Several months ago (Sept 21), Theo and the boys heard some loud crying coming from our barn. They investigated and found FOUR baby kittens hidden under the straw bales in the barn. We saw the Mom once or twice, but then she disappeared and we saw no sign of her for 48 hours. At this point, we are total newbie homesteaders and we decided to take the kittens inside and bottle raise them. There were many, many times that we regretted this decision and I wish that we had left them for another day or so to see if Mama was actually interested in raising them. Honestly, it could have been the right decision or it could have been the wrong decision. Either way, it is the decision that we made and we learned A LOT through it. I just thought I would compile our thoughts and experiences here in case it helps someone else who may find abandoned kittens.
The kittens we found were maybe around 7 days old. Their eyes were opened and they were able to stand on their legs, but they weren’t able to do much beyond that. Kittens from newborn to 4 weeks need CONSTANT care. They need warmth, they need to be fed every 2-3 hours and they need help going to the bathroom.
For warmth, we brought them inside the house, put them in a tote with some warm blankets and put a heat lamp on them 24/7. At week 3, we would turn the heat lamp off at night. We felt comfortable with this, especially since there was 4 of them to snuggle up together.
Bottle feeding kittens is actually much harder than I expected! Just like with a newborn baby, they need to learn how to latch onto the nipple and correctly suck without choking. Except with kittens, they have no gag reflex so it’s tricky to get them to latch and suck properly while also not aspirating. We found that while the kitten should NOT be held on their back to drink the bottle, it was sometimes the only way to get them to latch properly. We fed them every 2-3 hours, but drew the line at waking up in the night to feed them. We would do a 10pm feeding and then a 5 or 6 am feeding, and the kittens ended up doing just fine. Please note: KITTENS CANNOT DRINK COWS MILK. It is very different from their Mom’s milk formula, and especially the hormone infused stuff from the store is NOT OK for kittens. They need kitten formula…which is very expensive. Unfortunately. With four newborn kittens, we went through many cans of formula.
(I’ve linked all the products we used at the bottom of this post)
As for using the bathroom, their Mama would lick their bottoms and stimulate pee and poop, but without their Mama the caretaker has to do it- this involves wiping their butts every 2-3 hours until something comes out. It’s incredibly stinky and gross and involves SO much laundry. I never dreamed I would be holding a kitten over a toilet wiping their butt until a little turd poop comes out.
At first it was fun and exciting, but we quickly grew overwhelmed with taking care of these kittens. We still both were working our jobs and trying to coordinate our schedules so that someone was always home to feed the kittens at the 3 hour max mark. There was one day that I would be at school for 12 hours and Theo would be at work for 12 hours and so Theo ended up taking the kittens to work with him. HAHA. I also took them to church with me once so that I could still go to lunch at my parents house afterward and feed them on schedule without having to go back home first. Even when I was sick and exhausted from pregnancy, I had to pull the late shift and feed the kittens. I spent many hours sitting on that bathroom floor bottle feeding kittens. The first few weeks each feeding took minimum of 45 minutes. It was literally like having a newborn again. But it felt slightly unfair to have a newborn schedule AND morning sickness at the same time LOL.
Tera adored them and quickly named them all after flowers: Milkweed, Black-eyed Susan, Daffodil, and Tiger Lily.
Weeks 3-5 were the most difficult for me because the kittens were learning how to potty on their own, which meant that they constantly STUNK. I would open the door of my house and it would just smell like cat pee/poop and I couldn’t stand it! This is not advised, but I ended up giving the kittens daily baths and then warming them up by the wood stove. I just could not stand the smell.
Weeks 3-5 is also when we started to let the kids play with them more outside of the tote and bathroom. They were still tiny and fragile and their ears and legs were so disproportionate to their heads. They were very entertaining, though!
Around week four, I also started to introduce them to being outside. I wanted them to be able to adjust to temperatures and learn the sights and smells of outside. I started by leaving them in a tote outside. If the weather was warm, I would leave them for a significant chunk of time, but if it was chilly out, I would just leave them for a few minutes.
The transition from the bottle to regular food was a challenge. I’m very curious how this happens in nature, because our kitties struggled to go from bottle sucking to lapping food. One thing that did help was making gruel for them to lick up, then transitioning to wet cat food, and then transitioning to kitten niblets. This transition took a good 10 days, with 2-3 days for each step. This part was also very stinky because they would spill the gruel, spill the wet cat food, etc. So then it smelled like pee AND cat food. Gag. They hadn’t yet learned how to lick themselves, so they were just a mess.
I was sincerely hoping to have the kittens out of our house and ready to go home by the big wedding weekend we had in October, but they just weren’t even off the bottle yet. I did lay my foot down and officially move them out to the barn because I was not going to have overnight wedding guests AND stinky in my houses. I do have my boundaries. At first, we put blankets out in the barn with them, and we brought the heat lamp out, but the blankets were getting so smelly and I was doing so much laundry each day just to keep up with the bodily fluids in there. So I switched to straw and that was the BEST decision. Be very careful with straw + and heat lamp, though!!
The straw was so much less stinky, it absorbed all of their bodily fluids, and I could just dump it out and put fresh in.
Around 6 weeks, the kittens were finally able to pee and poop on their own, they were eating their own food, and were starting to jump out of the tote in the barn and explore on their own. HALLELUJAH!!!!!!
This is when things got FUN. The kittens were cute and cuddly and basically no work at all. Someone told me that I would grow so attached to these kittens, and from weeks 1-6 I did not feel attached AT ALL. They were SO much work. They were so stinky and I felt like my whole life was on their schedule (because it was lol). But once they started being independent, they were such a delight. The kittens are carted around all day long and it’s like every farm kid/homesteader dream at this point.
The time came for them to go to new homes, and a friend took two kittens. We didn’t even attempt to find homes for the other two- we loved them so much that they are sticking around. Which is hilarious because we disliked them SO much the first few weeks and could not wait to be rid of them.
We agreed they would make great barn cats, but as you can see from the following pictures, they don’t spend too much time in the barn.
And that is our story of the first time we raised kittens! I’m sure with a barn and a homestead this will not be our last, but at least now we know a little better what we are getting into!
Here are some links of supplies/items that we used. Also needed are LOTS of raggedy towels and rags, plus tons of laundry detergent because you will be washing many, many loads of laundry.
Kitten formula:
Kitten gruel:
It’s amazing how Mama cats keep them so clean!