Poor little girl - she’s having a rough time, but don’t worry. It took my little Leon about three weeks, two sets of antibiotics and two worming treatments to really get better, and even then he had several more weeks of sneezing and wheezing before he shook off his rocky start. It was almost a full week before he would feed himself or poop. But your baby seems active and engaged and that seems to make all the difference. Apathy is the real scary thing.
Thank heavens you found the little one before you turned on the car!
What an adorable moppet!
I have a tortie too… demanding I pet her right this minute!
Thanks for the vibes people, please keep 'em coming, she’s going to need it!
First the nice part, Monday evening around 6 she perked up no end and was on the floor playing with toys and sweet wrappers, she was happy as larry and having a whale of a time, then she went around the room looking at everything and sizing up things to see “can I jump up there? hmm, what about here…?” 
She settled in her basket for the night and only woke me twice for toileting emergencies (both pees)
Now the not-so-nice part. This morning she was looking very down. I assumed she’d over done things last evening cavorting around. But then she didn’t want anything to eat or drink (normally she dives into the bowls and guzzles everything - so I only give her a little bit at a time). Then around noon she started to wheeze as though she was ah ah ah-chooooooo but there was no chooooooo and the ah ah ah-ing wasn’t stopping, and her eyes got all big and frightened.
I raced down to the vet and the vet wasn’t so sure about what to do, I suggested she test and x-ray so we know what we’re dealing with and can go from there. So she agreed to test her for F.I.V etc and I left Sassy there.
Vet rang later to say the tests came back negative, she wasn’t too keen on x-raying due to the costs I was incurring, but I said to go ahead and she x-rayed her.
The x-rays showed a lot of ‘damage’ for such a teeny kitten, her heart is badly enlarged, her lungs were cloudy, her diaphragm doesn’t seem to be there at all (it wasn’t visible) and her stomach and intestines are full of goodness knows what, she’s only had kitten food since I found, her but we’ve no idea what she was eating before that (she hasn’t eaten any of the ivy) and she’s not been given any scraps from our plates.
So I was waiting for the vet to suggest PTS, but no, we can work with this. Special gastro-intestinal food, and a dose of antibiotics and an injection to help her lungs. And we’ll see where we go from here.
She’s curled up asleep on my lap wrapped in a towel keeping warm! Hopefully the situation isn’t too dire and she can survive with meds and TLC, she’ll be a house cat anyways (too many kids, dogs and bad drivers around here), and what cat wouldn’t want a life of lazy around with a hooman slave catering to their every need? LOL
Oh poor baby!! Give her cuddles from us too.
It’s a good thing she found you, sounds like her time was running out…
Additional vibes, coming your & your new overlords’ way! Poor kitty.
You know, whatever happens to Sassy now, at least she’s got someone with her who cares.
Oh, I’m so sorry she isn’t doing well. Please kiss the top of her head for me.
StG
She definitely found the right hooman for the job. Get well soon, Sassy!
Sending good thoughts. Kittens can be very resilient and she seems to have a strong will to survive as well as the best shaved-monkey slave money can buy.
oh goodness, you and the little one are going through quite a bit. i hope sassy pulls through all this.
sassy is a great name, and she is quite the cutie.
Good luck, little kitty!
Rooting for Sassy too. She’s had a rough start, but she’s lucky to have found you. Kittens are resilient, so I hope all that TLC kicks in and she gets better soon.
I’m sorry to hear this - hope it’s fixable. is Sassy her official name now?
Thanks for the vibes people, I think it’s helping
Wow we had the day from hell yesterday…
around 3pm while she was asleep on my lap Sassy suddenly started to choke violently and thrashed around, she fell off my lap, and I just about caught her before she hit the floor, where upon she staggered off and collapsed on her chest with her mouth open. I picked her up, put her in the carrier and tore down to the vets. Initially I said PTS, but when the vet went to lift Sassy pants out of the box, she tried to hang on to the sides! So instead she gave her an injection of something (I think to slow her heart rate) and put her on oxygen.
We left her in a box with the oxygen for the next few hours and the vet rang me around 7 to say she was neither up nor down, and if I wanted I could bring her home for the night, so I went down and the vet was sitting with Sassy on her lap, and she’d been drooling something, and looked terrible, so again I was willing to PTS as it looked hopeless, so the vet put her on the desk while she went to get whatever she was going to fetch, and Sassy looked up at me.
Okay she’s not completely gone, so vet gave her the injection for her lungs and I brought her home.
She was very very poorly, so I sat with her lying in my cleavage, and she was wheezing very hard. It takes about an hour for that injection to take full effect, but during that hour things good horrendous.
Poor kitteh started to choke and thrash about, she ended up on her back with her mouth open, and I was reaching for my mobile, when I realised it was no where near me… I rode it out with her for over an hour and a half, she was thrashing, wheezing, choking, [lightly] foaming at the mouth, and she started to get very hot.
Eventually she calmed down and lay stretched out across my lap with her legs waving - cooling herself down.
Around 10pm the worst of it was over, by 11 she was looking for food, and by midnight she was playing around on the floor not a bother on her! I got some warm water and cotton wool and washed the gunk that she’d been drooling off her and gave her butt a wash, and she was happy out! Hard to believe a few hours earlier I’d been on the verge of snapping her neck to put her out of her misery!
I took her to bed at 1.30 and she had a quiet night, woke me twice wanting the litter box and had something to eat and drink. The second time she was raspy in her breathing again, so I sat her on my lap for a cuddle and she started to purr, then she gave a gulp. And her breathing settled. After a few minutes I put her back in her box and went back to bed.
All morning she’s been in the living room, playing, eating, drinking peeing and sleeping on my lap. She gave a massive sigh earlier on, something I’ve not noticed her do before.
I really don’t know what to make of it, she’s eating like a horse, drinking like a champion, alert, lively, curious, great fun, then she crashes and can’t get any breath into her body. I’ll ask the vet if there are further tests she can have done to investigate further, it just seems wrong to PTS when she’s showing signs of being so normal!
guzzling her food (that’s a saucer btw)
batting a toy around (she stops as soon as she sees the camera!)
Such a pretty face! Pink nose!
I have no words of wisdom except to say after all this you will be immune to ordinary stresses! Scritch her back and tummy for us!
The choking, thrashing and foaming thing doesn’t sound good.
You might want to ask the vet about the possibility of a brain tumor; I had a cat that developed one, and he had seizures that involved all of the above. If she is favoring one side, like walking and turning only to the left or right, that’s a symptom.
OTOH, I really hope Sassy kicks this thing and the two of you enjoy each other’s company for years to come.
Sending healing thoughts to Sassy - and thanks to Bast that you found her.
It’s completely confusing, the x-rays showed a lot of unpleasant stuff, heart, lungs and guts. And if you looked at them you’d say “yeah that cat’s dead now, right?”
But she’s not. All day today she’s been like any other normal healthy kitten, eating, drinking, using her litter box, batting at her toys, climbing on my lap for a nap.
I’ve never seen anything quite like it before in my life! By rights she should be very sickly and listless, off her food etc, but she’s not.
Her belly is getting swollen again from eating and not pooing (or not pooing enough, she’s only done two peanut sized stools -that I’ve found- in the last 24 hours. She’s been hopping in and out of the litter tray trying to poo and I’m hoping that’s what’s brought on her current rapid breathing - she doesn’t seem to be overly distressed about it anyways, I’m watching her eyes, when she’s struggling to breathe her eyes get all big, right now she’s asleep.
It’s hard to know what to do, keep going, or PTS? I’ve had other [adult] cats who’ve had to be PTS one from kidney failure, another due to a tumour in her thorax, so I know the “please just let me die now 'kay?” look that a terminally ill cat gets. TBH Sassy isn’t even giving me that look when she’s struggling to breathe.
Oh and I had my dustbuster out earlier on, cleaning up where she’s been digging in the plant pot - she didn’t turn a hair!
TLC works wonders and the young have remarkable powers of recovery.