Well the verdict is in.... Chloe's milk is almost non existant, and her babies need to be bottle fed to survive. Because they are sick, they cannot be put with a surrogate mom cat, or moved to a house with any other kittens. So for now, they stay with me. That's both good and bad. Good because I adore them and will do anything for them, bad because I have a job and have to go to work. I have another coordinator from the rescue coming in to help while I'm at work, but the vet would like to see the kittens being weaned as soon as possible. My problem? I've never weaned a kitten, and was sure my mom cat would do it for me. The vet said we could start mixing in baby food with the KMR, but i have NO idea how to begin to teach a baby kitten to eat. They will be 3 weeks old on Thursday and all are still under 7 oz. I'm a little frazzled and could use some helpful pointers, prayers and good vibes. Chocolate wouldn't hurt.
-
Too many ads? Join our community of cat lovers now to reduce ads by 90%! Click here to join for free!
Update on Chloe and help me with weaning
- Thread starter yayas_mom
- Start Date
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2001
- Messages
- 34,872
- Purraise
- 77
www.kitten-rescue.com breaks it all down for you-
Good luck with the little ones.
One comment - when I was trying to wean my 3 orphans from the bottled formula onto kitten food, they never did go through the lapping stage and eating the gruel. I finally just put down some canned kitten food when they were 4 1/2 weeks old (had been trying for 1 1/2 weeks to get them to lap) and they started to eat it right away. I kept feeding them the formula as well as the kitten food until they stopped showing interest in the formula and only wanted the kitten food. So, if the mush/gruel stage isn't progressing as successfully as the experts advise, try them on the canned kitten food even if they don't lap yet.
Kathryn
One comment - when I was trying to wean my 3 orphans from the bottled formula onto kitten food, they never did go through the lapping stage and eating the gruel. I finally just put down some canned kitten food when they were 4 1/2 weeks old (had been trying for 1 1/2 weeks to get them to lap) and they started to eat it right away. I kept feeding them the formula as well as the kitten food until they stopped showing interest in the formula and only wanted the kitten food. So, if the mush/gruel stage isn't progressing as successfully as the experts advise, try them on the canned kitten food even if they don't lap yet.
Kathryn
I agree with Kathryn ... try mixing a little warm water in with the canned pate-style kitten food to make it a little (not a lot) goopy-er and then let 'em have right at it. At 3 weeks old, they are not at all too young to start eating on their own. You may have one or two that don't take to it right away, you may have one or two that eat it all before the others can even nurture the thought of walking through it, but try and see how it goes.
~gf~
~gf~
