Following are selected posts to the Holisticat (TM) Mailing List on the subject of kittens and kitten care. There's a lot of information here, and the posts are arranged in ascending chronological order. If there is a particular word you're looking for, it's probably best to utilize the "Find in Page" function in your edit menu!
Happy hunting :)
<28 June 98 From Sharon Scott Re: Another Kitten Formula>
Thought you might like to have yet another recipe for Glop. This is one that I have used for a very long time and the kittens (and cats) love it. After you mix it up, pour it into ice trays that have been sprayed with a non stick spray and freeze, then take out of trays and put in freezer bags. Take out what cubes you need and microwave. I usually double or triple the recipe and then I always have the formula when I need it.
KITTEN FORMULA
Sharon Scott
Gabbycats Persians
Sandy,
Litter-training a kitten is a snap. Just take a pan about The size that you make a cake in so that the sides are not too high for the kitten to get into. Put regular clay litter in the pan. Place the kitten in the pan and scratch the litter with your finger. If the kitten has an accident, put the accident in the litter pan. The scent will also tell the kitten where to go and what to do when the kitten gets there. The mother cat will show her kittens how to do this, but lack of a mother makes us work a little. It doesn't take very much, though. They are almost automatically litter trained. Perhaps a 1/4 teaspoon of pure pumpkin (not the pumpkin pie mix) mixed into the food will help to clean out the kitten's intestinal tract. A small amount of milk would loosen up the stool, too, but too much milk can dehydrate any cat or kitten. I do kitten rescues all the time. My last group of five were two hours old when I got them and they are now seven week old healthy rascals!!! I end up doing a whole bunch of tube feeding to help them make it and to make sure they all get enough to eat, but seeing them thrive is so wonderful.
You can forward my post to anyone who would benefit from it.
Marilyn
Here is a tried and true recipe that my cat vet gave me. She did not like using KMR. Also, it is fresher and inexpensive!
Kitten Formula:
To warm it up, I boiled water and poured it into a coffee cup. I then put the kitten bottle with the milk in it, into the coffee cup. I would swirl the bottle around to evenly heat up the milk. Test the milk on your wrist and if it is too hot, you can run the bottle under the tap water. I keep the coffee cup with me and place the bottle in the water in between handling the kittens.
Also, make sure that the kittens are eliminating. You can take cotton balls frequently and wet them with warm water to simulate the mother cat licking them.
Keep the kittens warm by providing a heating pad with the setting on low and keep it covered with a towel. I also provided the kittens an area where they could move off of the heating pad if they wanted to sleep on a cooler surface.
Chris
Diarrhea can strip or irritate the bowel and intestinal lining because
it is acidic and will cause blood in the stool to various degrees
depending on the severity of damage to the lining. The nurse
was on the right track IMO with her recommendations. You are
correct that deworming a kitten that is already weakened is poor judgement.
And because the bowel and intestine must continue to work, it can take
a long time for it to heal itself. That means you could be fighting
this for months to come,
even if you can pull this kitten thru and he eventually is eating solid
food. But in my experience they will eventually grow out of this
as they reach adulthood. The kitten has developed a collitus type syndrome,
where they alternate back and forth between diarrhea and constipation.
Each time the stool becomes more normal, the added friction of the solid
stool can reirritate the fragile bowel lining and cause diarrhea to return,
because an irritated bowel prevents proper absorption. The diarrhea
is acidic and causes some pain and discomfort in the form of burning, further
irritating the lining. All you can do is try to break the cycle,
which takes time.
I'd recommend that you give this kitten a couple drops of pure pecton (the kind you get at the supermarket in the canning section), which will help to gel the stool, sooth and relieve some of the irritation. It will provide a protective coating to the intestinal lining that may ease the irritation. This is actually one of the ingrediants in Kaopectate. Stop all the other things (chloraphyl, garlic, slippery elm, etc.) that you have been switching back and forth. Constant changing back and forth like this can in itself be irritating and exaserbate the problem. If diarrhea is SEVERE and you cannot stop it, you may even consider giving the kitten a few drops of Immodium, combined with the Pecton. I have saved 2 kittens by doing this, that failed to respond to any other treatment.
Good luck with your baby and please keep the fanciers list posted as
to the situation. I hope the precious little thing makes it!!
Bev
LYONHART PERSIANS
Some folks use egg substitute instead of the raw egg yolk. It is fresher than KMR and kitties really thrive on it, as do pregnant and nursing queens. And the "ice cube tray" trick really adds to the convenience! Here it is...
Pour it into ice cube trays, freeze, then put in zip lock bags in freezer.
Take out only what is needed & heat in microwave until warm. Note:
You can also add a drop or two of Pet Tinic or pinch of powdered vitamin/mineral
supplement to this formula for boosted nutrition on recouperating kittens.
--------------
Or you can use almost the same combination, slightly different proportions. Instead of goat's milk and pediolyte, use Carnation Evaporated milk and Hellman's (Best's if you are from CA) real Mayonnaise.... works wonders with mom and with kittens whether as supplementation or full nutrition. In the refrigerator (unfrozen) it lasts for 3 weeks as a gel, and can be rewarmed at low in the microwave.
RECIPE FOR KITTEN MILK SUBSTITUTE
INGREDIENTS:
<< Onion powder, an ingredient that may trigger a form of anemia called "Heinz-body anemia." >>
Perhaps not onion powder but onions in some form are ok to use right? (I know I read it in Fraziers book).
******************************************************
This page http://www.petlifeweb.com/dj98/pndj98-2.htm
says "Garlic, if fed continuously in excess, can cause Heinz-body
anemia in dogs, cats and other animals."
**********************************************
There is a ferret FAQ http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/pets/ferret-faq/part2/faq-doc-16.html
that says
"Onions, garlic, and other members of that family can cause Heinz body
anemia in dogs and cats; nobody's sure about ferrets, or what the dangerous
dose might be (the tiny bit in some meat baby foods is probably fine),
but caution is advised."
but the author says "Please note: I am not a ferret expert, and I did
not write, nor did I independently verify, all the information in this
file." So she's just read this somewhere and is repeating it.
****************************************************
aha, finally something about cats - - http://www.catdoctor.com/prevnote.htm a December 1995 "health alert" saying that this has not hit the vet journals yet but
"One of my clients, Cindy Harris, recently noticed an article on her
on-line service, Prodigy, and forwarded it to me. It seems that
Gerbers recently reformulated its baby food in a way that is potentially
very harmful to cats and kittens. Gerbers added onion
powder to its strained meat baby foods to make it taste better. Unfortunately,
the food can now cause a serious heinz body anemia (low red blood cell
count) in cats. I called Gerbers and they confirmed the change in their
food. I am currently checking with Beechnut to see if their baby food is
still safe."
****************************************************
if anyone is in Australia near a university, or anywhere with access
to a college of veterinary medicine - you might be able to find this
article in Australian Veterinary Practitioner Vol. 26 No 3. March
1996
Heinz Body haemolytic Anaemia Induced by Garlic or Onion (listed
by name, but no content I could figure out how to get to), at http://www.farmwide.com.au/nff/vetasscn/asava/contents.htm
*********************************************************
Sounds like the onion powder wouldn't have hurt human kids (other than those with the congenital problem). I can't imagine that baby food meat is a good regular diet for kitties anyway (with or without onion powder). I can see that onion powder would be more concentrated than onions, but it still seems likely that it would take *habitual* use to cause problems. Not that I'm recommending deliberately feeding a "bad thing" - - just trying to get a clearer picture of just *how* sensitive cats are to onion and garlic. My cats *love* garlic (which they get probably about once a week) and I have read good things about it as well as these negative things.
I am looking back up at the Pet Life site quoted above - it specifies problems with garlic fed *continuously* and *in excess*. Is it the same for onions?
jane (the other one :-)
Hi all,
It's me again. I got this paper called Why does the cat require a high protein diet? by Q.R. Rogers and J.G. Morris from University of California Davis. So I thought it might be interesting to share with you all.
There are two reasons why any animals including human need protein. 1)protein is required to provide the essential amino acids; meaning to provide the carbon skeletons (together with nitrogen and sulphur for part of the essential amino acids), for protein synthesis and for the variety of other derivatives, such as carnitine and several biogenic amines. 2) Protein is required to provide nitrogen; meaning to provide nitrogen for a wide variety of compounds such as dispensable aminoacids, creatine, heme, purines, pyrimidines choline, etc.
For the reason of 1), they alter the cat's diet to see what amino acid is required for growth and if cat requires higher amount of amino acids than any other animals.
The essential amino acid for cats are Arginine, Histidine, Isoleucine, Methionine, Leucine, Lysine, Phenylalanine, Threonine, tryptophan, Valine. Inadequate synthesis amino acids are Asparagine, Cystine, Glycine or Serine, Taurine. Adequate synthesis amino acids are Alanine, Aspartic acid, Glutamine, Proline, Serine of Olycine, Tyrosine.
When they left out those essential amino acids, the kitten gain weight slower than with those amino acids. Inadequate synthesis amino acid had little influence in weight gain. Adequate synthesis amino acids had no effect on weight gain.
The most unusual and unique finding came when they left Arginine out of their diets. Rather than showing a day's lag of neither gain or loss, kittens lost weight in the first day. By the end of the second day, two kittens were aphagic and lethargic. When Arginine was included in their diet, they promptly recovered. They could not believe what they saw, so they made sure with second test with different group. This time two kitten had diarrhea. Although ammonia intoxication was suspected, the blood test did not show elevated ammonia levels. But it did show low arginic and extensive hyperglycaemia. The symptoms of Arginine-free diet are hypersalivation and frothing from the mouth, depression with eye closed, nodding of the head, hyperaesthesia, sudden hyperactivity, moaning, ataxia, tetanic spasms with emprosthotonus. Even with low Arginine, the kittens had diarrhea and was vomiting. The cat is unable to make Ornithine, and unable to make Arginine even if Ornithine is provided. This is very different from other animals
However, the required levels for Alginine for cat's growth was not more than any other animals. Therefore, the cat required a high protein diet because of an unusually high requirement for one or more of the essential amino acids is nullified.
Next for the reason 2), they examined the effect of level of dietary protein on possible adaptation in hepatic nitrogen catabolic enzymes. Most mammals can adjust to various levels of protein intake. If the animals are fed low protein, hepatic amino acid catabolic enzymes decrease so that a lower proportion of the amino acids from the diet are catabolized. This enable s the animals to conserve nitrogen. And when animals are fed high protein, the opposite will happen.
They fed adult cats either high (70%) or low (17.5%) protein diets for one month and checked the activities of three urea cycle enzymes and several nitrogen catabolic enzymes in liver. They found little difference between enzymes activities of cats fed the low as compared to the high protein diet. This means enzyme activities in cat remains the same low or high protein diets. Nitrogen catabolic enzymes are permanently set to handle a high protein diet and that cat's liver does not have the capability of adjusting the activities of the nitrogen catabolic enzymes, thus resulting in a high obligatory nitrogen loss when cats are fed a low protein diet. So, this os why the cat needs high protein diet.
-- Yumi
Hi, I said I'd write about what we did to promote Thistle's recovery after my husband rescued her from the middle of a busy intersection at a freeway ramp.
The first question was about finding her original owners, but this turned
out not to be an option anyhow, since Benson said he had no intention of
giving her back to anyone after risking his butt to get her out from under
a moving car. The vet did feel that she had been poorly cared for,
and that she would likely have survived outside only a night or two at
the most, which did not explain the whopping intestinal infection, worm
infestation, and flea colony. He could have been wrong, of course,
but I
can at least tell myself she probably didn't slip away from a doting
owner. (She was WAY too tiny and slow to have "zoomed" out from underfoot
in a doorway.)
She was about eight weeks old but small for her age. She was shaking with terror and had fleas, but was not dirty. When I got her settled down she refused food, but she threw up some cheap cat food and had foul diarrhea. I did not get anything down her before taking her to the vet several hours later. She was clingy, but seemed woozy. He said she was slightly dehydrated and had fairly severe worms and intestinal infection. Herecommended:
Pedialyte (forced)
acidophilus milk
kaopectate
amoxicillin
I started her on Pedialyte by syringe that night, and she perked up noticeably. I also gave some KMR (yeah, I know, it's cow's milk, but I had to get some nutriment down her!) which she took eagerly from the syringe. Her first order of business was to wash and wash and wash. No real play for the first couple of days.
The next day I applied some Frontline, just TWO drops, which worked great. I also started the amoxicillin. For two more days she would drink a little KMR mixed with pedialyte, and eat a fragment of cooked turkey, but basically was getting most of her nutrition via KMR mixed with turkey liver paste and finely ground turkey by syringe. At the end of the third day she was chewing vigorously on the syringe so I switched to just bowl feedings, with pedialyte a couple of times after that by syringe. EVERY time she had some Pedialyte she was clearly more active for a while, so even after the dehydration seemed to have passed I think she was still running a low fluid balance.
I never did use the Kaopectate, since you can no longer get the original version with just kaolin and pectate. (NOTE for anyone using this product! It has changed and is now chemical!) I also used acidophilus/bifidus powder during and after the amoxicillin, rather than acidophilus milk which my pharmacist says does not have a reliable level of organisms anyhow.
Thistle has made a complete recovery and is the sweetest and nuttiest kitten. My poor confused Abyssinian, Rusticat, drags her around by the scruff of the neck and can't seem to figure out where to put her. She doesn't seem to mind this, but then she tortures him a lot when he wants to sleep.
She is now eating part raw, part cooked, and part canned like the rest of the crew. I am using Wysong Nurture for her dry overnight munchies on the nightstand. She's still pretty skittish about car noise, but I take her for a ride every couple of days and she is doing better with that. She crosses her little blue eyes and waves her paws ineffectually at people who are introduced to her. She is very trusting and has responded well to our house rule (nobody picks up a cat without asking permission). When Thistle is picked up, she considers herself to be very safe and won't try to get away if frightened of something. All in all, we're hooked... cat #4 and now we have to play kitty shuffle when the landlord comes around! Thank heavens the two black ones count as only one if you aren't looking closely.
Leslie
I'm tooting my horn a bit here but my current litter of kittens is one day shy of eight weeks old today AND NO URI -- NO HERPES -- NO CALC SYMPTOMSI!! By this time with the last three litters, they were already REALLY, REALLY sick.
After the fiasco with the previous litters from two different queens (rampant URI, herpes, eye ulcers and ringworm) I almost didn't breed again.
Except for a few minor slips, kittens who seemed a little off and didn't eat well for a couple of days, and one kitten with idiopathic vestibular syndrome, all of which was treated successfully with homeopathy, they've remained healthy, happy kittens.
So, pooh on the [herpes/URI/calci] "carrier" mentality. You CAN beat these diseases with a raw diet and homeopathy.
Of course, as I type this e-mail I'm pounding very heavily on my wooden desk. <G>
Michelle
Hi Susan
Having no experience with kittens, this is what I've come up with in Kaethryn Walker's "Homeopathic First Aid":
8 oz evaporated milk
8 oz spring water
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp corn syrup
Mix everything together. Warm up (on the stove) about a half cup at a time; feed with a small dropper. The mother might do well with a dose of aconite. Walker also suggests that if this formula isn't holding the kittens very well, then you could add some baby rice cereal to the mix to fill them up a little better. If the mother is unable to clean them, Diane may have to assume that responsibility, as well as helping the kittens to eliminate properly.
"Birth to fifth day, keep temperature 85-90 degrees Farenheit. Decrease gradually to 75 degrees F by four weeks of age. Keep area free from drafts and provide a warm floor; peace and quiet. Provide an area that is undisturbed by noises, excessive vibrations, and foot traffic. Nest boxes: line them with towels on the bottom and along the sides.
During the first two to three weeks of age, include several rolled-up washcloths, tied securely with string to provide sleepy young with quiet nests to rest undisturbed by their more restless or energetic siblings.
Formula, preparation utensils, and feeding equipment must all be sanitary (washed with soap and water then thoroughly rinsed). To prevent spoilage, prepare no more formula than can be used within a 24 hour period. Bottle in amounts needed for each feeding. Refrigerate bottles until needed. Warm formula to near 100 degrees F,or about body temperature (formula will feel neither warm nor cold to the touch). Feed amounts according to ages and appetites using proper feeding techniques.
As puppies and kittens develop over the first four weeks of life, there
is a correlation between steady weight gain and the increasing firmness
of
the stool. If diarrhea develops, modify infant formula for those kittens
*only* by reducing the amount of water by one half. When diarrhea ceases,
gradually increase the water content of the formula by one tablespoon per
day until you are feeding the standard recipe.
When newborn puppies and kittens are not eating, they should be sleeping." For the mother:
I hope some of this can help! As I say, I've got no experience with
kittens, particularly newborns. There are several versions of the kitten
formula but this is the basic. If the mother is in a lot of pain, it might
be wise to call the vet -- pain after spaying is normal, but b/c cats have
such a high pain threshold, if this lasts for any period of time, it's
best to do something about it asap. Pain is a pretty good indication of
problems, and hopefully there are no complications from surgery,
but she's been through alot in the past few days.
Good luck!
Kathy and the cats
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