hi! I am new to this site. I recently adopted 4 three week old kittens, whose mother has been run over by a car. I have never had such young kittens before and would have given them to a vet or a shelter but they were rejected because they are too young. I want to keep them, but cannot find anyone who has enough experience to look after them. I am feeding them the kitten formula the vet gave me. Please help me out and give me some tips and 'how to's' for looking after them, pls! i dont want them to die! (they also have plenty of ticks. how can i get rid of them?)
Daily Kitten Chat Forum » Cats & Kittens
tips needed on how to raise abandoned kittens!!
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http://www.dailykitten.com/chat/topic/20610
Welcome to TDK. Click on the pink advice in the upper right-hand side to look for much more advice on raising an orphaned kitten. May you have years of happiness with them. -
Hi, Kanna, you're wonderful for looking after these babies and welcome to TDK! We have lots of experienced foster kitty mums on this site, but you may have to wait a while till they log in as they are all over the world, and it is quite late I think in the US now. So keep checking back!
I'm sorry I can't help with the tick problem as we don't have them in NZ. But here are some great kitty raising sites that should help. The first one is particularly informative:
www.messybeast.com/handrear.htm
http://www.kittenrescue.org/pages.php?pageid=15
http://www.fanciers.com/cat-faqs/orphans.shtml
http://www.feralcat.com/raising.htmlKeep them warm (a heatpad or a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel are good) and with four of them they should be able to keep that heat in. (Leave some room in the box so they can crawl off the pad/bottle if they get too hot.) Keep them fed with the KMR. As TaraRose said, you need to get rid of those fleas with a comb and/or bath (towel them dry quickly so they don't get chilled) as fleas can give tiny kittens serious anaemia.
As I said, keep checking back for more replies. If there's anything else you need help with, just ask, we are not vets but there's bound to be someone who's been through it :) Good luck!
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the four are quite active now! they have become quite used to the place now and are feeding well and running around all over the place *shock* considering how small they still are. I still have one problem though... they are feeding quite voraciously and demand to be fed every 2 1/2 hours, but they have not pooped for the past 24 hours... they urinate well though, which is a very pale yellow colour and their stomach do not feel abnormally large though they are round. I have taken them to a vet and he has not detected any blockages... how do i make them poop? I am getting worried...
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I am hand-rearing 3-week-olds too... One method I used today to make them poop is, put her on my chest, belly up, and rub the belly with a warm soft tissue, the move to the butt, and rub there. It took me around 20-30 seconds, but the poop came out eventually. It was kind of runny though, but I hope it's OK, because my kittens hasn't eaten any solids yet...
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Use a warm wet soft cloth to lessen any chance of irritation, Jenn. Yay for poop!
Posted 1 year ago by Kitten Whisperer #
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Regarding the ticks:
They're pretty easy to remove, although I'm sure a vet would take care of them for you if you don't feel comfortable.
The important thing is to get the tick to let go before you pull it out so the tick's head doesn't stay stuck under the skin & cause an infection (ticks latch on strong enough if you just try to pull it out you'll rip it's head off before it lets go).
The best way to get a tick to let go is to pinch it's rear (the part sticking out of the animal) between your thumb and pointer finger and apply firm pressure without pulling the tick away from the skin. Squeeze hard enough to hurt the tick without popping it. You'll see and/or feel the tick start come out of the skin on it's own; then you can pull it out.
There are a lot of ticks around here, and all the pet food stores sell tick removers that do the squeezing for you, but I've always had success with my fingers. It's really gross, but effective.
I've also always heard that you can touch a hot match to a tick's butt & he'll let go (light the match, blow it out, & touch it to the tick while it's still hot) but matches and fur never seemed like a great combination to me.
Also, flush the ticks down the toilet after you get 'em out. They're pretty resilient little buggers and can climb out of trash cans, etc.
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i tried to get him to go and still no luck!?!? could he might not have to go yet!? i dont want him to be hurting!! n he wont go! =( i dk what to do! all he does is sleep in his bed then cry n i feed him n he snuggles with me n goes to sleep n i put him in his bed. is that normal? i just dont want him to get sickk.
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the same thing happened to me. We found four kittens in our abandoned shed! What me, my brother, and my father did was we used an old medicine dropper and filled it with milk. Since they are kittens, just feed them milk. They are not yet ready for hard food. we then kept them in a cardboard box, (with a blanket inside to keep them comfortable!) and did the same thing everyday. Eventually, we gave them to the humane society. It was VERY sad, but at least they now have a good home!
Posted 1 year ago by kittenlover04 #
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