Treat a Cat With a Cold

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Diana Korten and were here today with Little bit to talk about cat colds. Now Little Bit is actually very healthy right now but when I first brought her home from the Pasadina Humane Society she was very sick and what can happen with your cat is they start with little sneezing and coughing maybe and if their upper respiratory infection gets really bad they can get discharge from their eyes, their nose can get blocked up and make it difficult to breath and so one of the things that you can do for your cat if they do get that sick is mix up a little bit of sea salt with some distilled water, warm it so it is just mildly warm so it is not cold and then you can use it to wipe their eye clear, again not very much salt just a little bit to make a saline solution and you can also use that to clear any discharge in their nose and you want to be very loving when you do this so that you cat feels secure and well cared for. Now clearly at the first signs of any of these kinds of infections you are going to want to take the cat to the vet and the vet is probably going to prescribe an antibiotic. They may also want to prescribe an antibiotic eye ointment to put in their eyes. But if your cat gets really really sick you want to be sure that you are taking care of them in the home environment as well. You can provide a cool mist humidifier, keep them in a small room with a cool mist humidifier to help ease their breathing. You want to keep them separate from any other cats because you certainly don't want to spread the virus. Another thing that you can do for your cat, often what happens when they're really sick is they stop wanting to eat and it is really important that they stay hydrated and that they get some nutrition so you may find that you need to force feed your cat. I'm going to scruff her here, that's the scruff. You are not hurting the cat when you grab that loose fur on the top of their neck, that is how their mother used to grab them. Usually when the cat is sick it is a little easier to do this because they are listless and you can get the syringe in the side of their mouth and get them to eat a little bit of that food. Of course it is much better if you can get them to eat it on their own without having to force feed them. Most cats find baby food like chicken baby food highly palatable and you may be able to get them to eat it without having to force feed them which you can see is kind of an ordeal. The important thing with this again is there is lots of hydration in the baby food. Keep the cat hydrated while its body fights off the infection. Another thing you can talk to your vet about is subcutaneous fluids. Some vets are a really big fan of this and others are a little more devious about it. Basically you take an IV needle and you are not injecting it into the veins, you are just putting a little bit of fluids under the skin. You are using a bag of saline solution or glucose water, depending on whatever your vet recommends and then you put the needle under the cat's skin, right in the scruff and deposit a small amount of liquid just again to help keep the cat hydrated. Usually these colds last anywhere from about a week to three weeks. The thing to know is cat colds are not transmittable to humans and human colds are not transmittable to cats."