When to Pick Up Newborn Kittens

Video Transcript

"Picking up newborn kittens can be a bit of a challenge. There are several things you want to talk that I'd like to talk about about when you can do that. First of all, you have to understand that it's not just a kitten you want to interact but you also have the mother. Obviously though if you have an orphan kitten then you have a different situation but you will have to be very respectful of handling kittens, newborn kittens around the mother, not take them away specially for the first two weeks or so. A kitten actually is blind and deaf when it's born, it can't see for the first ten, seven to ten days and it won't hear until about two weeks old when their ears actually open up and start hearing. So, picking them up, the only contact they have is just that tactile movement of your hand on the cat and it's not really respond to anything else. So, sometimes I think the idea of picking them up and becoming socialized, the reason why, I mean it's great to have newborn kittens, they're lots of fun and the kids have a good time with them and everything but there's a limit to what you want to do as far as handling them and specially during those first two weeks because you want to make sure that they are well-attached to the mom, they're nursing well and she doesn't get wild because if she gets stressed then you have a lot of the problems. We've had issues with the mothers trying to move their cats out of the room, out of a nest or they're going to even getting worst case scenarios where they they'll just get either leave them alone, abandon them or worse. But so handling them is an issue but it's also it's great to do. Usually I say at the start, don't do it before two weeks. Their eyes are open, they can respond, they're crying, they're eating, they're crying or they're sleeping usually the first two weeks and after that they'll start getting socializing, they'll start getting more active and looking around. So, from three, four weeks you can start handling them and it's really a good idea to handle kittens. A lot of times if you don't get them socialized at a young age, as they get older I don't know if you've had experience but some cats really aren't all that friendly or they could be a different behavior or they're just not used to being handled and that sometimes can just be because of how they were raised when they were young. If they have never exposed to people and never handled, they're going to be very shy about that, some cats will be, some cats no matter what you do they just love you, to that and everything will be fine. And that also other cats you can handle all you want and they're just never seem to be really people, not oriented but a lot of times it will help if you do handle cats. Make sure when you're picking up a cat though just be aware of the mom and handle them gently."