Expert: Jessica - 3/9/2010

Question
Is this normal?  Cat is a stray that my daughter fed and set up to birth her kitters in her bathtub with a hot pad.  In the morning the day old cat was there with momma, a kitten without a head and a dead kitten.  How do you care for the kitten?  Is there something wrong with the kittens or cat?

Answer
Hi Linda.  I'm so sorry to hear this.  Unfortunately, there's no way to know for sure whether there is something wrong with mom or something wrong with the kittens.  Most often, mothers consume the bodies of kittens AFTER they have already died in an effort to prevent any disease from spreading to their surviving babies.  However, there are times when the mother may kill her kittens.  This may be because she senses they are ill, because of extremely high stress levels or simply because she lacks the skills to be a mother.  In a situation where three out of four babies are dead, it’s wise to assume the last will not survive if no intervention is made, and this baby should be removed from mom as soon as possible.

The baby will need to be kept warm, because he cannot regulate his body temperature yet.  These are the temperature requirements for the area he will be kept in:

Up to one week old – 90 degrees
1 to 2 weeks old – 85 degrees
2 to 3 weeks old – 80 degrees
Three weeks and older 70-75 degrees

Since most people don’t have any way to keep a room this warm for a kitten, you can use a heating pad.  Wrap the heating pad in a towel and set it on low to medium heat, and keep it in a box where the kitten will stay.  Be sure there’s enough room in the box where the kitten can scoot off of the heating pad if he gets too warm.

The kitten will need to be bottle fed with a kitten milk replacer.  I like the brand KMR, but there are others such as Just Born and Hartz that are fine.  Heat the milk up to body temperature like you would for a human baby.  At this age, the baby may need to be fed with an eye dropper or syringe, graduating to a bottle in several days.  For the first two weeks, the kitten needs to eat every two hours, night and day, so it’s good if there are two people who can team up to care for the baby.  Formula packages say you can feed the baby every four hours, but my fellow volunteers and I lost many more babies on this schedule than we do feeding them like natural moms do, every two hours.  When he reaches a full two weeks old, you can drop down to every three hours, and then every four hours the next week.  At two days old, you can expect the kitten to eat 3-5 cc’s at each meal.

You also will need to make the kitten move his bladder and bowels, and this is done by moistening some cotton balls with warm water, and using them to massage his genital area in a circular motion.  He should urinate each time and defecate a couple times a day.  Defecation takes a little more work, so keep gently massaging the anal area until it’s clear he doesn’t need to pass any stool (the kitten will start fussing at the stimulation).  The kitten will start urinating on his own around 3 weeks and defecating shortly after, so start placing him in a shallow try of litter after each meal around this time.  No clumping litter at this age – I like pine pellets.  If the kitten doesn’t do anything on his own, try to stimulate him over the litter try so he gets the idea.

Start trying to introduce the little one to solid foods by offering him chicken baby food when he’s about 3-4 weeks old, or by using a weaning formula, also made by KMR.  I give my babies a bottle until they’re at least 10 weeks old, but they should be eating plenty of kitten food by 6 weeks old.  I prefer a very slow weaning process so that the kittens don’t end up with behavioral problems such as inappropriate suckling.

Best of luck!

Jessica