Four Week Old Kitten And Feeding Woes

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  • 14 September, 2014 at 3:35 pm #817952
    Matt
    Participant

    Hello and good day everyone! I hope all is well on your end.

    To the matter at hand, I have a four week old kitten. After a scare yesterday with her not eating whatsoever, she’s back to her normal self, it seems, and has an appetite.
    There’s only a few problems, though.

    The first is that she refuses to suckle on the bottle, instead opting to chew on it and whine (I’ve made sure the hole in big enough, and that she can get milk out of it, and she could if she wanted to.) The second is that she also refuses to take anything more substantial, or even milk from a saucer.
    I’ve tried baby food (no additives, Gerber brand, turkey flavor,) pate kitten food, pulverized dry kitten food, all mixed with her milk, of course, and also in odd combinations (pulverized kitten food in pate and milk, anyone?) to no avail.
    From what I can figure, she needs weaned, but seems to be having the hardest time getting the concept down.

    I was wondering and hoping that perhaps I could get some advice on what may be going on and how I should proceed, as I’ve never taken care of a kitten this young before. Oh, and in case it matters, what my family and I can figure is that she was born to a stray, and wandered off away from her mother at around two weeks old.

    Thanks for your time and have a wonderful day!

    14 September, 2014 at 3:50 pm #817954
    Kittyzee
    Participant

    Hi Matt, welcome to TDK! Your kitten being 4 weeks old, is too young to be weaned. She can be started on wet food though and one of the ways I introduce it is like you did, adding it to her kitten milk. Make a thin gruel with wet food added in. Also cut the tip of the nipple off (I know, you think that this will be too much) but you can control the flow by tipping the bottle up or down. Watch that she doesn’t get it too fast and choke or aspirate it into her lungs, but most kittens I have raised do well with this method. If she is chewing and whining at the bottle, she isn’t getting her food fast enough, IMO. Then, in a few days, keep introducing wet food mixed with milk in a bowl, she will finally understand what she is supposed to do. Hope this helps. Remember that most kittens aren’t weaned completely from milk until they are at least 8 weeks old. Hope this helps, keep us updated on her progress!

    14 September, 2014 at 4:11 pm #817955
    Matt
    Participant

    Hey Kittyzee, thanks for the welcome and the response!

    Let me see if I understand you correctly.
    Firstly, slowly add pate to her milk in her bottle? Then after, say, a week, introduce her to a bowl with the pate/milk mixture in it?
    Also, I chopped off the end of the nipple and I had to squeeze slightly to get the idea across, but after that, she started suckling just fine!

    Thanks again!

    P.S: Random question, does sour kitten milk smell the same as sour cow milk? I want to make sure I’m not giving her anything that’s gone bad, and I’ve never dealt with kitten milk replacement before.

    14 September, 2014 at 7:44 pm #817956
    Kittyzee
    Participant

    Sour kitten milk smells SOUR, just like regular SOUR milk. Throw it away. A better alternative to KMR, is goat’s milk. She might not think she likes it at first, but with the food mixed in she may not notice. It’s full of good flora for her gut and doesn’t cause constipation or diarrhea. Anyway, add a little of the food to the milk, shake it up and feed it to her. She will need the extra nutrition from the food and not be so grabby at the bottle. You can keep feeding her this way each time you feed her, although she may not act as hungry as before. Every other day or so, just introduce wet food/milk mix in a bowl (not in place of) to see if she’s interested.

    14 September, 2014 at 11:31 pm #817966
    Matt
    Participant

    Thanks for letting me know, I wasn’t too sure!
    Also, thanks for the clarification concerning the pate/milk mixture.

    Today has been a little hit or miss with my little one. I’ve made the hole considerably bigger as per your advice, and mixed in some pate, but she’ll only suckle for a second or two at a time. It seems she definitely has an appetite, but no willingness to suckle, unfortunately. I would prefer not to force-feed her, but that’s sounding like the only alternative I have…

    14 September, 2014 at 11:31 pm #817967
    Ashley
    Participant

    Just out of curiosity, have you tried feeding her the kitten food off your fingers? It’s grosssss, but it worked for me. Both of mine refused the bottle entirely after four weeks, I could never get them to suck after that. They’d just bite the nipple and shake it like a pitbull (i really wish i’d gotten a video of that). I just found a kitten food they liked (Royal Canin), mixed it with their serving of kmr and when they were good and hungry just put some on my finger and put my finger in their mouths. Mina took to the plate immediately, Lily had to be fed off my fingers for a few days (I put four fingers out flat and put the kitten food on my fingers – she’s a really big mama’s girl, idk). After a couple days, she’d gobble it up off the plate. After another couple of days, they lapped formula out of their dish and I slowly stopped mixing their food.

    15 September, 2014 at 12:49 am #817972
    Kittyzee
    Participant

    Yes, like Ashley said, I’ve used my fingers, spoon, dropper, whatever works to get food into the kitten. They will eventually figure it out but you sometimes just have to be patient and persistent! The biggest worry with a small kitten is that they don’t get the nutrition they need and get lethargic: from that point it is touch and go on survival. I’ve had kittens with “failure to thrive” or “fading kitten syndrome” and some make it–some do not. But using your fingers works and it gets food down them, as opposed to putting it on a plate and expecting them to eat it. I like to think doing what’s best for the kitten, instead of force feeding…you do what you have to to keep them thriving! 🙂

    15 September, 2014 at 7:08 pm #818034
    Matt
    Participant

    Hey Ashley, thanks for your response!

    I’ve tried feeding her off my finger quite a few times, but to no avail. More times than not, she’ll just sniff it and turn away. I’ll have to try it again, though. Right now, I’m more concerned with her eating, period.

    Something I failed to mention and that may be important is that I introduced a new kitten into my home Thursday. She started going down hill, my little one, Saturday, and I’ve noticed that when she’s away from the new one, she does better. I’m not sure if she’s stressed, or jealous, or something else, but the new one may be the reason for all the worry, unfortunately.

    To the matter of her feeding, what I ended up doing was mixing in crushed dry kitten food with pate and kitten milk, and trying to feed her that. I had to force feed her at first last night, but after a small syringe full of food, she was ready to start suckling. Also, I supplemented the syringe with some regular water to make sure she got enough hydration, as I wasn’t so sure she would with just the formula mixture.

    After some consultation with my mother, her and I came up with a solution for my little one through the night: putting her up as per the usual (so she doesn’t pee/poop on anything important, and so I don’t step on her in the morning,) but in a separate room away from the new one.
    When I woke up this morning, she was back to her normal self and has been that way all day so far!

    More good news is that she tried to pee on my bed this morning, but after stopping her and putting her in a litter box, she finished there instead, and she even went completely in the litter box after another feeding a few moments ago! Granted, I had to put her in there to see if she even had to go, but I feel this is a milestone, nevertheless.
    Speaking of which, that feeding went without a hitch. She meowed constantly for food (something she hadn’t really done in days) and suckled on it really well for a good six to eight minutes.
    Now she’s passed out next to me on my desk.

    Maybe I just have to keep her away from the new one for the time being until she gets old enough and used to her a little better. Maybe that’s what’s really going on, but I can’t say for sure.

    I’ll be trying the pate/milk mixture in a bowl later today, Kittyzee, to see if she’s interested. I kind of hope she is, but at the same time, kind of not because I’m not ready for her to grow up just yet!
    She sure seems to like the milk mixture I made, though, so that may be a promising sign.

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