Emergency care for abandoned kittens
If you or someone locally has found small kittens which look as if they have been abandoned, here is a basic guide to giving emergency care until further help can be sorted.
FIRST AND VERY IMPORTANT! Make very sure that the mother of the kittens is not just waiting for you to leave so that she can return to her babies! Sometimes a mother cat will move her kittens and one will get dropped or left for a while until she can retrieve it. Watch from a distance if you can to see if she returns, or go back to look again in 20 minutes or so.
Immediate needs: security, warmth, hydration/food, toiletting and flea control – in that order
Security: The kittens should be placed in a deep lined box or basket in a draught-free place with a source of warmth. Even tiny kittens can wriggle out of a ‘nest’ and perish if not contained.
Warmth: (wrapped hot water bottles, heated pet blankets, microwave pads or even next to your skin). Kittens cannot feed if they are cold and until they are several weeks old they cannot regulate their own temperature so need help to do so. You can tell if a kitten is cold by testing its paw-pad on your upper lip or cheek.
Hydration/food: Kittens need feeding and toiletting every two to three hours when very small. A kittens’ eyes and ears are sealed up to about 10/12 days old – a good indicator of age. Kittens must be fed facing forward – mimicking the angle that they would feed from Mum. They should never be fed on their backs as a human baby is, for fear of choking.
Ideally the kittens should be fed lait maternisé made for kittens or puppies, otherwise goats’ milk (NOT COWS MILK!) or the supermarket plastic bottles of ‘cat milk’ which is lactose-free. As a stopgap boiled water with a little honey dissolved in it can be given. Everything should be about blood heat (ie should not feel cold or warm on your inside wrist). A syringe sterilised in boiling water is best for feeding very small kittens. If you are managing to feed an unweaned kitten it will need help to pee and pooh – (see below). Slightly older kittens may be able to eat soft scrambled egg or sardines mashed with warm water.
Toiletting: Until they are 3-4 weeks old kittens are unable to pee and pooh on their own. Their mother stimulates the reflexes by washing them so you need to mimic this after every feed with a damp tissue and gentle circular motions on their genital area. They should pee after almost every feed, but will probably pooh less often. When a kitten has peed, continue rubbing the area gently to encourage a pooh…if they are going to pooh, they will do so within a few moments.
Fleas: large numbers can seriously weaken a young kitten. They are best removed with a fine comb which is dipped into a bowl of warm water (add a drop or two of washing up liquid) to drown the pests once removed. Have several sheets of damp kitchen roll handy for wiping the comb and flea dirts. Keep the kitten warm during this process. The ‘dirts’ from fleas is dried blood where they have been feeding from the kitten.
Whether you are able to continue caring for the kittens yourself or need help finding someone to take over from you then you can contact Les Amis des Animaux for advice and assistance. Email us at cats@lesamisdesanimaux.com giving us a note of the date, place and circumstances in which the kittens were found, plus your town and post code. if possible include a photo (face shot) of one of the kittens to give us an idea of age. We will get back to you as quickly as we can.
