Brandy Alexandre wrote:

My cubicle neighbor found a kitten that is
about two or three days old. She's going
to try to raise it and if anyone has any
advice or encouraging words, I'd like to
pass them along.


She said she saw the kitten in the grass
and decided to watch for a bit in case
the mother was moving kittens in
stages. After more than 30 minutes and
no mama cat, she picked it up and took
it to the vet to get it checked out and get
some supplies. The kitten apparently
had fly eggs on it already, so it was
probably alone for a while. She said it
won't take the bottle, but she's using a
syringe. She said he had a little cough
and I'm concerned about pnuemonia,
but the vet probably would have heard
that. The vet did tell her his chances
weren't great, but she wants to try.
Advice appreciated.


--
Brandy Alexandre=AE

This is almost exactly how I found my first cat back in October of 1975.
I was waiting at a friend's house, waiting for him to get there, and
when he arrived he said he saw a small kitten alongside the street near
the Mississippi River bridge. He did not pick it up because he said his
tom cat would kill it. I went to check it out and it had probably been
15 or 20 minutes since he had seen it. It was very small, fit in the
palm of my hand, and its eyes were not open. I did not know what to do,
so I took it to the vet. He thought the kitten was maybe 3 days old and
it was covered with fleas. He used flea spray on his hands to cover the
kitten's body. Then I took it home with his recommendations.

I gave it KMR replacement milk every few hours in a small bottle made
for that purpose. I kept it in a small box with a heating pad on the
bottom with a towel over it. I learned I would have to stimulate it to
have a bowel movement, so I did this while holding its bottom under
lukewarm running water while stimulating with a q-tip. Then I would dry
it off, put it in an old sock and shake it down to keep it moving. Then
it was back into the box with an alarm clock until the next feeding.

I looked at the kitten's bottom to determine the gender and figured it
was a male so I named it "Ali" because he had to be a fighter to
survive. After about a week his eyes opened and the first thing he did
when he had his legs and was out of the box was to head for the
litterbox, and so that part was over. I had a beagle who had never yet
seen the kitten. This dog was wild about cats, but had never seen one
up close. When Ali came out and saw the dog, never having seen a cat, I
am sure he wondered, is this mom? So he started after the dog, who was
totally bewildered by this creature, and the beagle went and hid under a
chair. Ali had the upper had there and never gave it up.

Ali never saw another cat until I took him to be neutered. I think he
though he was a dog. While he was at the vet clinic I got a call from
them telling me they could not do the operation I wanted because "he"
was a "she". I was duly embarrassed, but they said trying to sex
kittens at 3 days old is difficult. It was even worse for me since I
worked at my city's zoo and took a razzing from my fellow employees.

Ali survived all of that and was queen of her kingdom. She travelled
with me in my car, riding on the back of the front seat where she could
scope out everything, once travelling from Wisconsin to Florida and back
again. She lived just a few months short of 20 years and I used what I
learned from raising her from a near newborn on other baby animals with
great results. So it can work out great.