My cat recently had a litter of kittens. Unfortunately she came down with mastitis. the nippe breast it was on basically exploded. I thought it would be fine and covered that one, and let the kittens nurse on the others. unfortunately by day 2 three more breasts had it and her Milk was septic. this lead to the kittens getting (As strange as this sounds) Abcess feet.
Now obviously because of this the mother no longer could be let to nurse them, we went to bottle feeding. I pierced and drained the infection out of their feet, salt soaked them, and peroxided them every 2 hours, and was bottle feeding them. Now this being a small town without any kind of pet stores, we’d gone to the only grocery store, Albertsons, to get formula. Albertsons carries only one kind, the Hartz liquid KMR cans. so we’d gotten that. Immediately the kittens did not like it. they refused to drink it. We assumed this was because the giant nipple on the kitten bottle (The cat has small nipples so it wasnt anything like they were used to) and presuming this forced the sick kittens to eat, worried theyd starve, they ate a little at a time, but very little.
Within that night the first kitten (Weakest and smallest) had died. at the time I had presumed it because of the afflicted feet.
However into the next day, the other three kittens Id observed, their feet were getting progressively better, quickly.. but they were still getting weaker and weaker. we thought the next smallest would die, she had grown very weak and began seizuring.. Bryon, my roomate, googled it breifly, because we didnt understand how, if the abcess was healing, it would be killing them.. Bryon found this site. Immediately I took the bus to petsmart in the next town and got GNC KMR powder. It was not the foot, but the formula, I fully believe, that was responsible for killing the first kitten, and nearly the others.
The three kittens, including the smallest which we thought would die, Are now doing very well. She is no longer having seizures, their feet have healed, they are strong and healthy. Do not ever buy Hartz.
6 Comments Received
February 26th, 2013 @9:45 am
Your puppy needs lots of fluids to flush out the poison, the vet does not charge much for fluids. Also, you can sign up for Care Credit for low payments. When you go to the vet, have them give you a estimate, then only let them do the procedures that you feel are necessary.
February 26th, 2013 @3:09 pm
Is there any way that we can let the press about this. Maybe more people would see it and stop using Hartz. I knew nothing about Hartz until I started reading about all the other animals who got sick and some even dying. I know if we could get this recognized it would bring out a lot more people
February 28th, 2013 @1:22 pm
This latest story, about newborn kittens (Hi, batgirl!) is very, very similar to my own. I foster orphaned kittens for a couple of shelters in my area. One weekend, we ran out of KMR, so I went to the nearest pet store- which only carried Hartz KMR at that time.
The morning after I fed these guys, one of them was near death. Lying in a pool of feces, non-responsive to any stimuli, and pretty cold – it was awful! But I could tell (heartbeat) he wasn’t dead yet. I washed him in warm water and cuddled him up to me to stay warm as I dried him off. I kept him warm throughout the day, sometimes tucking him inside my bra if I was busy. And incredibly, he woke up and started acting normal! Well, actually, it took half an hour for him to walk around normally and ask for food. But he did it! The following day, a different kitten had the same problem.
There are so many stories with the same features! There is DEFINITELY something wrong with Hartz KMR. It tastes bad to kittens, quite a few (impossible to count) have had this unconsciousness for a day, and some of them don’t recover. This may be a separate occurrence from the Hartz flea products, because I can’t think what substance would be in both the collars or drops and the kitten milk replacer.
But there are just too many similar stories to ignore. This is not a coincidence. I just looked, and there are thousands of victims’ stories just on this website, and I suspect ten times that, or more, victims have this same affliction and just never reported it to anyone.
Apparently, Hartz doesn’t want to answer any mail about this. Maybe they think that since kittens (and other animals!) don’t talk or email, Hartz can put whatever they want into their feed. This reminds me of a story I heard about a scandal in China, in which newborn human milk replacer had cheap additives in it in order to make the unit cost lower for them. One of these substances was – melamine! Yeah, the plastic-y stuff that dishes are made of. It’s poisonous when ingested. China dealt with it practically and almost immediately. But with non-human victims, I don’t think they feel like they have to do anything at all.
I told a few people at the top of the hierarchy of the shelters where I volunteer, and I didn’t hear anything back from anyone, the vets included. It may be that they think I’m a crackpot, but I just couldn’t let it go with no warnings. I still have three cans of Hartz KMR here, which in good conscience I cannot give to anyone for feeding kittens. Maybe they would do some good out in the compost heap?
I just don’t know what to do. One of you asked if publishing the story would do any good. Well, good luck. If you can back up your claims, and if you can get any newspapers to help you get this out in the public, bless you. But be careful about slander. If we have no scientific evidence (as opposed to anecdotal evidence), they can get a restraining order to keep that newspaper, us, AND this site from publishing anything about them. So if anyone has any better ideas, please post here. I believe that hundreds, if not thousands, of the people who post here would be very glad to stand up and be counted, and to stand up and tell their stories to the public. Any ideas would be appreciated! I think our weekly shopper (you probably have one – mostly classified ads, a few ‘news’ items) would publish a story about it, but it would be very careful to stay entirely neutral and to publish only what we say as ‘opinion’ and ‘hearsay’ without appearing to support one side or the other. But any publicity is good publicity, right?
ajjohnson
April 17th, 2013 @5:38 pm
Please people who have had problems with these products – leave feedback on amazon under the appropriate products – other consumers deserve to know, and if sales take a dive the company might actually do something about it. And amazon get loads of traffic.
May 10th, 2013 @10:06 pm
Sounds like the whole family was very sickly and needed professional veterinary treatment. I assume none was available in your small town. Sad for you and the little cat family.
May 14th, 2013 @12:47 pm
While I cannot say whether or not Hartz KMR is a good product or not, having worked with a rescue that has often had bottle feeders and used different KMR or Kitten Milk forumlas, has gotten up every two hours for feeding, kept them warm, stimulated their bowels, etc, the unfortunate truth of the matter is that it is VERY hard to keep very young kittens alive without their mothers milk, regardless of what you are using. Though it’s very sad, it honestly might have happened anyway
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