sick newborn kitten

Question
Kitten is one of a litter of 4, 13 days old.  As of today, mother is rejecting the sick kitten, dragging it out of nest.  The kitten has runny nose and eyes.  I have antibiotics and KMR.  How do I stop her from dragging kitten away?

Answer
Barbara,

Unfortunately you can't stop mom from rejecting this kitten - she knows instinctively that this baby is sick. His/her best chance is to continue to administer the antibiotics prescribed by your veterinarian as directed, keeping the kitten warm and feeding him/her small amounts of body temperature KMR every 1 1/2-2 1/2 hours for at least another two weeks. I really wish I had good news for you, but ultimately you can't force a mom to take care of a baby that she doesn't want to. A this age you will also have to help this baby urinate and defecate after each feeding by gently stimulating his/her anal and genital regions (wipe genitals to bottom to keep fecal bacteria out of the genital areas as much as possible) with a cotton ball or strips of terry cloth moistened with warm tap water - this is to mimic mom licking those areas to help her babies eliminate. Within a couple of weeks the kitten should begin to eliminate on his/her own and you can begin litter training. If this kitten still hasn't been accepted back into the litter by mom by that point then you can move on to feeding KMR's weaning formula and begin to integrate a high quality canned kitten food such as Wellness or a properly formulated homemade raw diet such as the one indicated on www.catinfo.org whichever you prefer is fine. As for the remaining kittens, so long as mom keeps caring for them it's perfectly okay to allow her to wean them on her own when she's ready which should happen somewhere around 8 weeks of age or so - the kittens should then stay with mom until they're at least 12 weeks old so that they are properly socialized and ready to go into their forever families if you plan to place them for adoption with friends/family. Right now momma kitty does know best, since this upper respiratory infection could potentially spread to the entire litter and could possibly prove fatal for one or more of these babies the best course of action is to keep this baby in a warm, dry and protected area until s/he starts to show signs of improvement - you can then try to reintroduce him/her to mom and see if she's willing to take him/her back, but again this is definitely a situation that you can't force, she has to want to take her baby back and raise him/her. If you have any further cat related questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me again - I'm more than happy to help you, your queen and her kittens in any way that I can.

Kind regards,

Ali