How to Bathe Your Kitten: 5 Vet-Approved Steps (With Video)
Water and kittens don’t make the best combination, but sometimes, it’s inevitable that you need to give your kitten a bath. They may need a medicated shampoo to treat fleas or a skin infection. Orphaned kittens can sometimes need help keeping themselves clean because their mother cat isn’t there to help them.
Follow our guide on how to bathe your kitten, along with useful videos showing you exactly how to do it the right way!
The 5 Steps to Bath Your Kitten
1. Prepare your equipment
Before you start bathing your kitten, make sure you’ve got everything that you need close to hand. We recommend:
The best pet shampoos are carefully formulated to clean your pet without causing irritation. Hepper's Colloidal Oatmeal Pet Shampoo does a great job of this by combining soothing ingredients like aloe vera and colloidal oatmeal. It is also pH-balanced and free of irritants like dyes, soaps, sulfates, and phthalates. You and your pet will both enjoy the fresh, clean scent, too!
- Only Natural Pet Shampoo - Our vegan, plant-based formulation is made with safe and natural pH-balanced ingredients to moisturize and soothe skin, leaving a fresh, soft and glossy coat to turn heads
- No Soap - A cat and dog wash free from soaps, glutens, dyes, DEA, sulfates and phthalates means it's a hypoallergenic dog shampoo for itchy skin / cat shampoo for itchy skin made with only good stuff
- Colloidal Oatmeal - Formula soothes and nourishes dry, irritated skin, providing itchy skin relief for dogs and cats alike. Trust us - they'll thank you with lots of licks!
At Catster, we’ve admired Hepper for many years and decided to take a controlling ownership interest so that we could benefit from the outstanding designs of this cool cat company!
2. Warm the room
Kittens can’t regulate their own temperature, so it’s important to make sure the room they’ll be in after their bath is warm enough so they don’t catch a chill. You want the room to be roughly 80 degrees Fahrenheit. You can use a room heater, but it’s also a good idea to have a heating pad or a heated cat bed for your kitten.
3. Bathe your kitten
It’s easier to bathe a kitten using warm running water, so the washbasin in your bathroom is the best location. Make sure the water is comfortably warm, then hold the kitten in one hand, and massage the shampoo into your kitten’s fur using the other hand.
If you’re bathing your kitten for fleas, you can create a ring of shampoo around their neck first so you can avoid getting their head wet and discourage fleas from moving up their bodies.
Gently lather the shampoo all over your kitten’s body, avoiding the face and head. Rinse all the shampoo off your kitten’s body using the water from the faucet. Proceed to gently clean the head and face area, using a soft cloth to carefully avoid the delicate eyes, nose, and internal ear. Rinse the shampoo off the cloth, and use it to remove more shampoo.
Once they’re clean, wrap your kitten in a towel (preferably warmed from the dryer!) to make sure your kitten gets warm and dry as soon as possible.
4. Dry your kitten
Use a warm towel to dry your kitten’s fur as much as possible. Most kittens will also tolerate being dried using the low setting on a hairdryer. Move the hairdryer around so the heat doesn’t concentrate on a single spot of the kitten’s body.
Once their fur is dry, you may still need to wrap them up in another warm towel to help them maintain their body temperature.
5. Keep your kitten warm
Once your kitten is clean and dry, take them back to their warm room. They may want to curl up for a nap, in which case, a heated cat bed is the perfect way to help them stay warm!
Bathing an Orphaned Kitten
Orphan kittens often get covered with food and stool, and as they don’t have a mother cat to clean them up, they must rely on you to do it for them!
When bathing an orphaned kitten, there are a few different options:
Giving your kitten a bath doesn’t have to be stressful, and following our tried-and-tested method means you can make the process as easy as possible for both of you and end up with a shiny, clean kitten at the end!
Featured Image By: Tom Pingel, Shutterstock
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Christian started writing for a local newspaper as a teenager, and he's been involved in the publishing industry for most of his adult life. Combining his love of writing with a passion for animals, he is currently the Director of Editorial at Pangolia and the Editor-in-Chief at Catster.
Christian lives in the Philippines with his wife, son, and four rescue cats: Trixie, Chloe, Sparky, and Chopper.
