The next day, a friend gave me the card of a new holistic veterinarian in town, Dr. Stephanie Chalmers. But before I had the chance to take the kittens to see this new vet, I was struck by a bolt of lightning. It was almost as though someone had whispered it into my ear. It made perfect sense. And these clumping litters absorb many times their weight in fluids.
Kittens especially tend to ingest a lot of litter when they are first learning to use the box.
Once the litter is inside a kitten or cat, it expands, forming a mass and coating the interior-thus, both causing dehydration by drawing fluids out of the cat or kitten, and compounding the problem by preventing any absorption of nutrients or fluids. My cats and kittens had probably reacted with diarrhea initially in an effort to cleanse their bodies of the litter before it had a chance to settle and coat their insides. On the strength of these deductions, I immediately went out and bought a plant-based litter to replace the clumping litter. I also took several of the hard, clay-like lumps of stool produced by two of the kittens and smeared them open. This was confirmation enough for me.