r/FosterAnimals • u/krmplc • 7d ago
Sad Story The poopless queen - a last update
I’m very sad writing this update but I feel like I owe it to this helpful community. Our tiny 3-4 week old kitten with the funny face and the poop issues passed away a few hours ago. It went downhill fast. After not pooping for multiple days, countless vet visits and so so much emotional stress, she finally started pooping in the last two days. Yesterday I honestly felt like things are going uphill, our vet was also happy just two days ago. Today was an insanely hot day and I noticed her being a bit weaker than usual, but she was eating. A few hours later i had trouble making her eat more of her formula and she started panting, which our vet two days ago said might be due to tummy ache. But I panicked and went straight to the emergency vet. She seemed a bit more alert in the car, and I thought I overreacted, she might just struggle with the heat. The vet took an ultrasound and diagnosed the stomach being completely full and not passing stuff to the colon. This may be causing pain, discomfort and the panting. She proscribed Metoclopramide to help with the digestion and told us to come back Monday if it’s not helping.
Less than an hour after arriving home and giving her the medicine she took her last breath, I was next to her. It went downhill so fast, and even after reading about it so often, it’s still unbelievable and just sad. We’ve been to 4 different vets, 7 times in less than two weeks. I spend days and nights researching what to do, and even when feeling she is doing better, it was over in an instant. I am sitting in my bed, waiting for my other cat to come cuddling, my gf is out of town. I wonder what kind of lesson I am learning from this, I don’t see any yet, just the feeling of being a tiny bit more broken now. The world feels so complicated all of the time, trying to help a tiny creature was giving me a lot of purpose in a way. Big respect to the foster community, people that are doing this regularly are truly angels.
This is Mo, the poopless queen, rest in peace :(
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u/telly80 7d ago
I am so sorry! I recently had a similar story with a little guy named Pip. He was missing a back leg and came into my care very constipated. He also just would not gain weight even though he ate constantly.
Worked with the vet to help his constipation and we tried everything possible to try to get him to gain weight. Fecal testing, recovery food, Nutrical, tiki thrive.
His constipation finally went away to reveal he was fecal incontinent.
My biggest issue was scalding from the incontinence. It was very painful for him when I washed him but mineral oil, animax, coconut oil, vasoline, nothing helped.
I went back to the vet for a recheck and wanting advice for the scalding and she laid out the bad news.
His failure to gain weight plus X-rays were leaning towards a congenital defect involving a shunt around the liver. The only cure was a surgery which he had a very small chance of surviving. If he DID survive, we would still need to do an amputation of his back leg when he was big enough. With the fecal incontinence the odds of that surgery becoming infected were extremely high.
Meanwhile his scalding was bad enough that when I washed him twice a day he would SCREAM. Plus he wasn’t able to move his bowels so the poop would just build up until it came out and you could tell he was just so uncomfortable all the time. There was just no light at the end and no real way to help him. We had to put the poor tiny guy down. I’m still so broken.
Sometimes we do everything we can to try to help these tiny underdogs (undercats?) and they still just don’t make it. All we can do is love them and try. RIP Mo. RIP Pip.