Found a small kitten next to a busy road!

moggylover

Drea wrote: »

:rotfl: I'd love another cat, not sure how my one would take to it though.

Only one way to find out;) . Females are often less tolerant than toms surprisingly enough

MrsTinks

Very true muggy lover... out of my two it's the girl that flips not my laid back tom... I've fostered kittens - some as young as a few days old - some older but definitely feral! My own two were semi feral when I got them at 7 weeks old and it just purely time and effort that finally turned them round
Littertrays seem to naturally attrack kittens - they have a built in desire to be very clean so given the option of something that resembles dirt or gravel they will opt for it without much training
I would definitely take it to the vets - don't worry too much about upsetting it - you may even find that when you get it back home it'll feel relieved to be back somewhere familiar
Once de-flead and wormed I'd try to introduce it to the cat that is taking an interest already but maybe with kitty in a carrier to start with to keep it safe?

Aylana

Hi guys. Hadn't even thought about worming, doh! Thanks MrsTine! Will also attempt cat introduction too at some point.

Thanks for the tips moggylover! Well I'm not sure what colour it's eyes are to be honest. I didn't manage to get a good look at it before it shot out of the box and vanished under the bed! I will have a look tomorrow as it will have to come out to be flea'd and maybe have a trip to the vets. It is a very fluffy black and white. So fluffy I think it may be a semi-longhaired. It is truly tiny, so it is reassuring that it may be a bit older than I think and just be small!

I hope I can make some progress in the next week as after that I will be back at uni and out of the house more. I don't want to palm it off on someone else before it has even had time to adjust to being here, but if I can't dedicate the time and energy it needs I may have to consider other options like foster homes. I really want to do the best for this little kitty. (Am going to have to think of a better name than kitty!)

Also had a nosey around the field where I found it this evening and it is much bigger than I thought and most of it isnt lit by streetlights, so didn't go very far on my own. I will have a proper expedition one evening when OH isn't at work so he can come with me.

Drea

Aylana wrote: »

Hi guys. Hadn't even thought about worming, doh! Thanks MrsTine! Will also attempt cat introduction too at some point.

Thanks for the tips moggylover! Well I'm not sure what colour it's eyes are to be honest. I didn't manage to get a good look at it before it shot out of the box and vanished under the bed! I will have a look tomorrow as it will have to come out to be flea'd and maybe have a trip to the vets. It is a very fluffy black and white. So fluffy I think it may be a semi-longhaired. It is truly tiny, so it is reassuring that it may be a bit older than I think and just be small!

I hope I can make some progress in the next week as after that I will be back at uni and out of the house more. I don't want to palm it off on someone else before it has even had time to adjust to being here, but if I can't dedicate the time and energy it needs I may have to consider other options like foster homes. I really want to do the best for this little kitty. (Am going to have to think of a better name than kitty!)

Also had a nosey around the field where I found it this evening and it is much bigger than I thought and most of it isnt lit by streetlights, so didn't go very far on my own. I will have a proper expedition one evening when OH isn't at work so he can come with me.

Give him to me! :rotfl:

Has he come out anymore than he was before? I end up saying he because my cat is male

Aylana

lol, if you want him you can have him! (him is better than it I suppose even if he is a she lol) Honestly I think if I even considered keeping him long term OH would revolt. While he is happy to amuse himself playing with excitable kittens, he doesn't really like adult cats much and I have already forced 2 of them on him. Once he is tamed (kitty not OH), he will have to find a new home. I think that will be really hard actually.

Or I could just kick out OH???? :rotfl:

He waited stoicly until I left the room to grab some lunch before coming out to eat some food. Then he hid again when I returned. I had to pop out this evening and while I have been out he has eaten the rest of the food. He is going to be a tough cookie to crack!

Careful_with_that_Axe

Awww, it just takes times and patience, and you seem to have plenty of the latter.
If it truly is tiny, you could tempt it out with food etc as suggested earlier, but also put a warm (not hot) hot water bottle under something or in a cushion cover near to both the food and you. All cats naturally gravitate to warmth and ickle ones even more so.
Bless.

moggylover

Aylana wrote: »

Hi guys. Hadn't even thought about worming, doh! Thanks MrsTine! Will also attempt cat introduction too at some point.

Thanks for the tips moggylover! Well I'm not sure what colour it's eyes are to be honest. I didn't manage to get a good look at it before it shot out of the box and vanished under the bed! I will have a look tomorrow as it will have to come out to be flea'd and maybe have a trip to the vets. It is a very fluffy black and white. So fluffy I think it may be a semi-longhaired. It is truly tiny, so it is reassuring that it may be a bit older than I think and just be small!

I hope I can make some progress in the next week as after that I will be back at uni and out of the house more. I don't want to palm it off on someone else before it has even had time to adjust to being here, but if I can't dedicate the time and energy it needs I may have to consider other options like foster homes. I really want to do the best for this little kitty. (Am going to have to think of a better name than kitty!)

Also had a nosey around the field where I found it this evening and it is much bigger than I thought and most of it isnt lit by streetlights, so didn't go very far on my own. I will have a proper expedition one evening when OH isn't at work so he can come with me.

I have two fluffy black and white so and so's climbing around me at the moment trying to "help" me with my post!:rolleyes: .

Sounds like he/she is gonna take some patience, but really - don't be too worried about forcing the issue a little. Some little ferrals get their first taste of a cuddle and a stroke and fall instantly into the whole idea of being tame - especially if you have some nice tasty morsels to offer at the same time (or each time you visit/handle:rolleyes: . They really are slaves to their tummies at that age - but do not overload as wild kittens can get diarrohea easily if they are suddenly inundated with much richer food than they are used to. If this one does - then feed plain boiled chicken (leg or wing meat will suffice - nothing too fancy) or a little plain boiled white fish, and mix with plain boiled rice and a little of the juice in which cooked. It usually settles quite quickly on this bland diet - and a little aspic added to the cooking juices makes a tasty jelly and helps as well. Be VERY careful with worming! Ferrals can have quite a few worms, and if they all die rapidly in the stomach you can end up with a blockage and serious constipation problems - so bad that if not cleared then the kitten can die from toxic shock. I found this out the hard way years ago when the first batch of kittens I rescued were wormed (with the supervision of the vet:rolleyes: ) and this blockage occurred! By the time we and the vet figured out why they were ill I had lost two - and been bitten through the lip by a third as I tried to hold him whilst he fitted in pain!

I always make sure they are pretty fit and well first - and worry about the worms when they are a little bigger - at least 10 to 12 weeks SIZE rather than age. I then worm with a paste wormer, and only about half the dose, and feed oily fish (or give vegetable oil by spoon/syringe) at the same time which should give them just enough of a loose tum to keep everything clearing through. I then re-worm after a few more days with another half the dose and the fish/oil treatment. Once I am sure that they do not have a huge build up of worms - then I can always give another full dose to make sure they are cleared, a couple of weeks later.

Sorry, don't mean to add worries - it probably would not happen - but thought I would mention it. This was some time back, about 17 years ago - and it may be that modern worming stuff would not do it - but this was panacur even in those days, and measured dose given by vet, so I am always cautious nowadays.:o

Ferrals are fundamentally the same as domestic moggies, but the mum may well have never been wormed herself, and maybe not her mum either,etc, and thus the kittens get a good dollop of worms from birth and then most of the food bought to them will be rodents which will exacerbate the problem, and then as they almost invariably have a good helping of fleas (as you have discovered) they groom themselves and get yet more! Not a nice life being a ferral! The worst flea infestation I ever saw was a little pale grey tabby who appeared to have a black chin - until I realised that his chin was caked with flea dirt:eek: - and that it all washed away to give a very pale grey chin!
I thought we would never get him flea free!

If you have any problems then feel free to pm me - and I will keep checking on the thread.

moggylover

Aylana wrote: »

Or I could just kick out OH???? :rotfl:


Well, bet you can guess what would happen in my house if that was the case can't you.

I once (many, many years ago) had a boyfriend who started to suffer from asthma from my (then) 4 cats - his doctor said that either the cats had to go or he would need an inhaler: he came home with the inhaler, repeated what the doc had said, and grinned and said: "I told him it had better be the inhaler or else I was likely to need a coffin if I so much as suggested the other alternative":o

Aylana

Careful with that Axe: thanks, I like the hot water bottle suggestion! Will give that a go.

Moggylover, thanks again for the advice and your offer of help. You are full of knowledge! Will be careful with the worming and will wait til kitty is a bit bigger. Better safe than sorry! Poor little grey tabby! Must have been so uncomfortable being covered in all those fleas.

OH is quite tolerant really. As someone who claimed to dislike all animals when I met him he exists quite happily with the 2 cats, 2 dogs, 3 rats and plethora of tropical fish. He knows that he would be first out the door over any of them. He didn't even kick up a fuss that his son couldn't stay over this weeked cos there is a feral kitten living in the second bedroom.:rotfl: Poor man!!

neverdespairgirl

I found a stray kitten just after Easter in 2004. He was tied up in a bin bag with another (dead) kitten, and I thought he was a black kitten. He was, the vet reckoned, only about 5 weeks old. I took him home, washed him off, and he turned out to be white with a big black eye patch and a black tail.

Later that afternoon, after looking round the same street, I found his brother, mewing in a doorway, he was entirely white with a grey patch between his eyes that disappeared as he grew up.

They were both terrified, but I took them to the vet, who checked them over, and then they moved in with us.

Sadly, the first one I found, Elijah, died when he was just 3 from heart failure. His brother, Yossie, then moved to my parents' house. He is a lovely, gorgeous cat, whose early life doesn't seem to have troubled him too much - he is very sociable and even tolerates my toddler carrying him around!