Orphan kittens less than a week – need advice

Thank you Moonshadow! I’ve had cats my whole life but never this young so this is a little exciting, though also very daunting so I appreciate the help.

I’ve had a quick read of the poop post, and will be upping the water to start with. We’re fairly certain mumma left soon after having them as the first time we fed them they ate a lot! We’re currently feeding with Di-Vetelact, 30ml per session with syringes (sometimes a little more or less). I know how important to get fluids in and hopefully that will right the poop (or lack of) situation.

They’re definitely fed on their tummies as they’re too wriggly to feed any other way!

I’ll get to reading the how to’s right now. And getting plenty of updates!

Hi kittyzee! Thanks for the welcome and advice though for the time being we’re just going to up the fluid in the Di-vetelact and see how that fares over the next day. Already their skins flicks back a lot quicker.
The feeds overnight have all gone well, & I think I might have jumped the gun on the eyes opening. Though their ears have opened! The boys are good though take a little rousing to feed on every second hour and one is a little more lethargic than the other but still feeding well and they’re both plenty warm.
Will continue to update as we go 🙂

Also urine is light yellow/clear so don’t think dehydration has anything to do with it?

Hi kittyzee, I did see that everyone gets excited and I got excited too! Haha

I just finished the feeding -it’s hard to get the down after sometimes! But I’ll give a rub in 20 and see how we go.

A few hours later & we have poo success!! Both boys have now had movements and are eating well. Will continue with updates and maybe some pics too!

Ok so now one has diarrhoea… Have watered food mixture way down and got as many fluids in as possible for both. It was only a little bit (think size of a small coin, 10c piece or a quarter, yellow) so we’re just going to monitor but he was very lethargic, though he suckled (very lazily) and purred.

We’re thinking perhaps we oversee slightly as there are so many differing pieces if advice on how much to feed.

I saw there are electrolyte solutions we can make at home but have no bicarbonate soda. Can we use just sugar and salt?

Where do we go from here??

Hi again! More updates and more questions.

The pooping and diahrea seems to have sorted itself out. They’re getting furrier and more mobile and are becoming rather good at climbing.

The thing that is worrying us now is that though they are feeding regularly and between 4-7.5mls at a time every 3 hours, they don’t seem to be putting on weight. They don’t cry for food and infact we have to wake them up to gets them to feed them. They are fine once they actually do wake up and they feed fine. They’re just not gaining.

What do we do? I’ve had a but if a hunt around for previous topics but nothing seems similiar.

Thanks again in advance.

This might sound awful, but I honestly cannot afford to get them get checked. We didn’t plan on hand rearing but the place we took them to to rear thought they were older and could not accommodate such little beings.

They’ve provided us with the milk replacement and droppers, basically everything we need to feed them for the next couple weeks til they’re old enough to go to this place (the take kittens 2 weeks and old, will do all appropriate vet things, microchipping, shots, etc) and adopts them out.

That being said, one of them passed a small amount of blood AFTER his poop after the feeding just now.he seems content enough, not in pain etc, but from the copious amounts of googling it sounds like it could be worms or something like that. Has anyone had experience with similar? Can we just monitor? I could take them to a vet but without being able to pay I’m worried we’d be refused treatment.

Also, they’re movements aren’t solid, but aren’t super runny but are maybe a step before diahrea consistency.