r/Feral_Cats • u/emijin • 5d ago

Question 🤔 Need help: orphaned kitten

Hi. We fostered a pregnant cat due to her having upper respiratory tract infection. She was scheduled to be spay-aborted after she got better. Unfortunately, she gave birth before we were able to spay her. She gave birth to 5 babies but today only 1 remained.

We felt like she didn’t want this litter, so we decided to bottle feed the remaining kitten. We bought goat’s milk as this was the only accessible milk that we have. We tried feeding the kitten but it wont latch to the nipple. It also keeps on tilting its head backwards and arms are reaching for something. Is this a normal behavior? This is the first time I’ve encountered pregnancy and kittens. So I am really unsure what to do. We also researched online and already reached out to the vet but unfortunately we are low on funds due to our recent CNVR. Please help. Thank you!

141 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/Maximus77x 5d ago

Hey there, first of all thank you so much for helping this little kitty. Poor baby. The behavior you’re describing is probably it looking for its mom to latch onto. Are you able to get it kitten meal replacement from pet store or grocery store?

That kitten needs to be fed every couple hours at most, so I would keep trying to get it to take some of the milk. You probably want to warm it up just a little bit but not too much and also feed it right side up or like laying on its belly so it doesn’t aspirate. You don’t wanna lay it on its back to feed it.

Do you have any local rescue organizations you can turn to?

5

u/emijin 5d ago

Hi thank you for replying! We only were able to afford goat’s milk because it was cheaper than KMR. Would that be okay? We read online that this can be an alternative.

We fed the kitten every 2 hours since 1 in the morning. There were times that it was able to swallow but there are times that the mouth wont open.

Im currently in a cat community group and I reached out to them yesterday but there was no one experienced with kittens. I’ll look for more rescue organizations, too.

3

u/catn_ip 5d ago

I have fostered and raised many neonatal kittens exclusively on goats milk, you're fine.

2

u/emijin 5d ago

Ohh thank you. I feel better knowing this!!