Discover the Neonatal Stage for Kittens

Series Summary

Your pet cat is much more than just an animal. Our pets are our loved ones, our friends, and sometimes our children. For almost a thousand years mankind has been drawn to cats for their affectionate and dignified nature, companionship and keen hunting skills. Properly caring for cats is important, especially young kittens, since we have domesticated these animals from the wild and taught them to expect to have their needs met by humans. In order for the pet-human relationship to work, we have to do our part.

In these free instructional video clips, you'll learn expert information on basic kitten care, including how to help your kitten with nursing, eating and using the litter box. Dr. Adrienne Mulligan also discusses some of the most common feline afflictions, such as diarrhea, vomiting, feline leukemia, lower urinary infections and feline rhinotracheitis. The tips and advice in these free video clips will help ensure your kitten grows up strong and lives a long and healthy life.

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Dr. Adrienne Mulligan and I am the owner of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic and I am here on behalf of Expert Village.com to talk to you today about caring for kittens. The neo-natal period, the very first few weeks of the kitten’s life, is from birth to 3 weeks of age. During this period, they do three things: they nurse, they sleep and they grow. They open their eyes about 16 days but it is usually in that maybe 10 to 16 days range. Their ears begin to open about 10 to 17 days. During this time, the mother takes all care of their feeding by nursing and also the defecating and urinating and helping them eliminate. She does this by stimulating the anal genital area by licking it and cleaning up the mess herself so that it keeps the nest clean and keeps the kittens clean and it also stimulates them so that they can have bowel movements."