Are my 3 week old kittens constipated?

[salt&pepper´smommy]

Hi, I just joined this forum hoping I can get this doubt out of my mind. I adopted on Tuesday, what seemed to be according to the vet 2 abandoned 2 and a half 3 week old kittens. I found them at my university campus, they were born under the library, and they were crying in the morning when I arrived, and when I was leaving in the afternoon, they were still crying even more desperately. I aproach them and they calmed down a bit, I asked around and some men working on a landscape proyect nearby, they told me that the mother changed the rest of the litter to another place, and left these two alone since the morning, and didn´t came back. They were more than starving, I took them to the vet, he told me their age, one of them had not opened his or her eyes yet, the other one was fully alert. He gave a vitamin gel to give them, put some flea drops for newborns on them and gave two bottles to feed them. Since he didn´t have any kitty formula, he told me to give them a mix of half carnation milk and half chamomille tea, they drank it and went to sleep. They had quite a night, especially the one that had the eyes closed a withe one. I ended up calling them salt and pepper, because the smallest is wihte and the other one is king of gray and black, looks like pepper. On Wenesday their urine was very concentrate, but they hadn´t pooped yet. On Thursday morning I was rubbing pepper´s tummy and urinated lot on me and then pooped, it looked and smelled like cheese, he has been urinating ok, and everytime requires less help. Yesterday I was about to feed him and he did the same thing, at night again and today he did it on my brother looking very innocent, and also he did it on their bed. But hasn´t pooped. The other one hasn´t pooped yet but he has been urinating fine, he needs help tough. The vet told me on Thursday that to give them more tea and less milk, it seemed to work, because they starting urinating more and less concentrated, and also told me to use baby suppositories for constipation, I haven´t try those yet, since their tummies are not swollen and haven´t show signs of distress. They only cry when they are hungry or want some attention. They do suckle a lot, especially salt, pepper is starting to bite, it seems as if he is eating my finger. Salt started to bite today. He is a momma´s kid. There´s some sibling rivalery, but they can´t sleep without each other. Pepper started walking today, and salt is making a very good efort, he is a quite a climber, he can get out of their box in an instant and can climb my legs all the way to my neck. They are more confident, they sleep trough the nigth and are more alert, they even know when I´m in the room. Still I´m worried about they not pooping, I´m not sure if pepper is ready to do it on a litter box, since he´s acting more like a cat every day. Salt needs help to go, but hasn´t pooped yet, they both burp and everything after the feedings, they even purr. So what can I do?

[MissDolittle]

Welcome on board! ;)

Please stop feeding what you are feeding them immediately and get commercial kitten milk replacer. Anything cow milk, carnation, canned, fresh, skimmed, doesn't matter..it will cause digestive problems that small kittens and without a strong immune system, they cannot handle it, dehydrate and die (in the worst scenario).

So, do what you can to get the KMR. In the meantime you can feed them some plain yogurt to calm down the stomach, but not too much either. I doubt they'll eat much of it anyways.

I don't know about the tea part, since they naturally don't drink it I can't imagine it being of any nutritional value for them.

Once the nutrition is right, everything else will fall into place by itself.

[salt&pepper´smommy]

thanks, for the nutrition part i´m giving them a vitamin gel thing the vet prescribed, it´s for convalescent animals, pregnant animals, youngsters in development, they have gained some weigth tough and salt grew much more hair than he had on Tuesday; pepper was all fluffy when I got them. The vet said to give them tiny bits, more like tiny dabs, since they are so small, before I feed them. Salt takes it all rigth, he hasn´t that cat instinct yet, pepper it´s harder to decive he knows that those are vitamins. I´ll try to get the KMR tomorrow, rigth now they are sound asleep. They sleep hugging each other. Can the KMR be purchased on a pet store or from a vet?

[MissDolittle]

The vitamins sound alright, however, you won't need them when you have the KMR, because it has everything the kittens need.

However, when the eyes are open and the teeth are coming in, it's time to start weaning them, which can take a month, so you will need the Kitten Milk Replacer (KMR), which can be purchased at Walmart, any Pet store and so far I thought, at any Vet's office too, but I guess not every vet has it on the menu.

[MissDolittle]

I forgot to mention that when you get the KMR, it probably will say to use 1 oart of powder (I suggest to buy the powder, not the liquid stuff in the can) and 2 parts of water.

In the beginning use less powder and more water. Do NOT feed full strength right away...gradually increase the amount of powder over the first 2 days until the formula is full strength. Otherwise you'll shock their already stressed digestive system.

You are doing a good job!!!! Keep up the good work :).

[salt&pepper´smommy]

thanks, I´m going to get along with the KMR some litter and a litter box to start training pepper, he poope just a while ago, normal color and texture, without help, almost on me. I´m starting to see a behaivior pattern, he looks up to me very inocently and the he strikes, just as he did yesterday when he peed on my brother. Salt hasn´n pooped yet, but he´s fine, active, alert and playfull. Only that I´m still in doubt with him if he´s a dominant white or albino. He´s white and pink all over, he has difficulty opening his eyes when there´s a bright light, but his eyes had not changed color yet to determine what he is. I´m not sure if he is deaf yet. Another thing that has me puzzled is that they are both walking already specially pepper, he can walk in a straigth line towards his objective, salt still strugles a bit, they can both climb out of their box now and they don´t need to suckle as much. They have all scrached up tough.

[MissDolittle]

Sounds like it's all working out for you! :)

Where did get that from that white kittens are supposed to be deaf? That only goes for certain dog breeds as far as I know. I had lots of white cats and kittens and none of them was deaf.

[salt&pepper´smommy]

Oh, the vet told me that there was a probability that salt could be deaf, so I google it, and found out that dominant white cats, white cats with blue eyes are 60 to 80% prone to being deaf due to the gene that makes their eyes blue. Salt is white as snow with ligth pink paws, ears, nose, but he is responsive to soud or at least it seams, anyway if his eyes stay blue he is a very lucky kitty, if they turn pink he is most likely albino. BTW, he learned to pee on his own. Pepper emptied his whole intestine, he learned to control his anus he pooped the rest of the waste he was holding back, it still was normal color and consistency only a little stinkier that the first time, so i´m watching closely to theach both of them to use the litter box, I just presented it to him and salt, he is still getting the hang of the squading thing.

[MissDolittle]

I have to say that this is the first thing I have heard of this white animal/blue eyes and being deaf in regards to cats. I have a white cat with blue eyes, raised at least a 50 kittens like that and none of them was ever deaf. I have a feeling that this is either a myth or highly exaggerated.

[WingedCat]

messeybeast.com is a pretty good resource for odd cat facts (they have a very interesting section about the so called winged cats ;) ) Anyway, here is a snip of their page about white cats:

http://www.messybeast.com/whitecat.htm

WHITE CATS AND DEAFNESS

A few years back I was asked three related questions on a newsgroup. This article is adapted from my answer.

- Are white cats, particularly blue eyed white cats, always deaf or is this an old wives' tale?
- Is deafness linked only to odd-eyed white cats?
- Some blue-eyed whites aren't deaf - why?

There is an established link between the white coat color, blue eyes and deafness. The tapetum lucidum is generated from the same stem cells as melanocytes (pigment cells). The blue eyes in a piebald or epistatic white cat indicates a lack of tapetum. Deafness is caused by an absence of a cell layer in the inner ear that originates from the same stem cells as well. In odd-eyed white cats, the ear on the blue-eyed side may be deaf, but the one on the orange-eyed side usually has normal hearing. Not all blue-eyed whites will be deaf since there are several different genes causing the same physical attributes (whiteness, blue-eyedness) so it all depends on the cat's genotype (its genetic make-up) not its phenotype (its physical appearance). Some people claim that 99% of blue-eyed white cats are deaf. This is inaccurate because blue-eyedness and whiteness can both be caused by different genes. It all depends on what genes the cat has inherited. These are the actual figures from scientific studies around the world. The percentages are given in ranges because results are different in different areas, partly because of the different genes found in the cat population. Where a cat is classed as deaf, the deafness may affect one or both ears.

* 95% of the general cat population is non-white cats (i.e. not pure white) and congenital deafness is extremely rare in non-white cats.
* 5% of the general cat population is white cats (i.e. pure white). 15-40% of these pure white cats have one or two blue-eyes.
* Of those white cats with one or two blue eyes, 60-80% are deaf; 20-40% have normal hearing; 30-40% had one blue eye and were deaf while 60-70% had one blue eye and normal hearing.
* Of the 5% of white cats in the overall population, 60-80% had eyes of other colors (e.g. orange, green). Of those 10- 20% were deaf and 80-90% had normal hearing.
* Deaf white cats with one or two blue eyes account for 0.25 - 1.5 of total cat population
* Total number of cats with white coat and blue eyes account for 0.75 - 2.0% of total cat population

It is evident from those studies that blue eyed whites exhibit a higher incidence of deafness than do orange/green eyed whites or non-white cats! But not all blue eyed whites are deaf and here's why:-

There is a known link between white coat color, blue eyes and deafness - but since the coat and eye color can be caused by different genes it means that only some blue eyed whites are deaf. There is a gene/gene complex which causes white coat, blue eyes and deafness, but not all cats get their white coat and blue eyes from that particular gene, so not all white cats will be deaf.

If the cat is a Foreign/Oriental White, it carries the gene for 'Siamese Blue Eyes' which is not linked to deafness (the gene for Siamese Blue Eyes is linked to cross-eyes instead). Siamese blue eyes have a reflective tapetum, but this is depigmented because the Siamese colour is caused by albinism. This depigmentation gives the red-eye with flash cameras. Random matings can mean that this gene sometimes appears in non Oriental-looking cats which have colorpoint cats in their ancestry.

Congenital deafness can also be caused by a variety of hereditary factors, just as in humans. Due to random mutation or the wide gene pool, cats of any color can be born deaf (probably less than 1%) - including orange-eyed whites. Hence deaf white cats with non-blue eyes can occasionally appear and in these cases the deafness is not linked to coat color. Deafness can also be caused by illness or injury, so a person adopting a deaf cat may not know whether the cat was born that way or became deaf later on.

There are also green-eyed white cats, the Russian Angora is green-eyed and white is a favorite color. Green-eyed white cats have a lower incidence of deafness than blue-eyed white cats because the gene for white they carry does not normally affect their eye color. It is similar for orange eyed whites; they rarely have congenital deafness. Genetic expression is very variable and orange-eyed/odd-eyed/blue-eyed whites are interbred in many breeds - hence up to 20% of non-blue-eyed, white cats may have some degree of hearing impairment depending on what gene is causing them to have a white coat.

So overall, blue-eyed white cats stand a higher than usual chance of being deaf; but they are not guaranteed to be deaf. Odd-eyed white cats may be deaf on the blue-eyed side. If you have a deaf white cat, it is not advisable to breed from it as this would pass the trait along. Deaf white cats are banned from exhibition or breeding by some fancies in Europe and there is a move to reduce or eliminate this trait from British breeding lines of various breeds. Deafness can cause problems because a cat cannot hear danger approaching. It can cause problems to breeders because deaf female cats cannot hear their kittens crying out and may neglect them. Deaf kittens cannot hear their mother calling to them and may get lost. Deaf cats also seem to have no volume control when meowing. For more information see Living With a Deaf Cat.

[salt&pepper´smommy]

thanks for the info, I read something like that, fortunately mi kitty is not deaf, he's starting to respond to his name at least to my voice.

[MissDolittle]

Thanks for the info, those are some numbers I can do with!!!!!!!!!!

[nouri]

I'm glad that everything works so well with Salt & Pepper.