Mom of all kinds in FL

by Mary
(Valrico, FL)

I hope you can help me. I've been searching for advice online all weekend and losing sleep over this question. We recently adopted two of five abandoned kittens after about four weeks of care including bottle feeding and socialization. Two little boy tabbies are now about 8 weeks old. They developed a case of worms and giardiasis, but after a trip to the vet and some meds are now well on their way -no more explosive diarrhea or peeing accidents. They are both just under 2 lbs and can be neutered soon.

Here is my dilemma: on the way to visit them at the foster home before we took them home, we fell in love with two OTHER kittens, about the same age, from a rescue group at the local pet store. We were stopping to purchase some toys forth five and help out my coworker foster mom. After some discussion, we decided to take these two also. A little tortie who feels like cashmere and a little white tabby. That was about four weeks ago. These two new kittens have had yucky eyes and the tabby is now being treated for a URI. The tortie is from a different litter, but now she has eye yuck too. The foster mom tells me that the mother had the eye issues and passed it to four of her eleven kittens.

My question is this. After the new kittens are healthy enough to be spayed and come home with us, I am worried that our existing little boys will contract the URI. I'm reading that even after symptoms disappear with treatment, they can be carriers and spread for up to a year.

Am I worrying for no reason? All our kittens will be indoor-only cats. Any advice or insight would be appreciated. Little girls will probably be ready to come home in about a week or 10 days.

Reply
Hi
First of all, 4 kittens , good luck you will have your hands full and you may territorial issues especially if all your cats are to be indoor cats. i say this just to warn you that there may be issues. Cats are not pack animals like dogs and so generally don't like to live in close quarters with many other animals. you may be lucky as they are so young. Making sure they are introduced properly and also that their home environment is as stimulating as possible will help. Two pages on my site may be of interest here

http://www.our-happy-cat.com/introducing-cats.html

http://www.our-happy-cat.com/indoor-cats.html

As for this eye condition. I will be honest with you i dont know what URI stands for but this sounds to me like cat flu or conjunctivitis to me. In either case it is possible to pass these conditions on to other cats if it is not fully cleared up by the time you introduce them all.

I live in the Uk where we vaccinate against cat flu, I don't know if this is the case where you live, it may be worth speaking to your vet about this first.

i have a page on my site about cat eye conditions which you may find of further interest here

cat-eye-problems.html

best wishes kate