Today, I heard loud, distressed-sounding mewing coming from the garage. I opened the garage door, went in, and there was a tiny kitten in there, crawling around, but rather wobbly.
We immediately picked the kitten up and took it in the house. The kitten was cold, so we snuggled the kitten up against our bodies, and the kitten immediately fell asleep. It's now about 5 hours later, and the kitten is still asleep, no longer feels cold, but this time in a box with a heating pad. Throughout those 5 hours, I've periodically gently picked the kitten up, examined it (we don't know if it's a male or female), and each time it opened it's eyes, wiggled around a little bit, and sometimes even made some vocal noises. The kitten is slowly beginning to show more signs of awareness over time, like lifting it's head up when it hears a sound, body moving in sleep, opening it's eyes, etc., though it doesn't respond every single time to these things.
The kitten does not appear to be bleeding, trembling, breathing abnormally (though the kitten's breaths seem rather slow), or starving.
As for the mother, we think we may have accidentally taken the kitten away from its mother. You see, it was cold and raining, and the garage was probably going to flood soon, so we thought we were helping. We didn't see the mother anywhere. However, when we went back outside a few minutes later, a cat, maybe the mother (but not sure), was in the garage.
I turned to Reddit as a last resort for advice, because:
- All of my local pet stores are currently closed, and won't be open for several hours yet.
- There are no 24/7 emergency vets in my area.
- All of the regular vets in my area are closed, and won't be open until Tuesday.
- We do not have ingredients to make emergency kitten formula, and no one is willing to make an emergency trip to Walmart or something to get ingredients. I can't either, because I can't drive.
- I have tried other online pet advice websites and question websites, but they all have either been unhelpful or you have to pay to use the website.
I looked up "Fading Kitten Syndrome", and the kitten matches some of the symptoms, but not all, or seemingly even most of them. Take lethargy, for example: I cannot tell if the kitten is lethargic/dying, or just very tired from crawling around the mewing loudly for its mother. The articles I read mentioned discolored gums, but I wouldn't know, because I haven't checked. The articles also mentioned limpness/inability to stand, which the kitten does have some, but I again cannot tell if the kitten is just too tired or maybe too young to stand properly.
We estimate that the kitten is at least 2-3 weeks old. It is not a newborn, because its eyes and ears are open.
How long will the kitten survive without milk? PetsMart doesn't open until 9 AM, could the kitten survive until then? Should we try to give the kitten back to the mother? What should we do? Can we give the kitten anything else? Is the kitten certainly dying/going to die? Please help!
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/cykt3o/i_need_help_with_a_kitten/
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