Anyone ever rescued a newborn kitten??

[2up]

My daughter's boyfriend rescued a kitten when he was less than 2 days old. Mommy kitty wouldn't feed or take care of him. He is now a month old and has been being bottle fed kitty formula and being helped to go "potty" as baby kitties need to be.

So, couple of questions now; (I'm babysitting today, by the way) they are trying to introduce solid food, which is dry food mixed with formula. He's just not that into it. At all. Any tips? We heat the formula and put a bit extra of warm formula on the already mixed dry/formula at each feeding. He licks the formula off of it and kind of pushes the rest around.

Also, how and when should a litter box be introduced? The whole rubbing his private parts until he goes just isn't a lot of fun. No, really, its not. lol

Thanks in advance.

[Cutty72]

IDK, all our cats always lived in the barn on the farm... either they made it or they didn't. But they were more than a month old when they started eating solid cat food, IIRC.

[skiergirl]

Have you tried wet cat food? like the canned stuff? it's a bit more solid than formula but not nearly as hard to eat as dry cat food?

We used to also soak the dry food in the formula so it's soft almost mushy and as they got used to that let it get less mushy each time until it's dry.

[2up]

Thanks guys. It's the dry food that has been made mushy he's not into. They haven't tried canned food. Today I actually got him to eat probably 5 or 6 pieces of totally dry food. He liked it a lot but I think was a little frustrated because it isn't super easy to eat. But at least it was more than just his formula in his belly.

I did a bunch of internet searches on the topic and of course there are a million opinions. Guess we'll just keep trying the mushy stuff and the hard stuff and see what he'll eat.

[cuttle]

We fostered baby kittens for years (bottle raised most of them) and the best thing I found that kittens can't resist is meat from a rotisserie chicken.

the other best option is wet food with gravy, in the beginning they may just lick the gravy but it's a start.

Litterbox: just put the kitten in the box after feeding and scratch with the finger in front of it. With 4 weeks the kitten should be able to do it without "stimulation".

Have fun!

[LittleTaz]

As soon as they can walk around and get into a litter box, they'll use it if you give them the idea what it's for. We've bottle fed several, some almost from birth when mama just disappeared. At first for the litter box we just used an aluminum pie pan. You just have to be sure to put enough litter in it to make it heavy enough to not tip over when they climb in. At this point they should poop on their own if you quit doing the butt rub When they do, just use some toilet paper, pick it up and put it in the litter pan, put them in with it and be sure they know it's there... nature will take it's course.

[Particle Man]

we've rescued several... most of them just naturally used the litter box once it was introduced. One won't go outside - she only wants the litter box and glares at the other cats when they go outside and can't cover it for some reason

[Rider]

I think the youngest I adopted a cat was 8 weeks old. He was already on regular kitten food and liter box trained by then.

[unknownroad]

I don't know anything about newborns, but we did rescue some parking lot strays that were about six weeks old (according to the vet)... At that point they were eating dry cat food that somebody was leaving out for them, and when we put them in a habitat with a litter box they figured it out almost immediately (although they also liked to sleep in it). They were between 1.5 and 2.5 pounds at that point- how big is your 1-month-old?

[Particle Man]

Originally Posted by unknownroad

although they also liked to sleep in it

we had that problem so we bought another litter box and put old blankets in it