Handling Orphan Kittens

Video Transcript

"This is an orphan kitten that's about two weeks old. One of a member of a litter of six who are doing really well and who are being hand raised. For orphan kittens it's very important that they get lots of handling and lots of socialization. So every day they need to come out, in addition to their feeding and their bathing, you need to stroke them and check their bodies for any abnormalities while you're petting them, get them use to having their little feet held. Even now that they're little their ears are sort of folded over, but you want to get use to having them have their ears touched. You can see this kitten is looking around for a bottle, but having these kittens handled every day is really great. If you have an adult cat who is well vaccinated and healthy and stable around kittens, who's pretty agreeable, it would help a lot to have some adult cat time for these little kittens. So that the adult will teach them what normal cat behavior is."