It is all right to handle the kittens after they are weaned. In fact,they should get accustomed to being handled and groomed. Start theirgrooming early. The nails of young kittens need to be trimmed morefrequently than those of older cats. Most kittens have needle-sharpclaws which can scratch or get snagged in rugs, carpets and curtains.Trim off the tips of the nails and file them with a sandpaper strip.
You will not have to worry about whether the kittens are getting enough exercise. After the tenth day they will become very active.Their eyes will open and they will push, shove, wrestle and play allday long. You can add to their fun by providing them with safe toys,such as hard balls, polished bones, paper tied to a string and whatnot.
By the time the kittens are weaned, tlay are ready to use the sanitarytray. Until that time, the mother will Qlean up after them. Place thesanitary tray near the sleeping box for a few days, then gradually moveit away, a short distance at a time. If the mother uses the same tray itwill help train the kittens. In any event they will eventually learn touse it by themselves.
Until they are weaned (and sometimes afterwards), kittens will sleepnestled against their mother for the comfort of her body heat. You canprovide the kittens with their own bed, in the form of a large boxplaced where it is free from draughts and away from a hot radiator.Unless the room is very cold it is not necessary to provide additionalwarmth. Nature has provided the kittens with a fur coat and a metabolism which regulates body heat. You can determine when the kittensare cold by the positions in which they Ueep. The colder they are, thecloser they will snuggle up to each other. On the contrary, if the kittensare too warm they will sleep alone. Shked some newspapers and putthe strips in the bottom of the sleeping box.
Cat owners sometimes become alarmed when their cat eats the placenta, or afterbirth, but this is a normal action. There are various theories as to why animals eat the placenta. One of them is that the animal does so to remove traces of the birth. This is important’ to wild animals, which must guard against other predatory animals lurking nearby, many of which will eat the young. Another theory is that the mother eats the placenta to provide a temporary source of nourishment, since she will be unable to leave the newborn animals for sometime.
The mother will begin to wean the kittens somewhere around the fourth or fifth week. First she will reduce, the number of feedings each day by spending more time away from the kittens. Then she will bring food to the kittens and teach them how to eat it. When she begins weaning the kittens, take up the feeding yourself. Remember to introduce the new foods gradually and avoid overfeeding.
Finely chopped beef, baby cereals with milk, and strained babyvegetables are all excellent weaning fogds. Feed the meat raw andserve all food at room temperature.
By the time the kittens are six week old they should be weanedfrom the mother. Put them on the feedihg schedule for young kittens. Once the kittens are weaned, they should not be allowed to nurse on the mother. She wilt usually get away from themwhen they try. You can help to dry up her milk supply by eliminatingmilk from her diet and cutting down oil the number of her meals. Ifthe milk supply persists, consult the vet. The vet can give the cat a hormone injection which will dry up the milk.
The mother and kittens should be left strictly alone for the first two or three days. Nursing kittens are very delicate, so avoid unnecessary handling. Caution children not to pick up the baby cats.
So far, the relationship between humans and whales has been a sad story. But it may not be too late to change the ending. International cooperation has succeeded in ending the slaughter of large whales in all but a few countries. This may have happened too late to help - although no whale species has become extinct (the word used when not a single living member of a species remains,. In this century, several have been reduced to such small populations that they may yet die out. So far, there has been little evidence that whale populations are recovering. Only the Gray whale seems to be a small success story once nearly extinct, there are now as many as 25,000 living in the Pacific Ocean.
Even though we are not hunting whales as much as we once did, humans are still harming whales by damaging their environment. Can you imagine what it would be like if somebody kept dumping garbage and toxic chemicals into your house? Well, this is what e are doing to whales by continuing to pollute the world’s oceans. There is more and more evidence to suggest that whales may be living shorter lives thanks to the dangerous chemicals building up in the waters where they swim. The remaining few hundred Beluga Whales in the St. Lawrence River are so badly exposed to chemicals that their bodies must be disposed as toxic waste when they die.
Unfortunately, the human fascination with whales has its dark side. Humans have log been the whales’ number one predator. Since the 12th century, whales have been hunted by humans in huge numbers, thanks to an enormous demand for whale products. Whale oil was uused in lamps, and also to make candles, soap, cosmetics, paint, and shoe polish; baleen was used to make fishiing rods, yumbrella frames and corsets (an old type of women’s undergarment); even the whale’s skin was used to make boot laces. By as early as the 17th or 18th centuries, some whale species (such as the Atlantic Gray Whale) had already been hunted to the point of extinction. But the 19th century invention of more powerful, explosive harpoons, and the 20th century development of floating whale factories, which could process whale bodies at sea, meant that nearly all species of large whales were endangered.