Dehydration causes teary eyes, inelastic skin - unable to fall into place after you pinch the skin between your fingers - and runny nose. Eyes will also be swollen, with third eyelid showing. Rehydration fluid, fed with a syringe, can be mixed with water using some glucose powder and salt.
We fed her vitamins, rehydration fluid, and cleaned her eyes with eye ointments to flush out the discharge so she can see clearly. I also cleaned her with a towel, including her face area, to clear out the dried mucus and discharge, as well as cleaned her large ears. But she still looks very sick, dirty and unhealthy - she must have been orphaned much earlier on and been living in drains or rubbish dumps. :(
She is so dehydrated that not only are her eyes tearing very badly, also, she can barely eat - her throat is probably all inflamed. I will be bringing down medicine for her tomorrow - anti-inflammatory enzyme Danzen which also acts as a pain killer, and standby some more Chlorpheniramine at the shop in case her nose still keeps running. I have bought some baby food - the purees you find in jars sold in the baby food section of supermarkets - to feed her tomorrow if she still doesn't eat her moistened canned food. (The baby food formula I got her was beef, pumpkin and potatoes. Pureed baby food is an option for convalescing or very young animals - cats, dogs, birds.)
We would like to take her to the vet if her condition is more than just dehydration, but we will have to raise funds for her first. If you are keen to help subsidise this kitten's veterinary fees it will be very much appreciated, any amount will do. In any case, she will remain under our care for as long as she takes to recover and we sincerely hope she pulls through. We hope we don't have to resort to SPCA's ER service because that will likely mean a certain death for her. If she survives, we will re-home her when she is in good health.
Her pictures - they can be quite unsettling because she looks really ill even after cleaning and eye ointments - are below -
Before medication and grooming and feeding
After medication and cleaning - not much difference :(
She is a three week old tabby, medium length tail, and has very Siamese features - large pointy ears, dainty frame. We are not sure if she will look like a Siamese tabby when she grows older, because her nose is infected from the severe tearing, so if there are any colourpoints we are not able to ascertain it now, but she definitely has Siamese / Oriental genes, colourpoint or not. She is very skinny, weighing possibly about 50gm.
We hope little Bubbles makes it through tonight. Looking at her made all of us rather sad, as one of us commented, 'See already heart-pain'. Thankfully our tear-ducts remained dry as we administered our grooming and first aid, else we would have teary eyes just like our little Bubbles, :'(.
