Sad snotty kitty

Our poor little brand new kitten Lily has an URI (Upper Respiratory Infection), and it’s breaking my heart! We just brought her home from the shelter a week and Saturday she started sneezing. Now her poor little pink nose is red and swollen, her eyes are runny and you can hear how horribly stuffed up she is as she struggles to breathe. I took her into the vet Sunday morning, and he gave her the second of her three vaccinations, with an appointment in three weeks for the last one. In the meantime, I wipe her nose when I can, and giving me a healthy snot shower via sneezing seems to give her a little relief, but other than that I don’t know what to do to help her. I can only hold her while she purrs and snots and I feel bad – and I still can’t find the cord to download any pictures of her!
Does anyone know anything that might give her any relief - anything we should be feeding her or doing for her? She is still ravenously hungry and thirsty, which is good, according to the vet. I just really want to help her!

When my cat got this, the vet told me to take him into the bathroom when I take a shower. All the steam is supposed to help clear them out a bit. It seemed like he liked it, though it’s hard to tell. It might be worth a try anyway.

Good luck, I hope she feels better soon.

Your vet didn’t give you anything for the URI? The same thing happened to us when we brought our kitten home from the Humane Society. The vet gave us a liquid medication administered orally twice a day, as well as some eye drops which were supposed to help clear the mucus from her eye. She was better within a week.

Did they give you any medicine for the kitty? There’s no point in vaccinating a sick kitten, their immune system is already compromised and you won’t get the response you need for immunity to develop. Was this your regular vet or the shelter vet? Either take the kitty back or take it to another vet.

Antibiotics aren’t a cure for a viral infection but they do help prevent secondary infections, such as pneumonia, but I can understand a reluctance to dispense it if the sneezing was mild as we don’t like to encourage overuse of antibiotics. However, URI’s in kittens can often develop secondary infections, especially in the eyes, so sometimes an oral antibiotic is needed. Sometimes an opthalmic ointment, like Terramycin, is used, too. They can also be given a mild antihistamine, but I think you should get this recommendation from a vet so I can’t tell you what medicine and the dosage. Also, many of these URI’s in kittens are caused by the feline Herpes virus and an oral lysine supplement is often helpful in suppressing the virus. As in people, Herpes is for life, so the supplement is good to keep on hand if the kitten starts getting sneezy as it can get sick again, especially if they’re stressed. Usually later outbreaks aren’t as severe.

You can also clean the nose and eyes with a mild saline solution, such as a saline contact lens solution (saline only) and put the kitty in a steamy room as suggested previously. Also encourage the kitty to eat because they are often feverish and don’t eat well because they can’t smell their food, so get some good stinky food.

There is another feline upper respiratory virus, calicivirus, that can be much more severe and lead to oral lesions and complications later in life. If I recall your new little one was also sick with diarrhea before you brought her home, so she’s had a tough time of it lately and I wouldn’t expect her already weakened immune system to be able to fight this off without some help. I would encourage you to take the kitty to a vet and get her checked out again and ask about getting some medications to help her through this.

Good luck with her.

They didn’t give me anything for her, telling me that anything we did to comfort her was really only going to comfort us. This was my first encounter with this vet (as we just moved), so I didn’t know him very well*. The shot they gave her was the 2nd in the series of vaccinations she’s supposed to get, according to him after consulting her medical record from the shelter. We spoke about antibiotics, and he agreed with your opinion that they’re administered all too freely.

I will call home and have hubby use some saline on her eyes and nose and take her into a nice hot shower room. She does still have a great appetite, which the vet said was a very good sign, along with her very strong heartbeat. I’ll call the vet and see if they will offer any supplementary medicine or advice. Unfortunately I have a big presentation to give here at work today, followed by taking hubby to the doctors, so today isn’t a good day for another visit. But if I don’t see any improvement by tomorrow, I’ll be taking her back in on Wednesday, just to be sure. Thank you so very much, everybody, for all your advice. I hope I’ll have good news and photos to post soon!

*He’s a retired vet, filling in on weekends. I’m curious to see if I get anything different from the regular vets.

I really don’t like talking negatively about a vet but I find it odd that they would not like dispensing antibiotics but would willingly give a vaccine to an already sick cat. A vaccine is not going to hurt her but it’s not going to help her either. How sick was she when he saw her? If she was just starting to sneeze then maybe he didn’t think she was that sick at the time, so if she is sicker now then it would be a good reason to have her re-evaluated.

In the meantime, if you have time to check out a pet store and see if they have an over the counter L-lysine supplement it might help, but it won’t hurt if it isn’t a herpes virus. Since it would be formulated for cats and flavored it would be a little easier than trying to crush a pill for people and give it to her.

I’ll have time to check out a local pet store that advertises itself as all-natural, so hopefully they’ll have the L-lysine. She’s napping now, finally, but when she wakes up she’s off to the steamy bathroom.
When I took her in Sunday she was just starting to get the runny nose - she’d only started sneezing the day before. She was nowhere near as sick then as she is now. Fortunately this big presentation will be behind me today - if I need to take off tomorrow to get her in I will. Or do you think I need to take her in this evening?

PM sent

when one of my kitties had a serious snot problem, it helped to chop a clove of garlic in her food. It made her breath smell garlicky, but it significantly reduced her snotting. Garlic is also a natural antibiotic. It certainly won’t hurt, and it might help.

we see a lot of that uri in my area, whichever vet I’m using at the time has always given me the same antibiotics you give to kids, can’t think of the name but it’s common, and an eye ointment if needed. they always get better after a week or 2. I can’t imagine a vet giving them innoculations to a cat they won’t prescribe for? that’s just weird. You don’t give shots to sick cats, or to cats you don’t think are gonna survive. You need a new vet.
looked it up, Amoxicillin sounds right

Garlic is toxic for cats, so I wouldn’t recommend giving it to a sick kitten. Human Foods That Are Poisonous to Cats

When I was making homemade cat food, my research said onions and garlic were a bad idea for cats. This article has more details.

http://cats.about.com/cs/catfood/a/humanfood.htm

It didn’t hurt my kitty. She lived to be 17. But whatever you’re comfortable with.

Good morning, everybody!
First off, my sincere thanks to everyone that posted. I took your advice and had hubby sit with Lily in a steamy bathroom. He said they were both pretty miserable the whole time, but it did seem to help a little. She hated the saline, and the effect of that was pretty minimal, so I doubt we’ll be trying that again. But through it all, her appetite has stayed robust, and she’s still purring, still playing. I held her and played with her before getting ready for work this morning, and she’s ready to get into trouble! She snuck out of her room while I was getting her new food, and she and the dog did a few hyper-laps around the house until I caught her and out her back - I think she’ll be joining the open household as soon as she’s better, with the door to her room left slightly ajar as a safe place she can escape to if the dog gets too rowdy. She’s breathing a lot easier, although still stuffy, and her eyes aren’t runny any more. Hopefully (fingers crossed) we’re through the worst of it. I’ll see how she does throughout the day - maybe we won’t need to go back to the vet.
Thanks again, everybody, for all your help and suggestions. You’ve been great!

Having recently fostered a couple of litters of kittens with cat flu, I agree with most of the advice given here, although I’ve not used garlic. I did think about it, because some studies I’ve read suggest that it has some anti-viral properties, but figured that enough garlic to help might be toxic.

If kittens are very stuffed up breathing in steam really helps. Getting them to cough can be helpful in clearing mucus out of their lungs … if you tap with two fingers at the base of the ribs on either side you’ll break up any solid mucus and they’ll cough it up. This is most effective if you do this after the steaming.

I put a couple of l-lysine tablets in the water bowl … they’re water soluble. I have no idea if it helps, but figure it can’t hurt. I just buy the human-grade ones from the supermarket or pharmacist.

It’s a good sign that your kitten is eating. I had one little one who was so stuffed up she just wasn’t interested in food and didn’t eat for nearly a week and I had to force feed her. If your kitten does go off her food you can try offering really smelly things, but if they don’t work (and didn’t with my kitten), then ask your vet about a food replacement.

I use stuff called Nutrigel … I had a quick look and seems like the US equivalent is Nutri-Cal. It looks and smells like caramel with a texture something like honey. You can keep them alive it until they want to eat again.

If the mucus from eyes or nose goes from clear to cloudy (ie yellow snot) you have a bacterial infection and your kitten will need antibiotics.

Also keep an ear on her breathing, and if her breathing starts to sound a bit “croupy”, or she’s breathing rapidly or shallowly, I’d take her to the vet quickly in case she’s developed pneumonia.