Post-op care of 3 week old kitten

Re: Post-op care of 3 week old kitten

Martin Atkinson — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 15:59:44 GMT

Its a bit like the starve animals with diarrhoea and vomiting advice we used to give and now know better. We used to give enterectomies/entertomies nil by mouth for 24 hrs then liquid only diets before moving onto solid food. The fact is the serosa has healed within 24 hrs and we lost sight of the fact that however starved the animal was before surgery there is still a nasty bacteria filled soup inside there ready to leak if it hasn't. Despite the logic of this I am still a bit cautious in adults for a day or two but in this case feel any caution is outweighed by the need to get food on board so resume as you were previously (minus bottle teats)!

Re: Post-op care of 3 week old kitten

Anthony Dennison — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 14:53:01 GMT

Anecdotal but:

I once saw a client with a litter of kittens as one had 'a sore leg', no more than 3 weeks old, probably less I think. Kitten had an open # of one of it's hindlimbs which had become horribly infected. I recommended euthanasia, but the family declined this on religious beliefs and asked for any other treatment. So offered euthanasia, though warned of the high GA risk etc. Eventually came in (owner tried to cancel the op and said he had been told it would be fine to splint it...) and kitten did fine. I saw it 10d post-op and it was doing remarkably well!

Re: Post-op care of 3 week old kitten

HollyK — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 08:30:44 GMT

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your comments (and the bump!). We thought if we addressed the teat early it would be better as we could potentially remove it via endoscopy so it was not causing a problem as we anaesthetised him about 10 minutes after the event! Maybe we should have waited, it was a bit of a difficult call (with an army of very worried nurses making it quite high pressure!!)

Overnight he has had bup every 8 hours and small frequent milk feeds and he looks great this morning - fingers crossed!

Thanks again, Holly

Re: Post-op care of 3 week old kitten

Michael Woodhouse — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 22:43:41 GMT

Holly

You don't say if the teat was causing a problem, because you may have left it alone and dealt with it when the cat was bigger.

I would get the kitten back onto whatever it was eating before, just little and often. I can't see hard food being any more risk than milk.

I'd be happy using carefully calculated doses of NSAIDs and add in additional drugs if needed.

See what everyone else thinks, and have a 'bump' on me.