When kittens are first born they are fairly immobile. Most of their time is spent nursing and sleeping. When they do move around, they use a slow, circular movement of their limbs called a “paddling gait.” They do not stray far from their mother during the first two weeks. By the third week, they begin to walk in a rudimentary way but they still do not move very far from the nest. By the fourth week, they can move a little further afield and are starting to learn to actually walk. By week five, you may see kittens starting to run for brief periods. During the 6th and 7th weeks, kittens generally walk like an adult cat and are fully locomotive. This doesn’t mean all their cat talents are developed, though!
Even though a cat walks like an adult cat by the age of 7 weeks, and can certainly run, he or she won’t be able to walk along a ledge or a fence, or turning around while balancing on either, until at least 10 weeks of age, if not eleven weeks. By the way, you should have been handling your newborn kittens during this time, from at least two weeks onward, during their prime socalization period.
Despite this relatively slow growth to full mobility, the crucial cat instinct to right his body is present at birth. By one month of age, the ability of a cat to re-orient its body in the air and point it’s paws toward the ground is already staring to show and by six weeks of age, air-righting reflex should be fully developed.
When kittens first start learning to walk, they are very uncoordinated. They don’t have a lot of muscular coordination and most of their movement is concerned with positioning themselves for nursing. They move mostly with a swimming-like motion while sliding around on their abdomen. If you hold a kitten by it’s body when its around 5 or 6 days old, it will start to make stepping movements with it’s front paws but not yet with it’s back legs. This is part of normal development but does not mean the kitten is ready to walk on the ground or is having trouble doing so. A kitten’s back legs, its pelvic limbs, are not able to support its full bodyweight until 14 to 16 days.
After this, it will still be another 4 days or so before uncoordinated walking begins. Once they reach around 28 days, coordinated walking is beginning to develop and their muscles will be able to support their body in a walking position, showing normal tone and tension like an adult cat. It is around this time that you will observe kittens starting to explore their environment. [
