Caring for a Newborn Maine Coon Litter: Week 4

Week 4 With Our Kittens: The Last Week of Babyhood

This is the last week the kittens are still “baby babies”. Next week they will start eating wet food and using the litter box. This week they are still completely dependent on mom and learning more about the world around them.

This week the kittens go from toddling to prancing. They trot around with their little tails in the air- especially if they’re trying to follow mom somewhere.

Their personalities continue to emerge. We get to know which are the most laid back, which ones are the most curious, who loves to snuggle, and who likes to start trouble.

Honey Crisp and Fuji come right to the gate so they’re first in line for snuggles

Socialization is our key focus this week. The kittens are still too young to meet strangers, but our family spends a lot of time with them. We hold each kitten every day. We let them rest in our hands and on our laps and just get used to being held. We gently touch their paws, their ears, their tiny faces. Not in a clinical way—just as part of being with them. Letting them learn that human hands are normal so they feel safe when they are with people. This socialization is incredibly important for the kittens to grow into confident cats.

Our mama cats start taking longer breaks this week. They’ll leave their sleeping kittens and come spend time with the family and catch up on their own snuggle time. They love to curl up in a lap and get some special attention too, but as soon as she hears a kitten meow, mom races back to her babies and gathers them all up for a feeding and bath time.

Ariel tries a bite of mom’s food and Olaf practices his pouncing skills

This week, we bring mom’s food to her while she’s with her kittens. We want the kittens to see her eating her food and maybe try a bite or two. They smell it. Step in it. One or two kittens might even lick it. Most of them won’t actually eat yet—and that’s perfectly fine. This isn’t about feeding them. It’s about letting them begin to understand that there’s something beyond mom.

The really fun part about this week is the kittens begin to play! A paw bats at a sibling. Someone pounces on mom. Another kitten rolls over in dramatic defeat. This play is critical for them to develop social skills, confidence, and boundaries. It is so fun to watch the chubby little kittens pretend to be fierce apex predators.

They get more space this week, and we bring them out into our main living space for a few hours a day. This gets them used to our dogs, other cats, and people doing people things. They watch everything going, and you can almost see them filing away information.

Week 4 has a very sweet rhythm to it. Mom comes and goes. Kittens play and explore, then collapse into a sleepy heap. We pick them up, hold them a little longer, then return them to their pile. They try new things, then retreat back to what’s familiar. It’s a gentle back and forth between dependence and independence.

By the end of week 4 they are drawing the connection between their world and ours and learning where they fit. That is what builds the foundation for the amazing cats they are becoming.