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Hey Ellen!
I see you posting photos of really young kittens that you are currently fostering, but are not available yet? How come I can’t put a deposit on the kitten and have you hold it for me?
Good question and I have an answer for you!
Foster babies are fragile creatures, not all of them make it despite the copious amounts of hours, love, attention and medical intervention we give. The one missing element is a real ‘mom cat’ and that is something we just can’t replace yet.
There are two very distinct periods in a foster baby’s life where there seems to be a trend in them dying or at least trying to expire. We call this ‘fading kitten syndrome.’ Fading kitten syndrome is frustrating as we don’t always know why the kitten is not thriving. Could it be a viral infection? What about a bacterial infection? How about metabolic distress or intestinal malabsorption- we just don’t know, but we are constantly asking questions and trying to figure out what we can do and if we can do something to correct the problem.
A bottle baby that has never met its natural mother has a smaller chance at surviving in their first week of life simply due to the lack of maternal antibodies they receive. We try to correct the lack of antibodies by giving the kitten some fresh plasma from a healthy cat to give it an immunity boost and add probiotics in their formula to help seed their intestines with the proper flora to actually be able to digest and process the food correctly. One of the most common causes of death in a bottle baby is chronic diarrhea from formula and a foster parent waiting a few days before seeking help. Many times it is too late to save the kitten. Preventing it increases the baby’s chance of survival, but it does not work in every kitten. Jumping on any problem immediately increases the chance of survival greatly.
The second period in their life is when you are attempting to wean them off their formula diet to regular kitten food. Cats are stubborn by nature and if they do not like a diet, they CAN and WILL starve themselves. This includes kittens. Every kitten is vastly different on their weaning time. Some take to a regular diet with no problems, while some can take as long as 9 weeks before it wants to give up their bottle. Diarrhea comes into play again since you are introducing a whole new diet to their delicate GI tract.
Remember, bottle babies need quite a bit of love and attention from their human caregivers. Many of the babies are desperate for constant attention and people forget that with a mom cat, they get attention around the clock.
Another thing we cannot guarantee is their Feline Leukemia Virus/Feline Immunosuppressive Virus (FELV/FIV) status until they are 6 weeks of age. This is where you know the maternal antibodies are leaving the body and if one of those viruses could have been given to the kitten. If the kitten is positive for either disease, they can still be adopted (you can have an FELV/FIV positive cat in the house with non-positive ones, but there are rules to the exception). They need to be rechecked again at 6 months of age to determine if that test is a true positive or not. For more information click here. The last thing I would want to do is to get anyone’s hopes up on the kitten to only give the bad news of a positive result and then the kitten be turned down on the adoption.
So sit back, enjoy the photos and keep asking about the babies! If you are ‘that’ interested in one of them, check back on a weekly basis to ask how they are doing. Once they have been tested, they will have the public shout-out they are available!