So you found a kitten ~ now what?

First and foremost you need to be very careful with stray/feral animals. They harbor diseases that can be deadly like Rabies. If they are acting strange in anyway, you should leave them be and call your local animal control officer.

When you first come across a stray/feral animal you should check the animal out before introducing it to your animals. You don’t want to pass on diseases or parasites.

When I saw the kitten (Bones) in the lawn I figured things were pretty save since he wasn’t acting strange, he looked pretty healthy, When Gambler went up to him he didn’t freak out he stayed right by us and meow’ed. I picked him up very carefully making sure he wasn’t going to bite me and he started purring right away.

When I picked him up I checked for fleas, being a stray there was a good change he had fleas. Surprisingly he didn’t have fleas. I don’t have fleas at my house and I don’t want them. 

I then checked to see what sex this kitten was and discovered it was a boy. I’m glad that he is a boy as I think being the opposite sex from MK they will get along better.

You want to make sure the animal you found doesn’t belong to anyone. Some things you can do are:

1. Check it for a microchip. This is the easiest and fastest way to check if it has a home already. If has a chip call company and let them know chip number. If no chip then continue to find owner if one.

2. Check with surrounding homes if the animal is theirs or if they know who’s it might be.

3. Call humane society or take to humane society if you can’t locate owner or keep the animal.

4. Look on social media sites that have pages for lost animals like Facebook has a page Wisconsin Lost dogs, cats and pets. There are other lost animal pages as well.

The kitten was weighed, he weighed 3.74#. We weigh the kittens and cats in kilograms and convert the weight to pounds.

The ears were suspicious for having ear mites, they were really dirty with black debris. This is not an uncommon finding when you find a stray/feral  kitten/cat. Here is a link to a ear mite Veterinary Partner article, you can view the article by clicking here.

A tall tell sign that the debris in the ear is ear mites will be the dry crusty material that is on the swab when you take a sample out of the ear.

Ear mites are very itchy.

Putting a sample on the slide so it can be viewed under the microscope.

Images of the mites under the microscope. Sometimes you can see the mites moving when you look in the ear with a otoscope, if you can’t see them then you look under the microscope to see them as they are microscopic.

Here is a video of the ear mites crawling around. The sample was loaded with mites. This poor guy had to be miserable. Once a Veterinarian instilled ear mites into his ear so he could experience what it was like and he stated that it was very itchy, not something I need to try anytime soon.

Before you treat the ears you need to clean them. The treatment doesn’t work very well if the ears are dirty.

Look at all that muck that was in the kittens ears. Those ear mites really know how to make a mess of a kittens ear.

Clean ears, time to instill the ear mite medication. We used a medication that goes in each ear and stays in there. It kills the ear mites immediately. After the ear cleaning and treatment the kitten got his physical exam. His physical was great, he had a couple of scrapes on his face and the only noticeable problem was his “pot belly” which is indicative  of intestinal parasites. Regardless of the pot belly appearance you should still have a stool sample run for parasites. I had one run and it was negative, which isn’t unusual either. The adult worms were in a stage where they weren’t producing eggs yet to be found in a fecal float. We dewormed the kitten with a broad spectrum dewormer. A must with all new kittens/cats if you don’t have records on them is to have a Feline Leukemia/Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FELV/FIV) blood test done. This should be done before you introduce your new addition to any cats that you may have at home already. This virus is deadly so you really have to be careful. We preformed the test and he was negative for both virus. I will repeat the test in three months to make sure moms immunity wasn’t interfering with the results. If you would like to read about FELV you can do so by clicking here, you can read about FIV here. Since the physical was normal and kitten dreamed healthy the first vaccination of FVRCP was given. This vaccination will need to be updated and when the kitten is older I vaccinate against Feline Leukemia (FELV) and Rabies.

Of course you have to get some toys for your new addition so why not give chewy.com a try? They have all your pets needs right in one spot and so fast at getting them to you.

Now have fun with your new addition and keep up with the vaccinations and keeping your pet healthy.

Have a great day and weekend I know I am!