Saving the Tiniest, Fluffiest Kitten with a Cleft Palate (Chouchou's First 3 Weeks!)

Chouchou has a severe cleft palate, but is thriving in foster care thanks to tube feeding!

TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone this is shushu and he is my three week old foster kitten. he's super cute but getting him to this point in his life has been quite a journey, so i wanted to introduce you guys to him and tell you about how special he is and what his life has been like so far during the first three weeks. yeah yeah you're three weeks old now. shushu was surrendered to a local animal hospital in a shoe box and when he came here he was just three days old and extremely small weighing just 70 grams. we were asked to take him on because he's dealing with a pretty significant medical challenge. shushu has a clutch pallet so the roof of his mouth is not solidly formed and because of that he can't safely nurse on a mama cat or even drink from a bottle. because there's nothing separating his mouth from his nasal cavity if he were to drink from a bottle or nurse the food would just come out of his nose and very likely go into his lungs which would be fatal for him so he has to be tube fed. and he came to the right place because not every foster parent tube feeds but it's something that i find myself doing a lot especially with these little medical kittens. yeah tube feeding is why you're alive. and you're doing great. i use a small rubber catheter to go directly down into the esophagus so that he can be tube fed without the food going into his mouth tube feeding is a very delicate skill set and if it's done improperly it can result in the death of the animal so it's not something that i recommend anyone do without hands-on training but for kittens like shushu who can't safely eat this is their lifeline it's not just important that the tube is placed properly but also that you know how much you can safely feed a kitten with shushu it's so important that he is not over fed so that he doesn't regurgitate if he were to regurgitate it would be really dangerous for him he would very easily aspirate so i feed him on the low end of what he should be receiving during a meal and i feed him every couple hours and monitor his weight very closely to make sure that he is going up in a slow and steady way yeah big boy so he started at just two cc's per meal and i've slowly worked him up to about five cc's per meal now and you are doing an amazing job at eating yeah you are a great little tube baby actually to tell you the truth you'll see i mean he does fuss with me a lot during tube feeding time it's not his favorite thing in the world but he always purrs immediately after his meal because he loves having a full belly it's just the thing we have to do and we're going through it together when he first arrived i noticed some strange breathing sounds which scared me a lot i was so nervous that he had already aspirated and had pneumonia which i don't think he would have been able to survive so we did a course of antibiotics which also had to be given via tube again he can't even have like a drop of medicine orally he has to have everything with a tube so we did the antibiotics as well as several days of nebulizer and even oxygen but i started to realize that the sound wasn't actually coming from his lungs it sounded like it was coming from his mouth because of the way that his mouth is shaped he makes a really crunchy sound when he breathes in but it is not coming from his lungs it's coming from his mouth when he breathes in he's breathing in through his nose but then there's no separation between the nasal cavity and the mouth so the air is traveling past his tongue which is like kind of pressed upwards and it's almost like snoring it's like a snoring type sound yeah i know i'm telling them about your sounds i know so he kind of sounds like you know an elderly pug or like a bulldog after a long hike or just like an old guy snoring so that's what you're hearing when you hear those sort of strange sounds that he makes that's not the only issue he had when he first arrived he is doing a great job now but in the beginning he was very very constipated so for a minute there he actually had to be given an enema to help things move through i also used a rubber catheter for that to give him a gentle warm water enema to get everything kind of flowing steadily after giving him the enema i stimulate him with a tissue and voila he poops fortunately now things are moving and grooving on their own and he no longer needs a tube in both ends to keep things going don't worry i use a different tube for the enemas than i do for feeding i got you dude as he started to get bigger it became clear he was a really unique looking guy he is so soft like a little bunny or a cloud or a lamb or a dandelion puff his fur always looked really curly and feathery he's just a fascinating guy sometimes he looks a little scraggly so once he was a little bigger and more stable i gave him his very first bath okay so my goal is to do an entire kitten bath in just about a minute or less i wet the body and i avoid the head shoe good job shoe shoe i know what on earth i'm just gonna use my baby shampoo and lather him really quickly and i know people always say turn the water off but it has to be a very specific temperature and if i turn it off the temperature is going to change so it's just a very very light stream i lather him really quickly and then i rinse him right away oh my gosh i can't wait to see what you're gonna look like little guy oh are you gonna poop it's okay we all poop in the bath just kidding good job baby okay and that's it just wrap him up like a little bundle good job i'm so proud of you i do want to wash his face because his face is a little crusty oh my goodness gracious what have i done to you sir do your head i know i just want to get this crusty little bit get you looking so nice and shiny and new i know you're doing great you're doing great you're okay okay okay good job you did it okay so after a bath it's important to get warm and dry as quickly as possible wow that's a really amazing look sir so try to fluff the hair so it can get aerated this is amazing look at you one of the fastest ways to get a kitten dry after a bath is to use a little toothbrush and back comb them so we're gonna just style your right up there baby boy hopefully it'll be nice and fluffy and clean good job you look so nice and fluffy beautiful good job shushu he looks like a little dandelion poof i could just blow on you and make a wish i love you good job you really did a good job with your bath sir well done sir enjoy your nap and now he is so fluffy now that his eyes are open and his face is changing it looks like he has a really flat face it's obvious he has some brachycephalic characteristics which unfortunately is commonly linked to having a cleft palate cats are really not supposed to have such flat faces it makes it harder for them to breathe and it can result in the plates of the skull not forming properly resulting in that huge gap on the palate so you know he is a challenging guy but we're getting through it this week he's going to see a dental specialist and hopefully after that we will know a little bit more about what the future holds for him with cleft palates especially when they're this severe they definitely need surgery often multiple surgeries but he has to grow a lot bigger before that is possible my understanding is that kittens need to be six to eight months to even get their first surgery so i'm really eager to go to his specialist appointment and see what they say about what the next couple of months will look like for him but for now my focus has really just been keeping him alive and fed and happy and you know what we're doing pretty good with that so i'll be sure to share more about shushu and his condition as i learn more for now if you want to help shushu and other kittens like him the best way to help is by making a donation to orphan kitten club so that's a look at shushu's first three weeks in foster care be sure to subscribe so you can follow along for more updates 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