I could really use some advice. My boyfriend and I adopted an 8 week old kitten from the Central Florida SPCA yesterday. She was apparently a stray kitten that someone brought in, not sure if her mother was brought in with other kittens as well or what. She was spayed at the SPCA on the 16th. She is fully vaccinated and negative on everything. When we first saw her yesterday, she was alert and noisy, a little boisterous; typical kitten. She is extremely skinny though (2.8lbs was the last weight the SPCA had on her, but as of last night she weighs 2.3lbs). We decided to name her Parfait.
We brought her home and introduced her briefly to our other cat, Eggnog. Afterward, I set Parfait up in the bathroom with her brand new kitty bed, litter pan, food, water and toys. I noticed immediately that she seemed extremely thirsty and was sneezing a little, but shrugged it off. She refused both dry food and wet kitten food. I shrugged this off as typical; getting used to a new environment, nervous, etc. Steadily throughout the day, her activity level decreased, until very rapidly she seemed to become rather listless. Still increasingly thirsty. Still refused food. Well, later in the evening she vomited a large amount of liquid bile. And I mean...excessively large. At that point, I knew something had to be wrong. I called the nearest emergency animal hospital, as it was quite late at night, and had my boyfriend come home from class so we could take her in as they recommended we do.
The vet said she was running a low-grade fever, stuffy-nosed and dehydrated. She said Parfait most likely has an Upper Respiratory Infection (URI) but that it could develop into Pneumonia or is something else entirely. It's hard to say I guess? Well, they gave her a shot of antibiotics and injected her with a large amount of fluids underneath her skin. They sent us home with Chlorpheniramine to increase her appetite, and the antibiotic, Clavamox to fight off secondary infections. Also gave us a can of AD.
She ate a little AD this afternoon, seemed really eager, which was a great sign. She is drinking water still, and urinating, but we're rationing how much water she can have so she'll keep it all down.
The vomiting has continued, once last night while I was sleeping in the bathroom with her to keep an eye on her (Kurt and I are taking shifts), once this evening, which was hours after she'd eaten the AD, and another time this evening while we ran to the store to get her some Pedialight, milk replacer and chicken baby food (only ingredients are chicken and chicken broth, smells really strongly, stronger than AD). I mixed up some of the pedialight and meat baby food and tried to convince her to drink, which she wouldn't, so I syringe-fed her which she is definitely not happy with.
I'm having trouble with the appetite pills as well, thus I've resorted to crushing them up, mixing them with pedialight and syringe-feeding them.
I'm just really concerned about the vomiting and the lack of appetite. I'm not sure what else I should be doing for her. I just had the shower turned up max heat for about fifteen minutes to help create steam and open her nasal passages, so I hope that's going to help clear her nose out. Her eyes are fine, except for her exposed haw (third eyelid). If she throws up again, we're taking her to the vet tomorrow to see what else they can do for her. Maybe she just needs more fluids.
