10 day old kitten - Advice

My cat Harvey had 3 kittens ten days ago. As a responsible pet owner we were taken by surprise over the Summer and will be spaying her as soon as we're able to do so....

Anyway, she had a litter of four - one stillborn, two girls and a boy.

The girls are doing great and putting on a ton of weight. The boy is struggling a lot.

When they were three days old, we found him outside of the nest, cold and clearly malnourished. We'd been away overnight and our tenant had been looking after him, and called me about the problem. I put him on an emergency kitten mix feed that night, yolks, homo milk, canola oil and got KMR for him in the morning. After two or three feeds, he was doing well, back in the kitty puddle and being fed by his Mum, who was clearly concerned about his health.

On Friday, now a week old, exactly the same thing happened again. I arrived home from work and he was cold, malnourished and out of the nest. He was too weak to feed and barely moved. I fed him KMR, and continued to do so at 2/3 hourly intervals on Saturday. By Sunday, he was much more vigorous and was feeding from his Mum without encouragement.

So I'm posting to ask a couple of questions....

1) Should I take him to the vet to see if there's something serious going on, or wait for nature to take its course?

2) Are there any specific signs that I should look out for so that next time he isn't in such a bad state before I intervene?

Outside of these two incidents, his mother is very responsive and concerned about him. She treats him the same way she treats her other kittens, but I have witnessed her moving him away from the others once.

As the other two are, and always have been about a third larger, and both are very aggressive in terms of feeding, my assumption is that there are times he doesn't get enough food because the other two pull him away from the Mother, he then gets too weak to feed, and then the Mother, thinking he is dying moves him away from the nest....

Has anyone experienced anything like this? Anyone have any advice...

I'd take over feeding him, or every 2 hours round the clock assure he gets a good feed from mum

He may benefit from a general antibiotic if he's got a slight infection, but unless your vet is used to dealing with breeders or rescuers they're often not too knowledgable on raising kittens

I would keep him wiht his Mom , but take over feeding him. Just to make sure he is getting enough food.

So you don't get another surprise, please don't let the mother out again until she has been spayed.  My own vets would want to wait until the kittens are 10 weeks old or so, and she can easily get pregnant again in that time.  She could also have an accident and leave you having to raise the kittens without her, which is very hard work.

Thanks for the advice, and as recommended, will take over feeding responsibilities from Mum. We're keeping her in until it's time for her to be sterilised exactly for the reasons above.

Many thanks!
 

Good luck

Having read around a bit more today, it sounds like the little one is/was a candidate for FKS. That being said, today's the third day since I found him weak on Saturday morning. He's put on a lot of weight since then and is holding his own at feeding time. He's also significantly more active and vocal than he was at the weekend. So, I'm preparing myself for the worst, that he won't make it, but hoping that he will pull through, especially as he's feeding well on his own from his Mum, putting on weight and I've observed him being a lot more aggressive about his favorite nipple.

Keep your fingers crossed that he pulls through the next few critical days...