HELP! Sudden Kitten Death!

I rescued a kitten yesterday and took him straight to the vet who put him on Clavamax. He seemed to be a little slow moving but i just figured it was his sickness. I was lucky enough to find someone who wanted to adopt him so we both decided to wait until i go back to the vet friday for a check-up befoe i give him to anyone. Tonight, i noticed he wasnt moving much after the last does of Clavamax and shortly after that he died. I ahve been so upset. This little guy was lucky enough to get saved from a life on the streets, but never even made it. I started to blame myself and thought i had given him too much Clavamax but after reading these stories i'm starting to think that he was just sicker than i thought, Poor little guy never had a chance.

I'll have one ready to go online Thursday. We lost Lilo, Sugar and then Sweetie had to be euthanized last Friday. He had whatever killed Sugar. If you go the Flickr under furbyshouse I have tons of pics of the rescued kittens.

Elisa, is there an update on your kitties? How are they doing?

So sorry you are going through this. I too have lost a lot of kits this year to the same thing. I foster for the shelter where I volunteer and have lost around 30 kits (out of 64 fosters)this year. They all did the same thing. They seemed perfectly healthy and then just dropped over dead. One or two may have had the snotty nose but it only showed up a day or even an hour before the poor baby died. Often though they did not have any symptoms at all. Our vet seems to think it is a form of viral pneumonia or a mutated form of panleukopenia. The kittens have been de-wormed, given flea baths, given L-Lysine supplements, and vaccinated, yet still they will suddenly die. Some of them have marginally responded to doxycycline and syringe feeding, while others do not respond to it at all. I wish I knew what to tell you but I too am at a loss. Yes, all of my fosters are kept separated and in their own cages that are sanitized daily but even that does not appear to be helping stop this stuff. The shelter director thought it was something I was doing until she lost two litters at the shelter to the very same thing. Bless you for the work you do and I am sorry. This is the hardest and most awful part of fostering. Just remember that we do save some of them and the ones we lose were much loved during their short time on Earth.

HI i pulled my foster kitties from barrow county in GA they had the usual URI 's when I brought them home but then they all suddenly started getting open sores , abscesses and the like after one died the vets started giving mine stronger and stronger antibiotic but nothing seemed to work in the meantime we had our poor buster necropsy and found out he had a nasty bug called Mycoplasma we started treating them all for it and they are healthy we had to give them doxycycline a very strong antibiotic maybe the vet could check them for that !good luck hope they get better 🙂 <3

Chloramphenicol CAN affect cats' bone marrow, and for this reason is seldom used by vets nowadays - if used at all, be very careful.

Hi Elisa. I just read PawPaw John's comment and I agree with him completely. These poor little babies have hardly a chance because they are the babies of mothers who are probably malnourished and cannot provide milk to their kittens that contains all the essential immune developing and strengthening attributes. And, then, there is the situation with the kittens being taken from their mother too early and dumped in the "shelter" to die. Either way, their immune systems are deficient. Do ask your Veterinarian(s) about the medicine I suggested earlier though, it saved our Pretty Girl when nothing else touched her URI...ALSO..we fed her for almost a week, twice a day, using a syringe w/out the needle...and dripped her, too so that she'd stay hydrated. It was quite a battle but, today, she's well and it is in her past. Hopefully, she has developed a healthy immune response should she be exposed to this or another type of URI, again....good luck and my prayers are with you. Kathy

Hi Elisa,

I am so sorry that the kitties are getting sick. Having just completed Microbiology, I wonder if there is any way your vet could do a culture of the nasal secretions from the sick ones to determine exactly what organism you are dealing with? Once you know exactly what it is, you can figure out what antibiotic they need. I know this might not help, as they might not be able to do it, and cultures can take several days to grow. It might be worth suggesting to the vet to see what he thinks though. You also mentioned colostrum in something else I read. I wonder if it might help them too, since the colostrum is the part of the mother's milk that contains her antibodies that will be passed to the kittens to protect them. You might ask the vet if that would be worth trying to get. I wish you and Laura and all the kitties good health and you will all be in my prayers!

Elisa, so sorry you're losing kittens, but kittens from different sources need to be isolated from each other in separate rooms or in cages several feet apart. I know you don't like cages, but it could make difference between life and death.

Every kitten with no mama to test must be treated as if it could have leuk or FIV - another reason not to mix. Leuk would be main concern - more likely contagious to small kittens without an immune system. Testing under 12 weeks is not reliable - leuk can take up to 60 days after exposure to show up in blood so if exposed by mother or another positive cat they may not yet be showing positive. If you mix, a positive kitty may spread disease to healthy one. Also, are all your other kitties twice tested for leuk/FIV? If not tested twice with at least 60 days between tests you mau have one that has something, especially if they were only tested as young kittens. We always isolate newcomers and test and retest, or wait out the 60 days and then test before introducing them to our other cats.

Kittens lose protection they have from mother's milk once weaned and do not fully develop their own immune system until about 5 months old. Meanwhile they are very vulnerable to viruses and bacterial infections, which you can carry from kitten to kitten on your clothing, shoes and hands, not to mention the various intestinal and blood parasites.

You can't absolutely rule out FIP. No test can determine definitively whether or not a cat has FIP - it can only be diagnosed upon necropsy. However, FIP only rarely strikes more than one cat at a time, is not generally believed to be contagious, and the symptoms don't really sound like FIP. Best way to prevent FIP is wean kittens by 6 weeks and separate from mother and other cats while they don't have good immune systems and are vulnerable. We've done this p
for years and never had an FIP kitty, have lost only about half a dozen kittens, mostly under 4 weeks bottle-feds who came to us beyond help, and in past several years have lost none. Isolation really, really helps keep tiny, vulnerable kittens healthy. For further info see www.dr-addie.com, Dr. Addie is world authority on FIP.

When you get new kittens vaccinate immediately for upper resp and distemper. We use Heska intranasal vaccine - easy to administer (nose drops), gives immediate protection (injectables take up to 10 days and may cause injection-site fibrosarcoma).

Fleas can cause bartonella/anemia; coccidea can cause anemia, but my guess is your kittens had upper resp. that caused pneumonia, which can get them very fast. There is a combination of antibiotics some breeders use successfully - I can look it up as I can't recall it right now, but I think it it is antirobe plus amoxy.

Hope you can get the kittens well soon and that this is is helpful to prevent problems in the future.

I have experienced this with my own cats, not just the kits but with immune compromised adults as well.

I'm no vet, but what I think what you are experiencing is a reaction wherein the kittens immune systems are too immature or are compromised in some way to effectively fight against the infections they have caught. If a kitten or cat also gets a particularly strong strain of URI, you will see this kind of thing happen in healthy kits and cats as well.

In such cases, the infections progress quickly and overpower whatever immune response the cat can mount, which is not much to begin with. Once, I pulled two cats out a trailer where the AC had failed. These cats had been isolated from other cats and people. When they came to my home, they were exposed to all the germs that no longer affected my cats. One cat caught a URI and died despite all our efforts. The other got the infection in her eye and the eye had to be removed.

What we figured was that the cat's immune systems had become compromised because they were never before exposed to the various cat germs and therefore could not mount a response. Another one of my adult cats had a fragile immune system. She was always fighting something and finally died when she caught a URI that her body could not fight.

I should tell you that antibiotics are not very effective in situations like this. They are worth a try, but in most cases they only seem to buy us time. Only through an autopsy could you confirm an immune system problem in most cases, and even then this does not always yield a certain result.

As sad as this is, what you hope for is that this is a result of a normal strain of URI overcoming a cat with a compromised immune system. Other wise, you have an aggressive strain that can infect your other cats. I suggest that until you know for sure, keep your other cats away from the kits. Thoroughly clean all surface areas and spray air sanitizers. You may also want to start any cat with signs of illnesses on antibiotics.

I am so sorry this is happening. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.

Chloramphenicol for Dogs, Cats and Horses

Elisa, first of all, I'm so very very sorry for what you're going through. It seems that this horrible uppern respiratory/infection is cycling among kittens all over the place. We've rescued several kittens who all exhibited the same type of symptoms...fast and furious. Our Veterinarian prescribed a very exotic medication (above)...look it up and share w/your vet. You must be very careful w/this because it effects the bone marrow of we humans (not cats) and so, wash immediately after dispensing it....but, first...see what your Veterinarian(s) say...it saved our kitties who did not respond to Amoxi, Clavamox, Exenol or Baytril...good luck and, again, I am so sorry for these babies and for you, their loving mom.

This has me a bit rattled as all of my fosters are from the same shelter. I have managed to finally get all of my "big" kittens healthy. I picked up 3 new ones last Saturday and they all appeared healthy. I call them the Lil Bits. The smallest of the 3 died Thursday morning (6-23), with no apparent symptoms. The other 2 have been perfectly spunky. I even wondered if mine was neurological, but he was gasping like Elisa described. I'm keeping a close eye on everybody and keeping the Lil Bits quarantined just in case.

Yes i have had this to happen to me!!! I know there is something called fadeing puppy syndrome!!one day they are fine the next they are gone!! but i know the kittens found happines with youif only for a short time!!

Thank GOD! He believes its a respiratory bacterial infection. It's just got us really rattled. It's just progressing so fast. I didn't know if anyone else out there had dealt with anything like this. I've been told to add some homeopathic remedies to the antibiotic treatment. Hopefully the readers can offer some tips.

Sorry to hear this. I am just a layperson as you know and this is a guess but did the vet mention FIP - Feline Infectious Peritonitis? If so and if he/she has said that it is not FIP then ignore this. Please leave a comment to tell me.

It sounds like it to me. This is a disease that is contagious and so will affect cats in close confinement spreading between them.

Incubation: 2-3 weeks. Most cats show no signs of infection but signs are mild respiratory infection: runny nose.

Less than one percent of exposed cats develop the fatal disease called FIP, the secondary disease. It is a common disease.

It most often affect kittens and young cats and older cats.

There is a higher rate of infection in catteries and such places.

The secondary disease is always fatal and cannot be treated to save life - treatment just makes the cat more comfortable. In the wet form fluid builds up in the chest that causes labored breathing. Other signs are dehydration, anemia, vomiting and diarrhea.

If it was FIP get advice from vet because it may spread within your home. New cats entering your home should or could be tested for FIP and isolated for two weeks (vet advice needed).

"FIP presents its greatest hazard in multicat families, shelters...." etc. (Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook).

If it is FIP it may be that the mother had FIP and passed it to her kittens (I have forgotten if these kittens are related). Kittens who receive FIP from mother die quickly and can experience sudden difficulty breathing and die within hours.

I would check this out and other contagious diseases, Elisa.

Best of luck. I'll work on this a bit more as this is just my initial thought.

Read more: Feline FIP

Michael