm, he was scarfing down food and meowing at me for attention. At 4:00pm he was limp in his play pen with bloody diarrhea all over him and his bedding. I immediately started FKS protocol which involves wrapping him in a blanket and heating pad, giving warm fluids, and dripping karo syrup or diluted dextrose over their gums ever 3 minutes. I did this until 1:30am. He had ups and downs during this time, but ultimately he was heartbreakingly thin and lethargic. He fought so very hard, but I told him it was ok to let go and he died cradled in the palm of my hand.
This is not how I thought the day would go and now I have to start Bluebell and Charlotte on antibiotics just in case. I have consulted with several medical fosters and none of us have any real idea what happened…it presented like panleukopenia but given the negative test, it was more likely a severe and aggressive infection. Metronidazole and PenG should have taken care of bacterial infections, so whatever killed him was beyond typical treatment.
RIP Alpine. Your loss is felt deeply.💔 @windycityfosters said.
@windycityfosters
Charlotte! This little girl has been through so much—she almost died at 4 weeks old, she lost her brother at 6 weeks old, and she’s been on medication for digestive issues for weeks. Even though she’s still struggling with soft-serve stool every now and again, she’s gaining weight and the happiest baby cat on planet earth. I call her name and she sprints over, climbs up to my shoulder, rubs her face on my face, and purrs in my ear. I adore her♥️ @windycityfosters said.
