Your kittens will be much more active and playing with each other and with new toys. Kittens love new toys. When my cat was a kitten, I bought the little plastic balls with jingle bells inside. I’d be asleep in the middle of the night and suddenly hear the “jingle ball” flying around the kitchen like a ping pong game. At least I knew she was happy.
By 12 weeks your kittens should have their first shots. If you got your kitten from the Humane Society, like I did, they may need to be dewormed, get their ears cleaned out from ear mites, etc. At 12 weeks, kittens can leave their mother and go to a new home. Unfortunately, my kitty was abandoned at the shelter at 7 weeks, much too young.
Cats are full-grown and mature at about 2 years of age, but the first 12 weeks are the most important and obvious stages of development.
During the 8th to 11th day, the kittens eyes will first open, but their vision will be blurry. Their first teeth will appear. Their ears are not yet fully opened. They may begin slight crawling, but are still very helpless and need to stay close to the mother cat. This is a good time to begin picking them up and holding them for a short time, if the mother allows it. The sooner kittens become accustomed to humans, the more socialized they will be.
After 12 days, the kittens will begin crawling around. Their vision is developing, although it is still blurry.
They will begin clumsy play with their littermates.
Two week old kittens
At first, kittens cannot walk, but crawl along on their bellies. After a while, they will start clumsy walking, but you will find that when they first start to walk, they hold their tails straight up. They need to coordinate their legs before they can coordinate the tail with them, too!
4th to 8th Week:
Four Week Old Kitten
As soon as the kittens can climb out of their nest, they will need their own litterbox. You will have to watch to make sure they don’t try to eat the litter.
At 4 weeks, you can add some mushy soft food to their diet, supplementing mom’s milk. Kittens seems to like baby cereal with milk. It’s too early yet to move to kitty food.
Keep a watch on them along with their mother, to keep their play area safe.
Kitten Playmates
At 8 weeks, their teeth come in. Now is a good time to be playing with them, socializing them to humans and also introducing them to scratching posts, so that they grow up knowing to pull their claws on “their” furniture and not yours. Speaking from experience, my kitten was born loving to chew on electrical cords. I am amazed that she didn’t electrocute herself. With their new teeth and love of biting and chewing, this can be a very important thing to keep an eye on.
Below is a short video on playing with little kittens. They love to wrestle and play with their brothers and sisters. Adding a human touch helps them to be accustomed to being handled by people and learning that it is fun (play!), feels good (tickle the tummy!), and not dangerous (No Hurts!).
Kittens weight about 2-4 ounces at birth. During the birth process, each kitten will be delivered, then the mother cat will take the newborn, bite open the amniotic sac if she needs to, and clean the kitten off. There is usually a 1/2 to 1 hour delay between the delivery each of kitten, allowing her to care for each one as it comes out.
Kittens are born blind and deaf, but their sense of smell is strong, and they snuggle right up to the mother. They will even push each other out of the way to get to her teats. A newborn kitten will wind its tongue tightly around the mother’s teat and hang on to it for the first few days even while sleeping.
While nursing, kittens will knead on the mother’s stomach to stimulate the production of milk. You may find that your grown cat will still knead on your stomach (mine does), which seems to give comfort and help the bond grow between you and your cat.
During this early stage, the mother will clean their little behinds to keep them clean and massage their stomachs with their tongue to help to stimulate their digestive tracts. The kittens need to stay up close against their mother for her warmth, as they cannot yet regulate their own body temperature.
The First Week:
Little baby kitten
Usually, when the kittens are 2-3 days old, the mother moves out of the birthplace for short spells and later she will move the kittens to a new place one at a time. She moves them by picking them up by the back of the neck and carrying them. They will hang loosely when she does this and it doesn’t hurt them. You should let them mother care for her kittens and not hold them too much at first, as tempting as this will be.
