How Soon Can I Hold a Newborn Kitten?

Video Transcript

"Let's talk about how soon you can hold a new born kitten. This is obviously not a new born kitten, but the principle's the same. With a new born the first thing you want to ask yourself, is this an orphan. If the queen or mother cat is present you want to let the queen take care of the kitten and basically not handle it for the first couple of weeks if you can help it. When you have an orphan you basically are forced to go ahead and take care of them and so handling them as soon as possible is better because you want nutrition in to them. You want to be gentle, you want to keep them warm, and not over handle them either. As they get a little bit older you obviously can handle them as much as they'll allow you to, but when you talk about real young ones again, let the queen decide, let mother cat decide if she is present. And you don't want to go too fast. It may take days to a couple of weeks to before she'll allow you to handle a kitten because queens can be more aggressive. But as they get older, they generally are going let you handle them and it's safe to do so."