Barbara took a class on bottle feeding the really young kittens today. She’s not interested at this time helping with these particularly needy kittens. She’s keeping herself up to date on the procedures needed in these cases.
She told me that one shelter is in dire need of bottle feeding volunteers and when they fail to find them for litters they euthanize the kittens. This is sensible to me for without knowledgeable volunteers the kittens are going to die slowly of starvation. It’s just humane.
We once had a bottle feeder in our care and its tough. These kittens need food every 2 or so hours around the clock.
They need a formula like food that if administers wrongly the kitten will aspirate, likely choking on the formula in it’s lungs and possibly drown. It can be nerve racking.
We had to give up that kitten after a day or so, just too much work for us. We’ve never gone back to accepting another one. Perhaps in time we will.