Rearing kittens

Rearing kittens

After giving birth to a lovely litter of kittens, your queen will hardly move out of the kittening box for the first week, except to feed herself and attend to her toilet. She will curl up with them, purring, letting them suckle and washing them, completely satisfied

At about 10 days old the kittens' eyes will begin to open, and the kittens will start to move around in the box If there is a litter tray near the breeding box, the mother will nudge them into it after feeding them and instinctively they will know what to do.

They usually start using the litter tray before being weaned, provided you have been thoughtful enough to provide one for their use. Normal kittens will eat some of the litter in the tray or any other dirt lying about, which apparently may help them to populate the gut flora with bacterial organisms vital for digestion.

They will be content with only mother's milk to begin with but if she is lacking in milk they will not plump up as they should and you must think about supplementing her milk with a foster feeding bottle The smallest who are not getting a fair share will be the first to accept the bottle and the queen will eagerly devour whatever contents are left.

In fact she should be offered a bowl of the same kind of milk. A week later this can become a milky baby cereal, served to the mother near the nest If you use the same sounds as the mother has been used to, when you serve feeds to the kittens, they will soon associate these sounds with food and come running.

Their language lessons will have begun. The kittens will copy their mother and stick their noses in the mixture, some will walk right into it. then squeal to find their feet slipping' The queen will soon clean them up.

Eventually they will all get the hang of how to lap and will look forward to their porridge at regular intervals In between they will still be suckled by their mother.

At three weeks they can be given one meal of raw meat, rabbit, chicken or fish, finely minced or chopped. four hours away from the cereal meal. If the kittens seem constipated you can use sardines and brown bread crumbs mixed with a little hot water into a mash

After four weeks give two milk and/or cereal meals and two meat or fish meals each day, adding one drop of halibut oil per kitten daily, and making sure all kittens get fair shares. If any kitten is greedy and eats too much, so that it regurgitates the food soon afterwards. feed it separately. A little at a time and slowly.

If the queen has been taught to sit up and beg for her food before the plate is put down, continue to do this and the kittens will follow their mother's example as soon as they can stand on two back legs without tumbling over.

If the mother was not trained to do this before, now is a good time to start and they can all learn it together.

Even when the kittens are all feeding themselves and seem independent of their mother's milk, leave them with her until they are at least ten weeks old, preferably 1 2 weeks for the foreign breeds.

During this time the mother has a chance to 'finish their education.