Hello,

I am an owner of a cat who got caught by a tom cat(thats what we think) my cat is a Tortie and now we have three little rascals of which we think two are girls (fully ginger with white paws) and the other a boy (ginger on top, but underneath is white, white legs and paws.) Thats beside the point i have just started to introduce Hi-Life pate to them, they love it, they have that twice a day and then Pippa (Queen) will feed them her milk which she is quite willingly doing at the moment, but because they are being fed solid food now comes the poop and this is our first ever litter as well as being hers and to be honest we don't know exactly HOW TO TRAIN THEM TO GO INTO THERE LITTER TRAY??? we have two, one for Pippa which is the one she has had since a kitten and one for the other three (do they need one each???) and so how do i train them and how do i train Pip to go in the garden and do it in the garden.

Thank-You

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JOE

The first thing I will say is please don't let your queen out until the kittens are weaned. This could be right up until they go to their new homes (Ideally at 10-13 weeks). The risk (IMO) of letting her out before then just aren't worth it.

As for litter training the kittens. We bought one of the kitten litter trays from P@H for a few quid, filled it with woodbased litter (which is also what my queen had been using since we got her). Then put it near the kittening box, but away from food. The last thing to do was take some of the wet grains of litter from my queen's litter box and scatter it over the litter in the kitten litter tray, just a little bit though. We were lucky in that as soon as one of the kittens came to investigate just a few minutes later she used it straight away, and so did the rest

I will say now though, the stage of litter training can be very expensive. You need to keep the litter tray free from pee and poop as much as you can, else they will go elsewhere. It was costing us about £4 a day in litter towards the end when we were safe to switch to clumping.

Eventually they will go in the other litter trays you have on their own

Good advice

I definately second your opinion in not letting mommy cat out the house!!
We do not need another dead cat mom ( davina )

Please keep her in.

Do bear in mind she will soon come into call again and letting her out will also risk you ANOTHER litter.

I appriciate this was an accident but we all need to learn from this and as soon as you can if you dont want any more kittens get her neuterd.

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To be honest we had her booked for 2 months in advance to be neutered and then when we took her in to undergo the operation they did a check up before hand and found out she was pregnant so we canceled the neutering as we thought it wouldn't be fair on her, so after they are fully weaned and independent we are taking her to be neutered.

Also she had them under my bed upstairs and then after about what 2 - 3 hours of the last being born we brought them out and downstairs into the room that we had prepared for her prior to birth and put them in that box with her they stayed there for half an hour but then decided to move them back upstairs and carried them one by one upstairs into my mum's room at the side of her bed. Whenever we moved them down she would bring them up and now that they are older when we try and attempt to keep them down they will climb back up the stairs and into my mums room, and because we wanted to try and see if they would have any food we bought some Hi-Life on sunday and tried them on monday they ate all of what we gave them but it was mainly the youngest (female) that ate it, and the eldest (female) started to eat a bit but the youngest ate most and the one that was born in between (male) would not touch the food. Now today we gave them the food but warmed it in the microwave for 5-6 seconds and all of them was eating it. (they have been eating up stairs in my mum's room, she has no problem with it but it isn't really hygienic.) Then when my mum woke up this morning she found wee from one of the kittens in the en-suite not smelling or anything but it had weed so now we need to litter train them and that is the tricky part do we put the litter box upstairs in the shower room (en-suite) or in the bedroom or in Pippa (Queen) room (with her litter box).

Thank-You

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JOE

I would put a few litter trays out for them. The mom cat will normally teach them to wee and poo in the litter trays but placing them in every once and a while and scratching their paws around will help them learn what to do.

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Lots of breeders use different ways - I personally find it much easier and quicker to confine mum and babies to a small room (bathroom, utility, kitten pen) until the babies have mastered the litter tray. I use the base of a covered litter box for them as my girls are "diggers" ... They can cover the entire floor with litter in their quest to dig the perfect hole. Using a litter box base means that there are 3 higher sides to contain the litter and one low side which is a perfect height for the kittens to get in and out.

You need to be very quick at "poo picking" the litter tray as many cats/kittens would refuse to use a dirty tray. I find myself picking poo 4-5 times a day and replacing the entire litter daily. In an ideal world, I'd be using 2 or 3 kitten trays instead of the one larger tray but unfortunately, my girls insist on emptying them first.