How to Hold Newborn Kittens

Video Transcript

"Holding a newborn kitten can be a bit of a challenge. What you want to really do, is make sure you're supporting them well. Newborn kittens when they're first born, they don't hear or see up until from seven to ten days old, their eyes won't be open, up till two weeks, they don't really hear. If you have to handle them at that age, make sure you support them well, don't, sometimes you'll see the mom carrying around by the nape of their neck. And you'll think, oh, that's the way you should do it. That's not necessarily the way, you want to do it. You want to hold them in the cup of your hand, make sure you support both their feet and not just under the stomach. And so they're well supported, you can do that, a little kitten can fit in the palm of my hand fairly easily. After that, when they get older, still it's important to handle them as much as you can within reason. But continually supporting them and that, if you wanted to carry them around, the only way that the mother cat can do that, is by grabbing them by the back of their neck and carrying them around. So that's not, that's a good restraint technique but necessarily the way you'd want to handle them as a person who is going to have a new pet in the house. But if a kitten is getting rambunctious or starting to bite or having some other behavioral issues, grabbing them by the scruff of their neck. Not to, you never want to hurt a kitten or be, you may have them, have a painful situation. Unless, obviously if you're getting an injection like, with a veterinarian, but that's one thing. But just normal handling them, you try to keep them well supported and not have them dangling or pulling them by the tail or the feet or holding them up and going, oh, isn't this cute? Because the poor kitten is, things aren't as pliable as you might think."