In October 2019, I decided to take a litter of 7 with mom. Large litters tend to be harder to place in shelters. They were supposed to be an easy litter, which I was looking forward to after a difficult kitten season.
The night of day 2 I noticed two of the kittens seemed a little run down. It can be hard to assess kittens when they have a mother because you don’t know how much they are eating. But to be safe, I gave them both fluids and dextrose. The following morning, about 6 hours later, I noticed they hadn’t improved. I gave additional fluids and decided if they weren’t better by 8, I would take to the shelter for the vet to assess. Unfortunately, both kittens proceeded to rapidly decline and the decision was made to euthanize.
I knew immediately what I was looking at: panleukopenia. The shelter confirmed later that day with a test. (They had been out of tests that morning and had to wait until they arrived.) A day or two later, a third kitten rapidly declined and required euthanasia. All three developed the peracute form the disease, which develops very rapidly and is 100% fatal (usually within 24 hours).
Two of the four remaining kittens developed the acute form, but it didn’t exhibit itself in the normal form with diarrhea and vomiting. Panleuk destroys the immune system and sometimes exhibits as a severe form of another illness, like a URI. Miracle had a severe URI the lingered much longer than I’ve seen.
He was congested, had ulcers in his mouth, and refused to eat. And because he had teeth and was still very alert, tube feeding wasn’t an option. Force feeding also proved problematic because anything I would put in his mouth, he’d spit out.
Instead, I made a mixture of 50% chicken broth, 50% Pedialyte, and Fortiflora. I then syringe fed this slowly into him. I figured out if you put a small amount at a time, the kitten instinctively swallows. I did this every 2 hours. Each feeding took at least 30 minutes. I also gave Sub-Q fluids and dextrose every 6 hours.
By day three I started to lose confidence. I wondered if I was making any progress or if I was keeping him alive in spite of himself–which can be inhumane. I didn’t want the kitten to continue to suffer if he wasn’t going to survive. I reached out to the vet, who advised me to compare weights. Thankfully, I had weighed the kitten 24 hours earlier and got a new weight.
He weighed exactly the same.
The fact the kitten had not lost weight was enough for me to keep trying. If he had lost weight, I would know that he wasn’t getting enough to eat and essentially starving to death on top of everything else. It would be evidence that everything we were doing was not enough and euthanasia should strongly be considered.
But that wasn’t the issue. So I kept going. I also decided to try Vicks Vaposteam in the nebulizer. I was desperate to get this kitten to breathe so he could eat. At that time, I had used Vicks Vaposteam in vaporizers but never the nebulizer. But I found a source that recommended it, and I didn’t have anything to lose.
After two nebulizing treatments about 8 hours apart, I noticed a different. He was finally eating on his own. I quickly moved to feeding him a slurry of Baby Cat canned, kitten formula, and Pedialyte.
Once I got him eating, he started to improve. He did develop a large lump on his back. This lump was in the same place I gave him his fluids. According to the vet, the lump developed due to the trauma of the vaccines. (And he hated them so wiggling was an issue.) Because he was so sick, his body didn’t have time to deal with the trauma at the time. Instead, it dealt with it afterwards. The lump disappeared about a week later. It was very strange because the hair didn’t fall out and I have no idea where the lump went.
Despite the set back, Miracle was able to gain weight and was sent back to the shelter for surgery and adoption a few weeks later. With panleuk, I had to make the difficult choice to have him stay at the shelter rather than return after surgery. The risk of his sibling who didn’t have panleuk contracting it was too high.