In article ,
"Aphrodite's Cat" wrote:

My 5 foster kittens seem to be needing bottle feeding (just on this
side of 3 weeks old, basically). Would like to make sure I'm doing
it right.

Heh--sounds exactly like our fosters. A good way to estimate the age is
to weigh them on a kitchen scale or letter scale. Figure about 4 ounces
per week. When we got ours, they were all about 13 oz. Now, they're
just over 1 lb each. Take pictures and video quickly, they grow like
weeds.

Right now, I'm wrapping the kitten in a tea towel and holding the
bottle at a 45° angle.

We don't wrap, just hold them close to our bodies with one hand and
direct the bottle with the other. Heh again--they don't fight it at
all, hungry little things.

Doesn't seem like a lot of air bubbles are popping up. Between the 5
of them, they're drinking about 60cc (2 oz) or just under. Should
they be drinking more or less?

IIRC, they should take about 1/4 oz for each ounce of body weight per
day.

They're also not really suckling on the teat- they bite it on the
sides of their mouth, mostly.

You might want to try a different sized nipple. Ours also gnawed at our
first nipple, but when we got a smaller one, they started sucking like
champs--I kid you not, if we could harness the power of kitten suckling,
we could make a mint in the vacuum industry. The vet says we may have
overfed them. I had no idea that this was possible; I thought kittens
were supposed to have as much as they wanted.