Learn to Spot Dystocia in Your Cat

"Hi! I am Dr. Adrienne Mulligan. I am the owner of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic, and I am here today on behalf of expertvillage.com. I am here to speak to you about breeding cats. So now let us talk about signs of dystocia; and dystocia is when the cat has trouble, the queen, when the queen has trouble having the kittens and needing some help in the actual having of the kittens. Sometimes they need to go to the vet and have a C-section, and that may need to be; and the way you will know that is if the kittens, or if the queen is straining in labor for more than 20 minutes to 30 minutes and not producing a kitten, then there is probably trouble. If you can put your finger up in there and feel the kitten, you might be able to use Vaseline, and lube it up and try to get it to pop on out; and if you can’t you need to hurry to the veterinarian. But let us say she is popping those kittens out and we are dong fine, but for some reason, being a new mom, she is not cleaning them up and getting the placenta off. She is busy waiting for the next one, or pushing on the next one, and you need to get in and help. The things you are going to do is clean the nose and the mouth of mucus and fluid that happened during the placental time; the placental fluid will be in the nose and the mouth. And you can use baby nostril cleaners to suction out their mouth and their nose. And you want to also tie off umbilical cords on them, if the kitty is not chewing those and doing those herself; and a good thing is just your home dental floss. Get a nice big piece; and the umbilicus, to chew, will be the tissue that is a cord between the kitty and the mom. And if you can just get that tied around in a knot, close to the body and cut that off then she will be fine. And so you want to do that on the kitten, and then start cleaning them out."