Mites live in kitty ears, not fleas.
On feeding – in my neck of the woods we can get specific tiny baby bottles and special replacement kitten milk. The kitten should be able to suckle from the baby bottle nipple.
Did the vet give you an idea of her approximate age?
Dude. Thank you so much for trying to help this poor suffering animal. I really did have watery eyes after reading her condition.
I agree with the age question, how old is she?
I’m thinking that she is cold, and I know that she is lonesome. Could you put a heating pad down for her? Or fill a bottle with hot water and wrap it in a towel for her to cuddle with? Put some towels on the floor, cats lose heat from their pads and your little darling is still pretty sick. She needs to get warm so she can sleep and recover.
Also, is she grooming at all? If so, you could smear butter on her paws so she will lick it off. Not the best diet for a cat, but your little girl needs all the calories she can get.
Thank you so much for taking this on. So many people would have just walked away. The world is a better place for folks like you.
Good morning people of the dope!
You got the right side of the pond, and you thought I was in the UK a. Because I use the correct bloody spelling, innit? and b. I am part British, so I get the joke 
(but I don’t think the name would work here)
Yes, that’s pretty much the method I happen to have found works the best (works at all, I should say). You forgot to mention that she must be securely wrapped in the towel first. Surely there’s a youtube video of how to do it properly, because she keeps slipping her head in to the towel bundle. I’ll figure it out. And yes, I did almost choke her yesterday, too!
:eek: That, along with worms, vaccinations, the tiny patches of missing fur I found while washing her and who knows what else are battles to be fought when this infection has cleared up. It’s a long road ahead…
She is approximately 2 months old but I didn’t ask him to check her sex. Yes, the bottle and milk is precisely what I got but she doesn’t recognize the milk as food because she can’t smell anything so it has to be forced down her throat.
But… I was ecstatic to find that when I got up and when to do her morning regimen … she had eaten the bit of canned food I left for her! OMG!! All by herself! She felt hunger. She recognized it was food! She ate it! I’m weeping with joy!
Please refer to me as Dudette, madame!
The bottle with hot water has been suggested to me but I didn’t have a towel to spare (besides the one I use to wrap her in and the one she sits on) and it didn’t occur to me to use a kitchen towel of which I have more. But a girl I know from work told me she would bring me a blanky (fleece or fluffy or something) to make a nicer bed for her.
No, she is not grooming. She just sits there. When I took her towel out to shake on the balcony she meowed in protest and when I went back she was sitting in her toilet shoe box (not used since last night when I changed the newspaper).
She was slightly perked up this morning, meaning that when I stopped petting her and moved around the bathroom (it’s tiny, you can only take a couple of steps in it) she watched me move.
As I said, she is not grooming (but I will do the butter on paws thing when her condition allows it) and she is not scratching either. Hopefully she has no reason to scratch now, but she wasn’t scratching yesterday and the day before, when she had plenty of reasons!
Does anybody know anything about the implications of her carrying this herpes family virus for life? What would that mean for my primary kitty? It’s something I need to start considering.
(Also, posts must be made about bringing the little critter into the life of the Princess, but I need to start getting ready for work).
I do browse at work, just not logged in, so I look forward to reading anything you have to say.
Your words of encouragement have meant a lot to me, really. Thank you once again, from the bottom of my heart.
We’re all pulling for you both!
If you have an old sweatshirt or pajamas that are well worn - something that has your scent on it - you could leave it for her so she’ll have that for comfort.
Is this the kind of medicine she’s been given? Bene-bac gel
It’s a huge help with kittens and the bacteria in their intestines. It can also help if she’s on a wormer (and she probably should be when she’s strong enough.) It’s over the counter both here and on your side of the pond.
Was your other cat ever in a shelter or an environment with other cats? Has she ever had kennel cough? Almost every cat who’s been in contact with strays or shelter cats is a carrier. My vet described it as, “pretty much the cat equivalent of a cold.” In a *healthy *cat, it’s not life threatening, it’s anywhere from “did the cat just sneeze?” and it’s over to a cat who needs a little l-lysine crystals added to her food for a few days. Occasionally, but not often, antibiotics are given (why, since it’s a virus, I’m not sure.)
We’ve got two shelter cats, one came home with this virus, and the other developed it in her first week with us. The boy cat (slightly younger, the one who came home with it) developed the cough and needed the l-lysine again once more during his first year. That was the end of it so far, and they just turned three.
It’s just hit your baby so hard because she was so young and malnourished; it’s not usually this bad.
Oh my gosh, I have no advice, but from one animal person to another, I’m sure the universe is grateful for you rescuing this poor creature. I’m so hopeful she makes it. It sounds like you’re doing all the necessary important things, and she’s improving. My fingers are crossed. You got good karma coming your way.
Two months? If it’s a boy, you should be able to see a scrotum within the next month if you can’t already.
So this thread has an elfkin AND a half-elf? No wonder I got confused! 
Anyway, thanks for updating us – we’re pulling for your new little friend. (S)He’s lucky you came wandering along.
My daughter’s cat, as a kitten, literally ran up to her Pekingese and begged to be rescued from life in the street. She (the cat, not the daughter) has a herpes eye condition that requires a daily dose of l-lysine to keep it in check.
My kitty got the virus from her weeks in the shelter, and she has the occasional respiratory flare-up which I treat with the l-lysine (she LOVES the paste), but her eyes are chronically watery and I wipe them down each night. I check to make sure there’s nothing funky about the discharge but so far it’s been totally benign. Eye drops tend to make it worse, actually, and since there’s no danger to humans, we just live with it. In a way, it’s nice to make her so happy by rubbing a warm washcloth over her eyes.
You must keep the cats separate until the vet gives the okay because FVP is highly contagious. That’s really all I know about the virus.
She is on Tobradex eye drops and Vibramycin antibiotic (which as I read is prescribed for various viral infections…)
As I mentioned in my previous post, worms etc are all be going to be dealt with once this shit clears up.
Great idea about the clothes - I will dig up a t-shirt I don’t really want and wear it for a couple of days and then let her have it.
Oh, so this is the kennel cough you guys keep talking about (I rarely post because my point has usually already been made, or I don’t know enough about life in America to contribute but I am an avid lurker). Right, I was wondering.
No, my kitty was a stray for the first few days of her life and here is the thread I started when I got her so as not to make this post any longer: Cat dopers, please advise: litter box queries - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
She is in excellent health and always has been. I must ask vet if her shots cover this virus and if they need to be repeated at some point.
Thank you thank you to you and everybody else. But may I send the karma on to sicky kitty? She needs it more than I do right now.
Ya, and I have noticed there are more of my cousins posting on the sdmb.
Awwww!
I must find out what the equivalent of l-lysine is over here. Yes I know that the cat itself just lives with it with the occasional flare (possibly when stressed etc etc) but I read said that it will intermittently (not necessarily when there is a flare-up) shed the virus and I don’t want resident kitty to have to go through it.
Yes, that much is clear.
And now for today’s update: As I mentioned, she had eaten her (half-spoonful of) food this morning so I put down some more, which I found eaten when I got home. Happy to note she had peed in her shoebox. I syringe fed her her milk and put down a little more cat food on her plate (around a tablespoonful). I had her up on the toilet seat (on her feeding towel) and was petting her.
At one point I got up to do something else and she jumped off the toilet seat (yay! 
) and went to the plate and ate the food up. I was so ecstatic I put another half-spoon down. She had a couple of mouthfuls and then turned away and started kind of scratching her claws on her towel. “Cool” I thought to myself. “She is becoming a cat.” And then I heard the sound. You know the sound the fast food ketchup bottle makes when you press it hard to squirt it? Yes, that sound. The previously consumed food went straight through and out the other end looking just as if you put it through a blender. Pink slush. On the towel.
I put her in the toilet shoebox and proceeded to wash the towel first by hand to get the shit off and then in the washing machine (must go and hang it out to dry in a minute). I put down a kitchen towel for her to sit on. I’ve decided that half a tablespoonful twice a day will be enough for her for the time being.
After having my tea I warmed up some of her milk and and put it in a dish and she lapped up around half of it. So I think I don’t need to syringe feed her any more! Question is, how much should I give her? The jar only tells you how to make a bottleful and it’s for infants in any case. She will definitely get a dish full in the morning and evening, but there are dishes and dishes you know? Any advice?
Oh, my resident kitty just galloped by with her Pluto dog in her mouth and went into the kitchen and left him somewhere by her food and water bowls. She’s so so cute when she does that!!
Anyway, those were the day’s events, I look forward to hearing anything you have to say about “FRV And Your Other Cats”, any suggestions on how much milk to give, and anything at all anybody has to say about my or anybody else’s cat!
Can we have a pic of the little one? 
I’m not familiar with those medications. I would strongly suggest ringing your vet and asking if you could use the Bene-bac gel I mentioned above. It’s designed to help the kitten digest her food easier and could possibly help with the diarrhea. It’s great that she’s eating but she needs to keep it in her!
Good luck to you both!
As I mentioned upthread, I don’t think she would consent to having her pitiful condition on her permanent internet record, so I think we will do the glamour shots at a later date okay?
I do however have a couple of super cute ones of resident kitty (which I owe youse from the thread I started this summer requesting advice when I got her) but I can’t find the damn cable somebody gave me to connect my phone to the laptop. It’s in my wardrobe/ boudoir/ desktop computer room which is still mainly a storage room with “unresolved boxes” from my recent move. I did just dig around a little in there but I’m too knackered to search any more.
What is a good free site where I can upload them when I find it?
Merneith: I will see what it’s called here and ask.
Here be Resident Kitty: the cutest, smartest, softest kitty in the whole wide world:
<iframe width=“480” height=“360” src=“Photobucket | Make your memories fun!”></iframe>
ETA: Drat, I need to figure out which photobucket link to copy. Hang on a minute, I’ll be back.
ETA2: will this work? Photobucket | Make your memories fun!
That will have to do for now, but will somebody please tell me how to link to the album page where you can see one pic at a time with front and back arrows ?
If I click on my favorite picture, the address in the Navigation toolbar changes. I can Copy that, and Paste it here: Photo Storage
That should take you to the “5 Months Old, In Basket Photo”, with the arrows. If you want to start people with a different photo, click on the photo you like and then Copy the address for that picture.
Oh, and…totally cute!
I have two cans left of Hills a/d critical care food. If you PM me, I could send you one or two.