I recently adopted a six week old kitten, and I noticed one of her front claws looked a little infected. Well, it got worse and started oozing puss, but I treated it with betadine and its drying up and getting better.

However, now her back right paw is messed up. It started with the joint being tender and a little swollen, but now, a day later, the whole foot is double in size, and the joint is about the size of a marble.

To make matters worse, she isn't eating on her own, which I suspect is partly due to worms, but mainly to her infection. We've been force feeding her a mixture of wet food and kitten milk every 3 or 4 hours. We've tried every combination of wet food, dry food, and milk we could think of, even mixing it with pedialite, which we discontinued.

Are there ANY other suggestions? I think she has a mild fever, and I can't get her to the vet until Monday morning. I would call the emergency service, but right now I only have 125$ saved up to treat her, and have NO other options.

Hmm, tough one. I'll tell you right now I don't have any brilliant suggestions. I'd take her to the ER, but thinking back to when I simply couldn't afford to, what would I do?

Well, I think first of all, I'd call the ER anyway. Just kind of depends on who is on duty, but sometimes you can get information from them and sometimes you can't. Sometimes I think they just want you to come in to get the money, but I know they also don't want the liability of saying something without an examination. But if you tell them specifically about her foot, you'd think they could give you some suggestions for that. I've called the ER before when I had no intention of taking a cat in, and I'd do it for this too.

As for the food. It's important that she keep eating, and that she get a reasonable amount of food, even if not her full allotment. So force feed if you have to. Trust me, trust me, I know how much fun that it. I went through h*** and back having to force feed a sick cat for like 2 months and with all the things I've had to do to a cat, that was most definitely the worst. But some suggestions. Try baby food. (Meat, no onion stuff.) Some cats will eat that on their own when they won't eat anything else. It is also high in calories for the volume of food. (In fact, maybe look for one that is 90-100 calories per jar.) That's not properly supplemented for a cat, but it'll be OK for a couple of days. And you can always force feed some other stuff along with it. Also try ANYTHING you can find. People food, whatever. Like a bit of human meat. I once got a cat eating with steak. I barely microwaved a bit, just to the point of being very juicy and making it really smelly, and cut it into tiny pieces. Or stick something like that in a blender. Just as a calorie comparison. A can of something like Fancy Feast has on average around 85 calories -- the same size of a kitten food would be more like 100 or so. I don't know how much she normally eats.

As for the foot -- there's the tough part. If this were a human, I would have course try a cool washcloth for the fever, and ice on the foot. But this is a cat. Hm... do you think you can get ice on a cat's foot? Is she still trying to walk on it? (Cats can be like that.) This is where I would at least want to make an attempt to talk to someone at the ER. I don't even know how much of an emergency this is. It doesn't sound good. That swelling needs to go down and she's surely in pain. I'm just silly enough I'd probably try to find a way to get ice on it, like a piece inside a washcloth and just gently lay it on there.

Wow, I'm stumped. Hate to say it cause I know you're having a money fight here, but I'd be wanting to go to the ER.