All About Kittens: Kitten Growth Stages & Milestones!

[Music] welcome my cat mojitos today we're going to get into something a little special i'm kind of psyched we're going to start talking about the ages and stages of a cat's life now it's funny i started to make this video and went through all the stages of a cat's life and it was like the video equivalent of like war and peace it was huge it was long it was unwieldy and we said you know enough let's just go back and break it up because there's so much to talk about when it comes to cats and how they develop when you take a look at how cats mature both physically and behaviorally you start to understand that the cat that i call the raw cat the ancestral cat is very much alive in our cats the stage of a cat's life where that is most apparent is kittenhood and that's what we're going to be talking about today we're going to talk about kittenhood that first year let's say now i'm going to say this right off the bat that all the timelines i'm giving you unless of course i'm talking about physical facts are a little malleable they can vary a little bit based on the cat's experience do they have their mom and their litter mates around them how many humans did they come in contact with that kind of thing that affects their behavioral growth definitely one way or another when you think about what kittens go through in the first i mean obviously the first year is critical but we're talking about the first couple of months crazy how they just form into that perfect hunter and so i'm going to take you through that right now and where are we gonna start zero days i was just born i am a kitten and as such i can't hear i can't see i can't walk i got no teeth i am completely dependent on my mom now not only are they blind and deaf but they have no way of regulating their own body temperature they are reliant on mom for everything including staying warm staying alive just by huddling up against mom they can't even really eliminate on their own they rely on mom to feed and then mom will stimulate them to go by cleaning them by about 10 days 9 to 13 days somewhere in there their eyes start to open okay well everything's fuzzy but whatever the ear canals start to open i'm hearing things i don't know what they are man by about three weeks the ears are open they're hearing things eyes open they are seeing things they are also beginning to get mobile they're starting to get around you know okay i know what these are for these feet that i can get away from mom a little bit even though i'm completely still dependent on them they are starting to take in the world around them so we are a hundred percent dependent on mom so now this is where the real fun starts here because the number that i've always used is between two and nine weeks is what we call the critical phase of social development and in these two to nine weeks man does a lot happen by the time we're at about five weeks ears eyes functioning walking around everything is cool exploring they can also start to write themselves so if they fall they know how to get back up they can start avoiding obstacles their teeth are coming in by about four weeks we can start introducing solid foods to them they can start moving away from mom a little bit we can start giving them cat food and what we are doing folks is we are petting them we are getting them very used to humans we are exposing them to different looks and different fields different sizes of humans whatever we can this is the time to do it the time to imprint humans on cats is right here at this moment in their development the experience they have here with humans in this first nine to ten weeks it says a lot about the quality of their experience with humans going forward because really if we don't do it not saying that anything's impossible just makes it harder for them to adapt after this critical phase so anyway i'm getting ahead of myself because these cats kittens are watching mom they're starting to mimic her behavior mom is starting to teach these guys how to do their thing and they're practicing on their litter mates now we're starting to see the fundamentals of hunt behavior remember play equals prey in cats now their claws are able to retract and come back out again they're learning how to inhibit the bites they're learning how to inhibit their claws at some point they're going to go up to either mom or one of their siblings hit him a little too hard with the claw and they're going to just get someone else riled up they're going to whap him upside the head and okay i just learned a lesson it's play but it's prey it's it's the thing that teaches them to be the raw cat we're only five weeks old four to five weeks old and we are now finding a little measure of independence from mom we're watching mom all the time we're watching our siblings and interacting with them and learning what it is to be a cat cat by about six weeks by the time that they're pretty much fully weaned from mom and really seeking independence and playing a lot more with with their litter mates and establishing just a little bit of sleeping pattern so they're not just sleeping all the time these guys need to play and they need to hunt which is where you come in because now we start presenting them with hunting toys i don't care if it's a little squeaky mouse i don't care if it's a you know one of those little plastic balls or crinkles or an interactive toy like a fishing pole toy that you know i love none of that gets ever left out for these guys we have play sessions we pick them up you know so i'm just making sure i mention that but allowing them to hunt something that's not either their litter mates their mom because she's sick of it by now or just a piece of fluff on the ground we give them a target we let them start knowing what it feels like to to stalk to pounce to tackle to quote eat you know we can get them into that that feeling of hunt catch kill eat groom sleep this critical phase of social development is critical you know in this vein of of when you think about how much like a little kitten shaped rocket ship we're talking about in terms of going from blind and deaf and not being able to regulate their own body temperature to little explorative hunting machines by the time they're nine weeks now as they get to about 10 to 12 to 14 weeks they're starting to differentiate from mom they're starting to explore past their siblings now we're getting into let's just play with you because i'm getting this language down i'm getting there and in the meantime i'm gonna start translating that into object play now it's just that much more important to make sure that you have toys available to them because they're gonna try anything this is where you got to start looking at the fact that you're 14 week old is starting to scratch up the couch or or your bed or whatever you got to have stuff ready there you've got to have scratching posts you want to introduce them to scratching surfaces whether they're vertical horizontal or anywhere in between and you know i've talked about scratching in many a video and if i point up here maybe something will appear that you can watch about scratching in the meantime the world around them starts to become more important and why is that by the time they're about 14 weeks old at least in the wild in nature these guys have got to be kind of self-sufficient they got to be ready to go out there and start hunting catching and killing for their for themselves and and cats are pretty solitary hunters and this is why they they're gonna always come back to their siblings or their playmates at this point but they're gonna come back in the meantime they're gonna explore out by themselves a lot especially the more secure ones we'll start doing that when you couple that with the notion by about 12 to 16 weeks they're sexually mature a three-month-old kitten can have kittens yeah that's right and this is probably why we're looking at such an incredible overpopulation crisis when it comes to cats is because they are ready to go at a very young age we got to make sure that we don't make more kittens when there's so many who need homes oh god i'm going off into a place that we're not gonna go there not gonna go there we're gonna stay with the magic of cat development and now we are at about four months old and we've got fully explorative fully differentiated and ready to go little cat machines now comes the next phase of kitten development that i think is of note i like to say it about six months and it's almost like for in my experience like right there in about six months they turn into teenagers this is where dennis the menace or whatever petunia the menace comes out they are trying to push limits they are pushing buttons in the meantime but they're just seeing how far can i go before maybe something bad happens or maybe something fun happens or i don't know what's going to happen but i'm going to try now not all teenagers like this but i was you know where you're like can i borrow the car no can i borrow the car no take the keys blow the car you know that's what kittens are doing of course they can't drive because you know they don't have thumbs yeah anyway you just want to make sure that you've got as many resources for your kittens as you can possibly have you can't go wrong with more beds more condos more scratching posts more toys keep them out of trouble because the last thing you want is suddenly you're like oh my the kitten is ruining everything what am i gonna do about this kitten i would say that at this point it's between six months about 16 months six to 16 months you've got a wild cat on your hands and it can be amazing it can be really just it's so gratifying to be able to take your little one through this phase even though you got to put up with like them swinging from the chandeliers sometimes it's cool man it's cool every element of this development is so important when it comes to your input if you're starting to notice that at that nine week mark 12 weeks 14 weeks you've got one of your kittens that is starting to just sort of drift off into the background become what i call a wall flower jump into gear man play play play play play expose expose expose push what i call their challenge line get them to know the the glory of hunt catch kill e listen anybody who doesn't know this stuff get my book total cat mojo because you will know but the idea of cat mojo is born early mojo being that confidence of knowing i know what i'm on this planet to do mark twain says the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why and for kittens knowing why they're here is the key to the utmost confidence in in humans and other animals and other cats in their territory in general so you guys don't let up for a second even from that six month to a year place where you're like oh what is the cat up to right now and i i do want to put another plug in here you know i've said this before that this is the plug for making sure that when you adopt a kitten adopt two because they take each other through this they push each other's buttons they push each other to places where where you know you might have to be involved normally 24 hours a day but you don't have to be because they got each other so remember that as well so let's just recap for a second what an amazing year one year and we go from blind and deaf and and not able to walk and not able to regulate their body temperature and being absolutely positively dependent on their mom to our little grown cats i tend to think of them as kittens until about a year or so what an amazing progression how they came to be one of the most perfect hunters on this planet it all happens in that first chunk of time amazing right so the next time we're going to talk about prime time prime time in the cat's life is coming up next in the meantime don't forget that we have new videos that come out every saturday uh so make sure to set your uh your subscription to uh get alerts for premieres because you'll know what it's about and all that fun stuff don't forget i'll also for the most part be dropping in for this that 30 minute chat during premieres so stick around for that it should go without saying don't forget to subscribe don't forget to hit the bell and don't forget to pick up total cat mojo because honestly everything i'm saying in here belongs there one last plug you guys if you want to know everything about kittens my friend hannah shaw the kitten lady really i think wrote the bible on this it's called tiny but mighty i'll put the link down below if you got a kitten especially if you've got neonatal kittens really young ones get that book because it will make a difference in your kitten's life okay that's it for me man this just really just gets me going talking about the the ages and stages of a cat's life i bet you can't wait till the next one because i can't until next time when we talk about that all light all love all mojo teams [Music] [Music] ah meow

Channel: Jackson Galaxy

Views: 1,010,262

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Id: aEY_csYMglg

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 03 2021