Kitten Nearly Drowns

One Saturday I received a phone call from one of my neighbors. He knows I work at a local animal hospital. He had found a kitten, probably about 6 weeks old, drowning in his backyard swimming pool. He fished it out and set it on the ground by his garage, but wasn't sure what else to do for it. I went over and wrapped the kitten in a towel and brought it to the animal hospital I work at. Everyone had left for the day so I dried the kitten as best I could, warmed up some towels in the dryer, and kept it as warm as possible. For a while it just laid there with it's eyes closed, breathing hard, but not very deeply. I just talked to it like I would another person and pet it every once in a while. But mostly I just waited, changing the towels with warmer once every 15-20 min. or so. Finally, the little guy (I checked) was a little more alert and kept his eyes open more. He started looking at his surroundings, but mainly at me as I was still talking to him. He was still pretty skittish and stayed in the towels, but I got him to eat some canned kitten food (and boy was he hungry!). I had to leave him overnight, but figured he'd do all right. The next day, since he was still really infested with fleas, I gave him a flea bath. He didn't really like it since he was, understandably, deathly afraid of water. Anyway, to make a long story short, one of the other staff took the kitten home to his girlfriend. :-)

Nikki.