What do you mean by "has a hard time just getting along with eating"? Are you feeding him canned food?

Our shelter has a dedicated vet. Most should have a vet they use and if you are fostering this kitten his/her services should be available to you at least on a limited basis. I don't know what arrangements there are between you and the shelter, but medical care should be their issue, at least a freebie consultation or physical when you are having problems.

I don't have a problem with giving animals human food if it's appropriate but if he eats grilled chicken and has runny stools maybe you should rethink giving him that as a treat. Does he eat cat food well, or is the diarrhea happening with everything?

The kitten could have a parasite. At the very least she should be de-wormed. See if you can bring in a stool sample to see if there is an infection. If so, the anti-biotic treatment is not that expensive.

And yes, I would change the kitten's diet to a high quality canned food.

Excellent advice;
shelter needs to step up & get this addressed by a good vet.

Plain canned pumpkin (the list of ingredients should say "pumpkin" only-not pumpkin pie filling with loads of sugar) often helps diarrhea.

I wish you the best.

When I adopt a shelter animal, and lord knows I have done that often enough, the fees I pay are based on the fact that the animals medical needs have been factored in. That's why an alley cat can cost two hundred dollars. Even the private groups who work mostly with foster homes have fees reflecting vet care. If that weren't the case, a foster care giver is opening themselves up for a tremendous financial liability. If they can't meet it, then the animal is not having its needs met and the shelter is not doing its job.

I considered fostering, and have looked into it. The food and supplies I'd have no problems donating, but not the medical care!

Call that shelter up and let them do what they are supposed to be doing or report them. Even if foster families are doing the best they can, if they can't meet the medical needs of an animal it's the shelter's fault for placing them there. It's not your fault.

Good luck and keep in touch. This kitten could have anything wrong with it including coccidia and that could be life-threatening without treatment and also infect your healthy animals.

Hello again, First of all thank all of you for your interest, I should have explained better,but he was going downhill so fast I was really scared. Our shelter here in town was hit by quite a bit of lay-offs as the police department, these kittens were found on the freeway and I just couldn`t say no, when it comes to animals I`m a real push over. I don`t know if I mentioned one of the females I finally adopted but she had some type of pancreities and after her kittens were born she was very ill, anyway not to take up so much space she was given Clvamax desperate as I was I mixed it over some of the grilled chicken 1/2 of ml. He looked so much better this morning I`m hoping I can get him better I was going to Pet
Smart and getting the best kitten food I could which he would eat a little not much of it, he acually ate with all his brothers and sisters this morning,no our shelter does not look upon giving any type of medicine, so he probably would have put down, believe me from now on I will only donate food and such. Thank You again.

Bless your kind heart, and good luck to kitty. Scary, isn't it?

uGGH, Calliope I would love to say our local shelter gets free vet care but it doesn't. In fact, they avoid coming there if at all possible -- or that's how it seemed when I was there. The vet techs that would pick up animals in the early morning for spay/neuter (adoptions) would act like we only worked at the shelter because we couldn't get jobs at a nursing home. Sadly, I've never seen one single vet tech in my town ever set foot in that shelter when I worked there (5 years).

We NEVER got free care ever. We might get a discount but not free. And that was a Humane Society shelter. Sanctioned and wearing the brand of HSUS. Vets charged us for everything.

All I can offer is what does it smell like? If it has a very sour smell, you might consider that it's coccidea. That can be devastating to a kitten. I've nursed kittens through this before successfully though. You would definitely have to take a stool sample to a vet. I hope you discover the problem. That would be my first suspicion -- coccidea. But it is treatable.

Ours doesn't get free vet care.........they pay for it, but it's factored into the adoption fees and they have a vet on premises on a regular basis. I got the impression swallowtail was a foster mom to these kittens until they are placed. Those animals should have access to the same health care an in-house shelter animal would have, because the fees for adoption probably reflects it.

I will say that our community actively supports the local shelter with donations of money and time in addition to their paid staff. We also have a really dynamic new administrator. Not bad for a rural county. But, you know a shelter who does not provide adequate medical care for it's animals is guilty of neglect and shouldn't be taking in animals.