Kitten feeding question

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PeterDevonMocha

PeterDevonMocha

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My cousin found a kitten that was only a few weeks old .. she has been bottle feeding it and now the vet thinks she's about 7 weeks old .. but she won't eat any food or drink any water yet, just wants her bottle .. any ideas on how to make this switch? I've never had a kitten so little before!
 
Offer her kitten food off her finger, may even have to put a bit on it's tongue. Mama would most likely already be stopping it from trying to nurse. Just keep trying soft food and withhold the bottle - yep, they 'yell' at Mama too...

This worked for me so thought I'd share....others will have better suggestions. GOOD LUCK!
 
Place warmed, small, pea-sized canned food blob on finger.
Pick up kitten.
When kitten meows, quickly place/scrape food into mouth (roof of mouth works best - its like peanut butter that way!).
Wait for swallowing to occur.
Repeat until kitten figures it out.

This worked for a 4 week old semi-feral kitten that was hissy. Now Fission is Fizzy girl and loves to eat canned food and be cuddled.
 
It's been a while since I had a kitten that young, but we did have a bottle baby once upon a time. When we were switching to solid food, we used canned food, mixed with warm formula to make a warm, but not hot, slurry, and put it on a flat paper plate, not in a bowl. It was messy, because they waded right in. The flat plate seemed much easier for them to figure out than even a shallow dish at first. And having the food slightly warmer than room temperature made a big difference. From there, they were weaned onto food mixed with water instead of formula and then onto eating out of a regular dish.
 
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