My 5 week old kitten has diarrhea and doesn’t drink water.

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  • #51804
    Xenomorph
    Participant

    She’s five weeks old and frankly should still be with her mother. My friends found her abandoned under a barn house and the mother was gone. I’ve only had her for about 24 hours, and every time she needs to use the litter box it’s apparent that she’s having diarrhea. I can’t let her roam the house yet because she can’t find her way back to the litter box in time (we’ve had a few accidents already). I am worried though because she doesn’t lap up her formula yet…I feed it to her by bottle. She won’t even acknowledge a bowl of water besides swiping at it. I am worried she’s going to get dehydrated. I am wondering if she needs to be transitioned to wet cat food at this point. She cries for food, but her stomache is taut like it’s full. And she keeps having diarrhea. I am at a loss. I will do my best to get her to the vet this week if I need to.

    Does anyone have any advice that could help us? Thank you so much in advance.

    #737538
    Chaos
    Participant

    she probably has worms which is why her stomach feels like its full. That comes with pretty much all feral cats. I would get an eye dropper and try to get some fluid in her that way. Try adding pedialyte to wetfood, water, or formula to help her stay hydrated. I will add a pedialyte tag which will show some other threads with similar problems. There should be some recipes for homemade pedialyte, if you can’t get it in a store. Leave a bowl of water or formula on the floor. She will get curious or step in it, or get it on her nose and lick it off. She will understand she is supposed to use her tongue eventually. Give her more diluted formulas so she starts getting weaned off the taste of milk and gets used to the taste of water. You can also mix a little gravy from wetfood in the bottle so she tastes that too. Diarrhea is pretty common in kittens. If pedialyte doesn’t work you can get canned pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling mind you, and puree it and add it to her formula. Canned pumpkin does wonders for diarrhea, and should help her get more fiber in her body. If the diarrhea persists or she becomes lethargic or dehydrated, she should be taken into the vet to get fluids injected under the skin. Sometimes abandoned kittens have systems that shut down and it makes it hard for them to digest. As long as she is eating and not dehydrated, it is probably just because she went from mothers milk to formula. To recap:

    Dilute the formula with more water and add pedialyte, if that doesn’t help,

    add puree’d canned pumpkin to her formula or food

    If diarrhea persists after 2 days or so, she should go in to see the vet

    She can stay on the bottle a little longer if she is malnourished. But by 8 weeks she should at least be eating wetfood, even if she still drinks formula. Hope this helped at least a little!

    #737539
    Xenomorph
    Participant

    Thank you so much. I will do those things. It’s a very frightening time…I can’t wait until I know she will be safe. Kittens are a lot more work than people realize!

    #737540
    Jeankit
    Participant
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