Sick 5-week old kitten, Owner Scared

by Solana Hall
(Las Vegas, NV, USA)

About a month ago, my mom and I rescued 2 kittens who, at the time, were about 2 weeks old (we couldn't really tell but their ears weren't up and their eyes had just opened). The first one, Skylar, we got since his feral and young momma kitty had just finished nursing him on the ground and ran off. The other one, Jack, we didn't find until the next morning. It had poured the night before and he was stuck over the wall where found his brother in nothing but oily mucky water and a few millimetres from drowning. We rescued him, gave him a warm bath, and did everything else we could. In a day's time, he was back to normal and a happy kitten with Skylar. We fed them formula different times of the day, kept an eye on them so they weren't alone for long, and stimulated to pee and poop.

The problems started a week ago today. At 1 in the morning, Jack had a violent seizure. He was foaming at the mouth, hissing and growling at us, eyes dilated really wide, and he had a few drops of blood come from his anus. It lasted for about 5 minutes, but the aftershock was about another 10 with him trying to calm down. We took him to the vet (a heart wrenching experience the entire time) and had him checked. They have him a shot of Valium into a vein, and that seemed to calm him down. The next day we went back and they tested him for feline leukimia/AIDS, both negative Thank GOD, his glucose (normal), and they gave him another Valium shot, this time in the muscle. We also came back with some antibiotics we are supposed to give him every 12 hours, which we have been doing faithfully.

After the second shot he seemed to be doing much better. He started eating normally again, acting more like Skylar, and being okay. We still had to stimulate him to poop, and feed him his medicine, formula, cod liver oil (since its seemed difficult for him to poop for the last few weeks), and a bit of PediaLite/water mix.

However, starting 3 nights ago, he's been having mini-seizures. His eyes dilate wide, he starts hissing at us, jumping scared like something's attacking him, and he looks back over his shoulder like there's a monster trying to eat him. It's over within seconds, and afterwards he's calm and affectionate. It's been happening more often the last few nights and this morning he's been doing it more and more. These ones make him completely paranoid to any loud noise and he poops a little after each seizure is done.

Money is an issue right now so it's hard to find a good vet and pay for a lot of tests or medication, but having Jack act like this is really terrifying and scaring. What should we do?

Reply
Hi
Wow you have taken on a lot, and thank goodness for people like you.

I don’t know what Pedialite is, if it is a human medicine i would stop giving it to him even if it is in small doses as a cats metabolism cannot process chemicals etc. the same way as humans can.

It may well be that one of the reasons the mother cat abandoned this kitten is because he is lets say not right. Cats can sense this and it may be that he was oxygen deprived during birth for a little while and he may have some brain damage, or may suffer from epilepsy.
Unfortunately only further tests from the vets and proper medication is the only way to try and control this situation. I have found this page online about epilepsy which you may find of further help
http://www.pethealthinfo.org.uk/cats/health_epilepsy.html
I hope you are able to help him, he is very lucky to have good people like yourself who have looked after him so far.

Best wishes kate

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