General Questions About Very Young Kittens

[jbr4gg]

Hi everyone,

As a few of you may or may not know (http://www.pets.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=39597), I recently decided to adopt another kitten from a local humane society as a companion to myself, as well as to my current 9mos. neutered male, Odin. Well, I went and picked her up today and she is a -lot- younger than I had anticipated -- I assumed/was told she was between 2-3 months old, which is the age Odin was when I got him, but in actuality the staff when I wen t there today thought she was maybe between 5-7 weeks, and on the latter end of this.

Thankfully, the introductions have already went very smoothly, as far as I can tell. At my girlfriend's urging and against my better judgement as well as most of what I've read, after a very short time of Odin sniffing around Lily's carrier, we decided to let her out to explore in the same room and just carefully monitor them. I'm assuming we've made a fair amount of progress because Odin seems VERY tolerant of her, and has spent the whole night following her around and making sure everything is to his liking. There's very, very little hissing or posturing on his part, in fact, she's even pounced on his tail a few times and he does nothing but back off and maybe hiss a little bit.

Unfortunately, I feel any sort of issues that may arise are exacerbated by the fact that she was just spayed at most two days ago (at 5 weeks I am assuming that this just must be standard Humane Society procedure; I think with Odin they had waited until very soon before I had adopted him, so he was close to 3mos) and possibly just yesterday so the incision is still fairly fresh, so to an already extremely small and fragile kitten add the extra concern about worrying about tending that, as well. Not to mention the fact that she's so, so tiny (I'm afraid that because of the added complication of the recent surgery she might not even manage a fall from my bed if it happened just right), I'm at a loss with what to do with the most trivial aspects, such as where she should sleep (right now she's in my bedroom with my girlfriend on the bed, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere -- we've designated that room as her "isloation" room, however, Odin usually sleeps with me so I'm taking one for the team and sleeping on the couch tonight).

I know this question is unbelievably broad and probably fairly aggrevating , but as I mentioned, this is far from what I was expecting to have to deal with. I was wondering if any of you would mind sharing any random pieces of advice as far as dealing with what I am assuming is a kitten that has been adopted at a relatively young age, but that is probably just my own ignorant assumption.

My sincerist thanks in advance for any insight any of you may provide; I think unfortunately I tend to overworry/overthink most of this stuff. In fact, in that vein, I'll get the ball rolling with something that has been bothering me -- Lily has been pooping fairly often, and it seems to be almost entirely liquid - is this normal?

Thanks so much everyone.

jb

[clm]

We got 2 of our girls at 8 weeks of age from a rescue group, and they had been spayed at 6 weeks. The incisions had completely healed over and they had a nice fine layer of fur on them already. Squeak had a slight bulge, likely from too much activity before the incision had healed, but that also disappeared in time. You'd be surprised how quickly little ones heal. We had gabby done at 12 weeks of age and after the 5th day, you couldn't keep her quiet no matter how hard you tried. She too ended up with a slight bulge around the incision, but that's completely gone now. Just keep an eye on the incison to make sure it's not infected and try to keep her from running a marathon.

Cindy