Not So Short Update

I realized that I did not update last week. Whoops! My bad guys. Things were a little crazy around the house and I had a lot of animals and people to take care of. Lets see if I can give a short recap before the regularly scheduled kitten blog...

When we last left you... lol I have always wanted an excuse to use that... Anyway, my last post was about Spoookie being sick. I am happy to report that she is doing just fine now! After my last post she continued to throw up despite the medicine and was very reclusive which is not like her at all. I was really worried, especially since she had not eaten in about three days at that point. That Saturday I had to work because I had switched shifts with someone, so I called the vet on my break to get the blood results. The blood work came back normal except for a low glucose and that was most likely due to not eating. I had asked the vet what the next steps were and he said first they should do x-rays to look for a gastrointestinal (or GI) obstruction and probably check her in for the remainder of the weekend so that they could put her on an IV and monitor her. I knew that I was not going to check her in to the vet for overnight stay. For one thing, Spoookie does absolutely terrible in a kennel and more stress was exactly what she did not need, but also I have fluid bags at home for treating my sick fosters so I was able to give her fluids subcutaneously (under the skin) and monitor her myself. I talked to my vet friend at work and she recommended the x-rays because it was possible that Spooo ate something that she could not pass. I was 99.9% sure that Spooo did not have a GI obstruction, but like my vet friend said 'you never know' and we didn't have many other options since everything else was coming back normal. I sent Mike to the vet with Spooo and they did the x-rays, which of course came back fine. It was a relief because the surgery that she would need to undergo to have something removed from her bowels is both expensive and harsh, but it was also frustrating because we were back to square one. Medically there was nothing wrong with my cat, except that she was vomiting, anorexic, and lethargic. My mind was scaring me with ideas of cancer and kidney failure, even though my vet friend assured me that things would be screwy on the blood work if either of those things were to be found. So we waited it out. Spoookie was on Reglan to try and stop the vomiting and something like Pepto to deal with the acid in her stomach. She continued to not eat until about Monday, when we were able to get her to eat a little human food and a taste of cat food. We tried daily to give her a variety of things, she nibbled some and rejected others and slowly she began to come around more and throw up less. By last Friday she was her regular self again and begging for McDonalds from my friend!

So what was wrong with her? We don't know. That is probably the most frustrating part. We have no idea what caused her to be so sick. The only thing we can figure is that she got into some poison. We have not had our apartment sprayed and we don't use any, but maybe someone else in our building is using something and we tracked it in or something crawled in and she ate it. The amount of poison needed to kill a bug or mouse would not be enough to kill a cat but would be enough to make one very sick and the symptoms match. Also, a minuscule amount of poison might not show up on a blood test. I don't know what it was but I'm so happy to have my Spoookie back to normal.

In foster news... My babies are getting so big! There are a few that are really hanging on to this upper respiratory infection and two of them still have kind of crusty eyes but other than that they're pretty healthy. Most of the babies aren't even sneezing anymore and Mama Bones is completely over it. Mama is still so skinny though! I don't understand it. She eats 4-5 cans of kitten food per day and I keep the dry food bowl full at all times as well. I am going to treat her with de-wormer again soon but she has already been treated once so I do not believe that a tapeworm is the cause. I have started adding KMR (Kitten Milk Replacer) to her food to see if that will fatten her up but I am trying to get her fat without giving her diarrhea because that would be pretty counter productive. I wish we just had a magic cat-fattener medication, or maybe we could transplant fat from Buu to Mama Bones and even them both out. I know that taking care of eight kittens is hard but I feel like she is eating enough that she should be gaining SOMETHING.

Finally, there is Zora aka Scrubbly. He is a kitten from Zelda's litter who went to the adoption center a few weeks ago with his sister Navi. Navi and Zelda were both adopted (hooray!) but Zora came back to the rescue and recovery center (where I work) for constipation. Apparently he was backed up pretty bad because they sent him in for x-rays and discovered that the was full of... well... poop. The vets are concerned that it may be a condition called megacolon, which sounds a lot funnier than it actually is. I still need to do my research on it but from what I understand it makes it much harder for a cat to move stool and they are perpetually constipated. At the shelter he did not like being in the cage and would scream at me whenever he saw me but was not allowed to come home with me until the vets were sure he was stable. The first couple days that Zora was back at my shelter he had to be given daily enemas and have his litter box watched carefully. They have also prescribed him a laxative which we are still trying to figure out a proper dosage for, but at least now he is home with me. It is requiring a lot of litter box checks and he is a lot more work than the other sick cats that I am taking care of, but I am glad he is here. The first day I brought him back he ran around the house like a mad man, meowing at everything like "I know this! This is where I was born! This is my stuff!". He is so cute and such a cuddler. There is nothing saying for sure that it is megacolon and since that is something that usually shows up in adult/senior cats we are hoping to cure whatever his condition is. I don't know what the other options are but from what one of the vets told me it is really rare to see megacolon in a kitten and makes for a very difficult life. I don't want him to need enemas weekly because it would be stressful and it would mean that he is not adoptable because he would not be healthy enough to be in a home without frequent vet care. We are taking it one step at a time though, and he has a visit to the vet on Monday.

Well, so much for a short recap. Since I have updated the kitten situation all that is left to do this week is take pictures and post them, so look out for that within the next day or so!