The Purr-Therapy Room: Not So Tiny, Tiny Tots

Well I was going to write this much sooner. Alas a course of events that I wasn't quite prepared for happened.

The Tiny Tots had hovered just under the 800 grams for what felt like weeks so I just kept motoring away with them, keeping them fed and happy.

If you took a gamble and tried naming the kittens in the previous post. Pat yourself on the back if you got it right.

Then the occasional sneeze began turning into a series of sneezes.

It came to the point where Mittens was sneezing a lot and dropping weight. She never went lower than 730 grams and never got above the 740 mark. Her siblings were much higher getting extremely close to 800.

Yeah, I fell ill to a virus *pouts* ~ Mittens

I separated Mittens from the others to see if restricting her movement and monitoring how much she was eating would help. Tigger had suffered similar behavior and recovered his weight within a day or so.

I poke my tongue out at virus' *evil laugh* ~ Tigger

That didnt work and she began to show some clear discharge from the nose and one eye.

I knew before Christmas they had something suss going on. The vet gave them a quick once over and said they were fine. Mittens went down hill over Christmas.

Not to the point of emergency vet but she was a lot flatter than all her siblings and just stuffy in the nose. I had to wait until next vet check.

By next check most of Mitten's siblings were over 800 grams. If there hadn't been sniffles going around they would have been returning for sales checks. Alas that was not the case.

They were diagnosed with an Upper Respiratory Infection (URI) and Mittens having been exposed to all the other kittens the vet said it was highly likely that her siblings as well as Cotton and Percy would begin displaying the same symptoms. Mittens was also likely to get worse before she got better.

Unfortunately since there was no secondary infection and what she had was viral there was no treatment other than riding the illness out and hoping it didn't mutate into something that was difficult (if not impossible) to treat.

For two or three days I kept Mittens completely secluded from the others in her new quarters. Cotton and Percy joined the other four Tiny Tots in the big cage and I watched them for any further signs.

I had to heat Mitten's food, syringe feed her at times and generally just make sure she was eating. She wasnt the worst patient I've ever dealt with and although you could tell she felt like crap she didn't fall completely lethargic. The more days that passed she began to actually play.

I'm feeling just a bit under the weather ~ Mittens

The other six kittens beyond the occasional sneeze never developed the same symptoms as Mittens. The vet advised possibly keeping them for three weeks just to make sure but that was a rough estimate. The illness could have run for longer or shorter period of time it depended on the cat.

Mittens conquered the virus, now over 900g

By the end of week one Mittens was doing much better. Cookie, Tigger, Koda and Zorro reached and passed the 1 kilo mark. Cotton and Percy over the 850 gram mark. Mittens began actually rising in weight instead of just leveling out.