The Fosters: It's Always Something

derrycats

May 19

Just when things were going so well, I went to check on Rebecca and her kittens this morning, only to find a ton of diarrhea from Rebecca. She'd filled the litter box and moved on to the floor. Sigh. It resulted in a day of back and forth with the vet's office, but the end result was a visit at the end of the day, after many more bouts of diarrhea for the poor girl.

Turned out she has a small fever, just 103, but a fever nonetheless. And she was incredibly dehydrated. So they gave her fluids at the vet's and the rest of the bag came home with me to continue them on a daily basis for a bit. Because she is nursing she really can't take very many medications, but she is now getting a probiotic with her food, and hopefully she can fight off whatever this is. I dropped off a fecal for testing this morning too. We're very limited in what deworming we can do while she's nursing, but we'll see what's up and go from there. Sigh.

The other worry is that 4/5 of the kittens went down, some significantly, in weight from Tuesday to Wednesday. The two smallest ones are really well below what they need to be, in the two week old range for weight, even though they are four weeks + old. So I got a lot of good hints and help from our bottle feeder today, and I am now supplementing those two kittens with kitten milk replacer every three hours during the times I'm up during the day, but not at night, at least not yet. But if they've lost more weight by the morning tomorrow (Thursday) the vet wants to see all of them too. Hopefully Rebecca doesn't have a virus which she passes along. Given how dehydrated she was, that may have affected Rebecca's ability to produce as much milk, so hopefully things will improve.

And the last crazy bit is that we will be getting a foster dog tomorrow, which I anticipate being a very quick turn around. Ace is a return from someone who adopted him last year, a 25 lb beagle/jack russell mix, about 4 years old now. His adopter became incapacitated and cannot care for him anymore He had 13 applications come in on him last year in just four weeks, and I'm hoping for a similar result this time around! He is evidently dog friendly, but not dying to play with everyone, and cat friendly - was fostered with cats when he was with us last. I have the commitment that if he isn't good with cats, he will go elsewhere immediately. Our cats have been through enough in the last year. He's supposed to be a good walker, and a generally nice dog. Hope so. He comes Thursday evening. This is a bad picture of him from last year...I'll try to get better photos of the guy. He needs his vaccinations updated, a 4DX test, and a fecal, and hopefully he will be good to go. My goal is to get him adopted by the end of June (or sooner!).