It's been an exciting weekend for the kittens. We took them in on Saturday afternoon for treatment for the most common cause of diarrhea. Their weight loss had slowed by Sunday but not stopped and the litter box was getting worse. The fecal sample also came back negative, but we made an appointment for Tuesday morning since the problem was clearly still going on.
Monday just confirmed they still had something wrong. The diarrhea started showing blood as well (kittens are cute...a lot of caring for them isn't!). I fed them extra food in the afternoon, which is why some of them didn't lose a lot of weight that evening since they were still trying to digest it. That night we did spot something moving in the litter box--ah-ha, worms of some type.
Some types of worms they'd already had the first treatment for, since it's done automatically. The second half of the treatment isn't due until tomorrow. We were supposed to take them in on Thursday, but since we were in this morning we have the doses sitting on the counter and will give them ourselves. They hadn't been treated for tapeworms because they'd shown no sign of fleas. However, tapeworms are notorious for not showing up in fecal samples, and fit the symptoms. So, they got shots for those today.
The CCHS's lab's opinion is they've been treated for about all the parasites that would be causing the problem, so hopefully the next couple days the kittens will recover. They'll be happier and so will we--healthy kittens cause less of a icky mess of the room, though they do tend to knock stuff around more.
On the bright side, all the kittens like people and run over to say "hi" to anyone who comes in their room. They didn't mind the nearly 1 year old that hung out for a while either. They all like climbing on people, most don't mind being picked up. We're still working on Alice and Esme to be calmer about being held; they put up with it but we'd like them to be more relaxed and calm. They are making good progress!
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