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It's possible to bathe a newborn kitten with fleas? (lemmy.one)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Xirup@lemmy.one to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Hi, well to start I usually feed any cat that came to my house, and a pregnant cat start coming around 2 months ago but unlike the others cat, she remained on my yard and basically she lives here.

At some point, when I realized that she was pregnant, I started to lock her on my house where she can give birth and be safe.

Just some 3 days ago, she gave birth to 2 completely black kittens (she is black with white points) and one white kitten with black points. But when I was looking closely at the white kitten, I realize that he had fleas, and obviously all the kittens and the mother have, but they are too dark to watch the fleas.

I read that an easy way to remove the fleas is bathing the kitten, but ironically I also read that if a person touches a kitten too much, the mother can stop recognizing it by its smell, and even eat it, without mentioning that they are only 3 days old, so I guess that this is not an option.

I also read that fleas abhor the smell of chamomile tea, so I could do a bit and rub a bit over the kittens without bathing them, but I don't know if what I mentioned in the previous point also applies.

For the mother, I don't think I have to worry, because I'll buy her a pipette,

I also want to clarify that the kittens are not infested with fleas, maybe they have 5 or 10, but they are 3 kittens that sleep one on top of the other, and I prefer to be safe rather than sorry.

(Sorry if this is not the correct place to ask such a question, but I couldn't find an "AskVet" alternative on Lemmy)

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[–] Lycanthrotree 0 points 1 year ago

Look up the channel "Kitten Lady" on YouTube; she has a lot of really great tutorials on caring for newborn kittens and a few with advice on giving flea baths to kittens.

If you do give them a bath it's really important to keep them warm and make sure that they don't get cold when drying off. Fleas also cannot stand dish soap if you use that to bathe them (usually useful for making a ring around their necks to stop the fleas from swarming their head while the kitten's body is under water). Since they're SUPER newborn babies, I don't know if I would risk a bath just because they're so fragile with their temperature - I'd ask a vet there. But, with or without a bath, I think you should try your best to get as many fleas off as you can, maybe with a flea comb. They're so small that they don't have a lot of blood to lose so fleas can do more harm than you might think.