So every veterinarian is going to have their own. We have some nationwide guidelines that we use to help us out. But my personal vaccine schedule is to start their first and second visit with their feline distemper vaccine, and then their third and fourth visit; we do that feline distemper, along with their feline leukemia vaccine. We then update them on their rabies vaccine that last visit. We do that because they have to be a certain age to receive rabies, but it's such a great vaccine that they only need to have that vaccine once; it doesn't need to be boostered.

I like to start vaccines between that six and eight weeks of age, as that's kind of the ideal place to start. But that doesn't mean that if you get a cat and they're a little bit older, like three or four months, that we can't start their vaccine series there. Or even if they're eight or nine months, there is a series that we need to go through for any age of kitten. But that perfect window is when they're six to eight weeks of age.

The three core vaccines that I require for kittens are going to be the feline distemper vaccine, which protects against the common viral diseases that we see in cats, along with the feline leukemia vaccine, which prevents leukemia or cancer of the blood. And then the last one is rabies, and that one's required by law. And that's also the one that you and I could potentially catch, so we want to make sure we don't see that.

That's something that you can discuss with your veterinarian. We look at their body condition, their hair coat, things like that to make sure that they're eating enough. There are also some ways that we can calculate their basic energy requirements, and there are some feeding charts and recommendations out there as well. But each kitten is individual, and you can best figure out what they need with your veterinarian.

So that depends. When kittens are younger, they need smaller, more frequent meals. And then, as they develop and grow older, we can do larger, less frequent meals. So it's not uncommon for your veterinarian to recommend having food out all the time while they're little.

Yes, and I would always recommend making sure that you have a fresh, clean bowl of water available at all times of the day.

I want them to start working on either canned food or dry food at that six-week mark. But once they're about 10 weeks, they should be consistently on dry food.

I definitely wouldn't recommend it. Even though that's like an age-old thing that we see, I wouldn't recommend it. It's not the best nutritional support for these guys.

No, it's an age-dependent necessity. Those younger kittens that are purely on milk at that stage in their life need to be bottle-fed. But as they get a little bit older, again that six-week mark, we can go ahead and transition them over to dry or canned kitten food.