Surrogate Question For The Future

[Bp_968]

Hi all, I work with a local group fostering kittens/cats and thanks to Facebook have gotten a reputation as the goto "cat" guy (being disabled affords me more free time for such things). Anyway, I currently have a litter of 6 kittens (about 4 weeks old now) with mom. A week ago someone brought me a 24hr old kitten that had been abandoned. I called around and was left with the only option of trying to surrogate it with my current litter. So I carefully introduced the tiny baby and mom seemed to be fine with it and it seemed to be strong and have plenty of energy at the time. I checked on it often the first 24 hours and other then having to work really hard to compete with 6 siblings 4 times it's size it seemed to be doing surprisingly well. Then the morning of day 2 I found its *remains* scattered around the crate mom and babies stay in..

I cleaned up the crate and no one (other then me!) seemed concerned about the fatality. Any ideas on what happened? I suspect that baby wasn't doing as well as I thought and died overnight and the mangled corpse was mother cats attempt to clean up the mess. The other option is that she or the babies killed it outright (they were 3-1/2 weeks old at that point).

I really wish there had been another foster with a younger litter at the time to take the infant.

 

[kashmir64]

It's never a good idea to put a small one in with older. Although mothers milk is the best, I would have recommended to let the little one suckle, then remove it to a warm safe location. Check the weight daily to make sure it's getting enough. You can use a heating pad wrapped in a towel for warmth, give it a stuffed animal to curl up in, and most importantly, make sure no other pets can get to it.

 

[Sarthur2]

Most likely the mom killed it. It's sad, but it happens. It could be because the mom sensed something was wrong with it.

Kashmir is right. It was too young to be side by side with the older kittens though, but thank you for trying.

I'm sorry for what happened.

 

[Bp_968]

I figured the little guy was too little but it was abandoned, I called all the people I knew, and wasn't really left with any options. I never take kittens that need bottle feeding because I simply can't keep up with their care due to health issues (you have to know your limitations). I wish there had been another option but sadly there wasn't. The only other kitten I've lost was due to a reaction to a medication it was given and it went into immediate cardiac arrest and died. Vet said he's only seen it happen once before, so just terrible luck.