Cat Chat Feline Forum

I am fostering four gorgeous 4 week old ex-feral kittens. They are healthy, eating well, litter trained, deflead and wormed, but they all smell awful. Any suggestions as to how to remove the smell?

I've never come across a smelly kitten before.

There's a link here on what causes it and what you can do. Hope it helps.

http://pets.thenest.com/kittens-odor-5882.html

Hi and welcome. If the kittens are not neutered yet then that may be the problem as they give off a terrible odour. When we adopted our first kittens, many years ago, from Cats Protection, at that time we had to do the neutering they weren’t all done before homing and the smell from our little boy cat was terrible. It soon went once he was neutered. I also fostered a few years ago and even though one of the males had been neutered recently he still had that smell for a few weeks after.

Janey wrote:Hi and welcome. If the kittens are not neutered yet then that may be the problem as they give off a terrible odour. When we adopted our first kittens, many years ago, from Cats Protection, at that time we had to do the neutering they weren’t all done before homing and the smell from our little boy cat was terrible. It soon went once he was neutered. I also fostered a few years ago and even though one of the males had been neutered recently he still had that smell for a few weeks after.

Jane - the kittens are only 4 weeks old, so not only too young to neuter, but too young for their hormones to be creating a smell. It is common in hand-reared kittens to smell, as they don't have a mum to clean them - I would suggest wiping them down a couple of times a day with baby wipes.

booktigger wrote:Jane - the kittens are only 4 weeks old, so not only too young to neuter, but too young for their hormones to be creating a smell. It is common in hand-reared kittens to smell, as they don't have a mum to clean them - I would suggest wiping them down a couple of times a day with baby wipes.

Ah yes, mum would always lick the kittens rear end to clean them. Maybe as booktigger suggests, you wipe them down to clean the smell. I never saw kitten poo or wee when they were very little. Mum always did a good job of cleaning them.

Ah yes sorry I didn’t read 4 wk.