4 week old kittens... food?
Hey,
As I have previously posted, my cat had kittens recently. They turned four weeks old today. I've been reading all over the intenet that I should be starting to introduce food to them. The only problem is... what kind? I know it should be soft... but after that I'm at a loss. Shuld I just water down the dry stuff I have or should I buy something new? HELP!! :confused:
My kitten won't eat, only suck
Hello Everyone! I've been looking through internet about learning how to feed my kitten. I got 2 kitten (germany and ireland) when they are only 3 weeks old.. I fed them from bottle, then to syringe, and one is eating on his own.. they are 5 weeks old now. The other one, Ireland still won't chew.. still suck on food.. I tried putting kitten soft food in his mouth to make him learn how to CHEW, but he still suck on the food. I'm not sure what I should be doing to him. Continue on syringe? I think he's big enough to eat on his own.. Just like his brother Germany.. :confused:
Any suggestion? It'd be helpful! Please let me know ASAP, Ireland's crying for food, and I'm trying.
My kitten won't eat, only suck
I work at a cats-only vet clinic in Maine, so if you don't mind me sharing some stuff I've heard from our doc more than once...
Even though the kittens were born at the same time, Germany may be advancing faster due to having been conceived earlier. (Unlike some other animals, cats can stay in heat for a few days after their first sexual encounter, and can therefore have several kittens with several different fathers all in the same litter that were all conceived on different days.) Ireland will probably eventually learn to eat regular food just like Germany has, but it may take a lot more patience on your part.
A suggestion for trying to back off the syringe feeding is to get a good quality canned kitten food and water it down with either milk, kitten formula or water to the point that it's runny enough to syringe feed, but let Ireland "suck" it out of the bowl. As Ireland starts to get the idea that the food is always being served in the bowl and starts to react when the bowl comes out to be filled for dinner, you can begin to back off on how much watering down you're doing a little at a time. As the food becomes more difficult to "suck" out of the bowl, Ireland will probably take a tip from Germany and start chewing the food a bit more (although in watching my two-year-old Maine Coon mix eat, he still does something closer to licking the canned food he gets at the morning feeding and chews the dry that he gets in the evening).
Of course, nothing beats having the kittens seen by a vet to determine if there is a physical reason for Ireland's refusal to take to the normal kitten food, and the vet you see may totally disagree with what the vet I work for tells people. (In fact, the first vet I worked for would have a totally different approach to what I've just said than the one I currently work for - just as the person who responded to the posting above yours had the view that you should NEVER feed a kitten canned food. My doc would tell you to never feed dry food because she feels that dry food is the equivalent of feeding your cat Twinkies for breakfast... :) )
Best of luck with your kittens, and here's hoping little Ireland realizes soon that crying about food doesn't fill the belly as quickly as going nose-deep into a dish of the stuff... ;)