A baby without a mother is a tragedy! But if you could shelter that baby, how good it would be? This frequently happens with kittens. Some cat owners do not prefer to have the babies of their cats. Hence, they choose to give them away to their knowns. Or else, they leave them on road and the kind-hearted you see them and bring them your home. Now begins the challenge. You need to know how to take care of newborn kittens correctly. Also, you need to be extra careful since they are infants and too sensitive, if something goes wrong it is quite disastrous.
This article teaches you how to take care of newborn kittens without a mother.
What if your friend tries to give you some newborn kittens?
- As rule number one, you should ask your mate to tolerate at least four 4 weeks. Because newborn kittens find it impossible to survive without their mother during the first four weeks since their birth.
What if you see some orphaned kittens and you simply cannot leave them?
- First, get it to a vet and take his advice. Because, depending on the type of kitten, feeding formula and the feeding frequency may differ. Feeding them contrary to the exact schedule and formula could be harmful to them.
How To Feed A Newborn Kitten?
Never depend on cow milk! Because cow milk contains a lesser amount of protein than what is required by a kitten. Here, the alternative would be a kitten milk replacer (KRM). If you have no clue how to pick a suitable KMR, ask your vet to prescribe one.
The times per day to feed your kitten depends on its age. If the kitten is spending its first week, you need to feed it every 2-3 hours. If the cat breed is small, not more than 15ml would be ideal. When they reach the second week, four to five meal rounds are enough for them per day. Here you need to drag the feeding hours to every 2-4 hours.
Usually, 180ml / kg of the body weight of the kitten is the prescribed amount of KMR per day. You may feed that quantity after dividing it by the number of meal rounds your kitten requires. Anyway, to get a very accurate quantity, the best way is to adhere to the label of the KMR, or you may negotiate with the vet.
Temper the KMR up to 100° F: or in other words 38° C before you feed it. It is also important to judge how your kitten poops. If you suspect that it is facing a diarrhea situation, generally lessen the dose of the mixture.
How to Bottle Feed a Newborn Kitten?
Make sure your kitten is lying down on its stomach when you are going to feed it. Never make it lied down on its back as how human babies do. If you could use a towel here, it will feel comfier.
You must make it feel as if it was fed by the mother cat. Naturally, kittens are made to identify their mother cat on how she licks the babies to clean and so. Here, the baby kitten might refuse to suckle as you expected, since it feels quite unnatural.
To succeed, you can very gently rub its forehead with your finger. Because mother cats generally use to lick the foreheads of their baby kittens at the times when they suckle her nipples. A similar feeling could be given to the motherless innocent by rubbing its forehead as I suggested. Likewise, it will feel as if it is being fed by the mother cat and will suckle peacefully.
While stroking the forehead as said above, you should assist the kitten to keep its head steady with the same finger. Then insert the nipple of the bottle very gently into its mouth. Here you need to focus only on inserting. Letting the formula flow toward its mouth is the next step.
Now make the bottle angled gradually. When the bottle is angled up to 45 degrees, it finds it easy to suckle. Continue to rub its forehead gently till it finishes.
How to Keep Newborn Kittens Warm
Keeping the kitten under the correct warmth is a major newborn kitten care task. Newborn kittens are needed to be kept under a warmth of 90°F during the first two weeks. 3rd week onwards, 80°F would be sufficient. The question is how to keep them so. Here are a few popular tips you could follow to be there.
Use a Cardboard Box: A cardboard box consists of fully covered walls. It is unlike a multi-pillared kennel or a birdcage, so cool air hardly comes inside.
Heating Pads: It is recommended to keep the cage of your kitten upon a heating pad: in a way, only one-half of the cage is grounded on it, and the other half is away.
Folded Towels: Make the baby kitten rest on a well-folded towel. I recommend a towel over a normal cloth due to the thickness of the towel. Thicker the material, the warmer it be. Even towels are better than blankets since the warmth of a blanket fades away quite quickly.
These are the basic arrangements you could make to provide your kitten with a warm-enough cage. The threshold room temperature is considered to as 45° and above.
Now you are supposed to check whether it is warm enough.
Gently touch either the ears or the foot pads of it and see whether they are cold. If it is, it requires more warmth.
If you notice your kitten is panting hard, that means its cage is overheated. Get the kitten out of the cage quickly and adjust the temperature level of the heat pad. Once it is fit after a few minutes, keep it back in the heat-adjusted cage gently.
After reading this newborn kitten care guide, I Hope you got a good idea of how to look after a motherless kitten. If your kitten is quite weak, I recommend you get advice from a vet whenever possible without getting stuck to what I shared. Because my content was general. Finally, good luck with a good deed. Goodbye, the kind-hearted you!