Can anyone tell me their experiences with cats that have been bottle raised from kittenhood?

LiveWire is seven months old. I found she and her four siblings, newly born with their sacs still attached, after I watched someone dump a box from the back of his truck in July South Carolina heat. Just the way he was acting told me he was up to no good and my 'radar' went off.

Four of them didn't make it...and then there's LiveWire. I have about 100 or more cats a year come through here. I've never seen ONE like this one. She rules the roost around here.

Everywhere I go, Wire has to get there three steps ahead of me. If my Wire thought for one instant that ANYONE didn't think SHE was wonderful I believe she would faint right there on the spot.

People she doesn't know come over and if they ignore Wire she gets right in their face, sits down, and just stares,as if to say...."umm hello, WIRE IS HERE person, where are your manners?" When they do not respond she looks at me like "are you gonna do something about this?" No one refuses Wire or they bleed.

This cat was born with genetic abnormalities and she was hand fed until she was 14 weeks old. Is it any wonder? I honestly believe she thinks she's our daughter.

When I take a shower so does Wire. When we go to bed so does Wire. Right now she is "reading" my screen. Whatever happened to cats roaming at night? Not this one. She's slept all night, whenever we sleep, every night of her life.

The funniest thing I think I've ever seen in my life was this stringy 6 week old Wire, barely hanging on to life, bringing me her syringe when she decided she was ready to eat.

I do rescue work. That's my calling. I crossed the line with this one and I broke every rule in the book. She's gotten no discipline and she is so rotten she stinks. She had three major surgeries to correct her intestines before she was six weeks old. If I told you I spent $1,800 on a cat you'd think I am insane. Especially a generic black domestic shorthair. Well I spent $1,800 on THIS cat. I ate up about five years worth of anniversary gifts and perhaps Christmas too but by some miracle of God she's alive. And every day, in some small way, she manages to remind me how lucky I am that God was generous and he allowed me the priveledge of keeping this one.

When Wire wakes up she MUST find me, say good morning and get a good rubbing. When Wire is ready to go to sleep she has to find me,tell me goodnight and get a good rubbing. I'm constantly amazed at how genuinely glad she always seems to be to see me even when I'm just in the next room. She comes in screaming, running up in my lap and just falls over as if to say "oh thank GOD, there you are."

I have known many animals in my 38 years. I'm still looking for the "zipper." What zipper? The one I know has to be on this cat somewhere because I swear to you, I believe there is a tiny human in that cat suit.

Hello,

First I want to say good for you that you adopted! plenty of pets that need homes......

I bottle raised a kitten since he was 2 weeks the previous owners lived in the country and left him for the coyotes and being the cat rescuer that I am I took him home. He is more affectionate than my other cats and loves to be cuddled. He is now 6 months and has plenty energy. Any advice would be to make sure there gaining weight appropriately and that they have a vet exam to rule out any underlying health issues. Good luck!

We have 6 cats and all but one of them were bottle raised by us. It is the most WONDERFUL experience to bottle raise kittens!! I wish we could do it all the time, but we can't bear to give the kittens away after we've raised them, and SIX cats are quite enough, so we will have to wait awhile until we can do it again. (We've done it twice -- 12 years ago with 2 kittens and a year and a half ago with 3 kittens.)

All of our cats are extremely affectionate and purry. However, one of them is a bit 'neurotic' -- wants to suckle on my pajamas, can't WAIT for me to get into bed so she can suckle -- which I'm sure is caused by being orphaned at 10 days old.

I would never, NEVER, EVER take young kittens away from their mother. Kittens should stay with Mom until they are at LEAST 10 weeks old. Even 8 weeks is too young. Studies show that kittens who stay with Mom are much better adjusted. I feel really sorry for our kittens because they didn't have mothers.

But, since they WERE orphaned, we were only too glad to raise them!!

My daughter has a friend whose mother works at the animal shelter. She regularly brings home kittens and puppies that were brought to the shelter but are too young to be put up for adoption. Because of that, they would be euthanized because the shelter doesn't have the space or facilities to care for orphaned baby animals. So she takes them home and has her three daughters care for them. Many times, that includes bottle feeding the animals. The kittens become very socialized because they regularly are held by the girls and played with. We got a kitten from them almost two years ago and this one is the least skittish and nervous cat I have ever had. She is so used to being handled that she can be cradled without trying to turn herself over and she goes limp when she gets picked up.

My sister raised two kittens from the time of their birth (they actually survived their mothers spaying, mother was a feral cat, she lived on this woman's property she humanely trapped her and was doing a responsible thing and getting them all spayed and neutered, she didn't know she was pregnant, I said that because so many people don't even care to spay and neuter their pets, yet this woman was helping cat population to animals that weren't even hers and paying out of pocket) and they turned out to probably be the most affectionate cats EVER. They thought they were little humans I swear. They responded to her voice and followed her around and they loved everyone because we all took turns feeding them at some point. They were adopted by my sister's best friend, and the boy now sleeps every night curled up next to HIS boy (and helped with his night terrors) and both he and the girl still respond to my sister when she comes over and are both very affectionate with everyone!

some animals like vivid issues. If the bottle caps are the metallic ones, the cat could be interested in the vivid metallic. in the different case, this is likely basically instinct: The bottle cap is about the right scale to be a cat's prey, so the cat translates it as a target of a few style, regardless of if it basically finally ends up fiddling with it.

Beaker came into my shelter with a sister, both about a week and a half old, when their mother had been hit by a car. like someone else mentioned, it is common practice to euthanize babies that little, most often just because there aren't enough foster homes for all of them and to raise them in the shelter is certain death from the diseases they'd be exposed to. it had been a particularly bad day for me, as we'd had to put several wonderful cats to sleep due to them being in the end-stages of feline leukemia and/or FIP. i couldn't bear to kill one more animal, let alone two, so i brought the baby girls home to raise.

the stronger one, beaker's sister, died two weeks later. i was devastated, because i knew if the strong one died, chances are the weak one would go too. but such was not the case. she may have been small, but she had already learned to be a fighter at her young age. she prospered and grew and took the world by storm. she charmed everyone she came across, be they friend or foe. she adored being around people, cats, dogs, rats, birds, televisions, you name it and she was fascinated by it. she loved life and it showed. she was very vocal, very smart and very much an attention-seeker. and more than anything else, she was sweet. everyone knew that she'd have no trouble finding a home - kittens were hardly ever in our shelter at christmastime, and here she would be at an adoptable age right around then. she just had too much personality in that little 1/2 lb body for someone to pass her up. the more you got to know her, the more you loved her. and i loved her a lot, enough to make her my christmas present to myself that year. santa couldn't have found a better present himself.

beaker blended well in the little house with myself, my two cats and one dog. she knew just what to do to each of us to charm us into doing whatever she wanted. she played the subordinate to the older cats, knowing she couldn't challenge the gals and win...that got her one companion to sleep with on top of the fridge and one who'd let her get away with her obnoxious pouncing game. she knew to lie still and let the dog groom her head if she wanted a share of the dog's treats every night. and she knew that to curl up on my shoulder every night in bed and rub my head with hers would get her anything she could dream of. the only real issue that being orphaned so young brought about was that she was always quite petite, never really weighing more than 7 lbs or so. but she had the heart of a lion and never realized she wasn't much bigger.

11 years later, she developed chronic renal disease. one minute she was seemingly healthy, the next she wasn't. some cats live for quite some time with diminished kidney function, but she wasn't one of them. my little cat who was the fighter lost her final battle 3 months later and succumbed to kidney failure. i tried every trick in the book that i knew to do for my little shadow cat, but it wasn't enough. it's been a year and a half since she passed, and even now, i cry as i type this. she was a champion, and is so very missed. other cats may take up space in my heart, too, but the light she brought to my life can never be duplicated.

bless you for adopting your amber. saving one animal won't change the world...but the world will sure change for that one animal.

i have a cat that was bottle fed. he was 2 weeks old when we got him. now he is mean as hell. he dont like other people that come to our house most of the time i will lock him up so he dont bite anyone.