It's a cute little Twitter video but is it a good idea to allow a near-adult domestic cat companion suckle from a bottle like this? I mean it looks nice in many ways; it looks like this cat is a human baby with the presence of mind to hang onto a bottle of milk and drink from it as if they are suckling at their mother's breast.  But does it not perpetuate the thought in the mind of this cat that they are a kitten and might it not be a good idea to allow the cat to grow up and become more independent?  The truth is, as stated by Dr Desmond Morris, that human cat caregivers keep their companions in a near permanent state of kittenhood due to the relationship. It is an automatic byproduct of cat domestication. Near-adult cat likes to suckle from a 'hand-held' bottle. Screenshot. The person who has tweeted the video is a colleague of mine who is on a mission to try and stop cat declawing in the USA. I have tried myself through hundreds of posts. I won't go on but declaw...

No, domestic or feral cats do not abandon their pre-weaned kittens if you touch them. Although they will probably become anxious . A feral cat mother might move her kittens to a new den if you touch them. A domestic cat, in a nice warm home, might become anxious if you touch kittens. It is best to leave them alone but watch. Noise and activities near them might also make them anxious. They need quiet dens. Yes, newborn kittens do not have teeth but rarely they might have. Incisors are the first teeth to appear and about 2 to 3 weeks of age. Photo in public domain and words added by MikeB. However, I think that you will see cat breeders touching newborn and young kittens quite often in order to check for their health. The mother probably finds this acceptable because she will be a full-time breeding mother and used to the whole process. On a grizzly note, I feel too that some breeders will kill newborn kittens if they are not up to scratch on appearance. Appearance is all for breeders....

  This is a bit of teamwork. The girl finds abandoned kittens in a disused outbuilding, in a box. She looks after them and does well because it is very easy to lose kittens to hypothermia and a whole pile of diseases. But then her female cat steps up to the plate and decides to nurse kittens she has never met before. This happens a lot as we know. It is nice to see what I consider to be teamwork taking place to rescue these highly vulnerable kitties. It would seem that the mother cat in this video was already lactating because under these circumstances mother cats readily adopt kittens who are not their own. I have a page on an associated website which tells you how much formula milk kittens need. You can click on this link to read that page if you want to . Bottlefeeding satisfies the suckling urge of kittens but they have to be strong enough to do it. The kitten should be warm and you have to be sure to clean the anal area and the abdominal skin. Bedding should be changed often t...