Q: Nursing kitten

Answered by caroleanne on 9/13/2005, 4:29 am

A: Nursing kitten

> My kitten is 10weeks old and he still wants to nurse. The
> problem is he wants to nurse on me. The mother cat isnt
> around. He will jump up on my lap climb to my face and try
> sucking on my lips, nose and ears. He's learned how to climb
> up on to my bed in the middle of the night and wake me up
> when he's trying to nurse on me. What can I do? Its
> getting really annoying to be woke up like this every night.
>
>
> Thanks
>
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Hi Tsunrise22,

This sounds like my cat. He too, would suck on our fingers, ear lobes, cheeks, noses, chins….We actually found it to be a bonding experience and indulged him as often as we could.

As is the case with my cat, your kitten has lost his mother at an early age. Cats who lose their mothers too soon tend to find objects to suck on that will reduce stress, bring them comfort and a feeling of security, because they were deprived of time with their mothers; ideally, kittens will still nurse from their mothers until about 8 weeks old, but they should still LIVE with Mom and siblings for 12 weeks, before being adopted out to other homes – by that time, they will have learned everything from them and will be mature and feel secure enough to live apart from them.

When your kitten was very young, and he would lie down and suckle on Mom, it wasn’t always to feed, sometimes it was just to soothe, like a human baby with a pacifier. When he does it now, it reminds him of the feeling of well-being and happiness that he felt when he was with Mom.

What you can do, is give him his own “special blanket” to suckle on. Of course you don’t want him on your face constantly, so if you provide him with his own blanket and you show him that that’s where you want him to suckle, he may get the message after a while. When he tries to suck on you, gently remove him and place him on HIS blanket. This blanket should be placed in an area where your kitten seems to prefer to do his suckling (your bed, in his cat bed if he has one, a favorite spot on the carpet, etc.) Make sure that you give him a clean 100%% cotton blanket that you launder often with a mild soap (no bleach). Do not let him suck on a piece of material that has “fringes” or tends to come apart in threads. Even those little balls of material that you see on some blankets can eventually accumulate in cats’ digestive tracts and cause blockage. Cotton is safe, and will not come apart from your kitten's sucking or “kneading”, but keep an eye on him to make sure that he is not CHEWING it, as this can also cause blockage.

It may take some time for your kitten to get used to the new rules, but remember that he is doing this for comfort, he is not doing it to be annoying or to be “bad”. He may not stop trying to suck on you any time soon, but eventually, he will cut down on it more and more until he stops (because all cats have different personalities, some will stop this behavior or at least cut down on it, sooner than others). My cat did it until the age of 9 months.

It is possible, however, that your kitten will continue to suckle on the cotton material for some time still, maybe indefinitely - this is called wool-sucking. There is no harm done as long as he is doing it on the proper material and is not chewing it.

Best of luck with your little guy!