Feline Herpesvirus

[Carly9457]

I just recently had 9 kittens that came down with what seemed like herpes virus.
5 seemed ok after normal treatment, antibiotics and eye cream, but I lost 4 of them. They stopped eating, had bad diarrhea and then just died. I tried to sustain them by force feeding, tube feeding, sub-q fluids and even had them to the vet hospital for days on iv's with antibiotics. Even the vets were dumb founded as to why they were dying. Fecals were tested for parisites and were negative. The doctors are pretty sure it was not panluke (distemper). I had them since they were 1 week old and they were 10-12 weeks old when this happened. No new cats/kittens were brought into the environment during that period.
Has anyone ever come across this and if so what did you do?

[bhtl818]

One of my cats went through the same thing five years ago when she was just a kitten. She contracted what appeared to be Feline Herpesvirus. I gave her antibiotics and separated her from the other cats of the household. She steadily got worse. Soon she was having diarrhea and also stopped eating as your kittens did. I started force feeding her, but she still was in terrible condition for about two weeks before she got any better.

Now, she has constant discharge from her eyes and has never started breathing correctly since then. She is wheezy and sometimes has discharge from her nose. She hasn't ever fully recovered but she still plays and cuddles and eats plenty, like a healthy cat. It appears she is just permanently damaged from her brush with death.

I'm not sure what exactly she did get as a kitten, but antibiotics and lots of force feeding, plus separation from all contact besides with me, she was able to pull through. She was probably just really lucky to have made it.

I'm sorry your kittens didn't make it. I don't think there was anything else you could have done to help the situation.