We completely relied on our mommy-cat for milk. Our mommy-cat had a great human, who made sure that she had plenty of extra food and water to keep her energy levels up. It takes a lot of stamina to raise six fur-babes.
We were pretty much nursing every two to three hours. That can be draining for anyone! We drank from mommy-cat until she started to loose interest, which was around week seven. We were fully weaned by eight weeks. At that point, we started crunching on those nibbly-bits!
Mommy-cat delivered, we were lucky! We didn’t need to be feed ‘kitten milk replacement’ formula or KMR [if you’re hip], to help us grow up and be strong.
I did learn of a horrible story about some young kitties, whose mommy-cat wasn’t able to give them milk. The cat-mom’s human took it upon himself to feed these young kittens cow’s milk!
The poor things became quite ill. Their poor little digestive tracks were all messed up. Talk about a poop-fest. Their splatter paintings didn’t go down so well either. I’m guessing stinky-brown fur doesn’t taste good, poor mommy-cat had to lick it clean.
I guess the moral of the story is: that we cats shouldn’t really drink cow’s milk. It doesn’t matter what age. It doesn’t go down well! Just give us water instead!