Question re: kittens born outside

[Karen]

Someone emailed me this question, but I don't have an answer. Does anyone know about mother cat behaviour?

the same calico mom keeps having kittens outside my classroom window. she looks like she's about half-domesticated and half-taken-care-of by this family who lives in the house next door. so what i'm assuming is that when [the kitten i rescued] was abandoned, it was that he was too weak to survive. in my experience, mother cats generally just euthanize their babies when stuff like that happens - but [the kitten] was simply abandoned, not given care, and left to die. is that common?

[annie]

Hi there!
To answer Sean's question, yes, it is very common. We, humans, usually feel shocked or sorry when we see this happening. However, it is a simple law of nature (or evolution). Cats will generally leave the sick or weak kitten to die while other species will actually kill the sick animal. Abandoning the weak ones is far more common for felines.

To come back to the cats' case, I am not sure if it is a matter of energy the mother doesn't have or simple instinct (the " I won't feed you if you don't even try" type of thing), but it is frequent. The last foster I had in Canada was a mom with 5 babies. The mom was sick and I had to force her to feed her babies (put putting her in her carrier with the kittens so that she couldn't escape). The family got all sick (from rhinotracheitis- the flu brought from the kennel), but most of them were still doing fine, except one. It was my first experience with a mother cat, and I was really frustrated with the mom not taking care of him. I tried to force him to drink and everything, but nothing would do. The poor baby died... The mom just didn't care and focused all her energies on the healthy ones. Disturbing sight of her feeding the healthy ones beside the dead body...

Then, it seems like some moms are also inexperienced. I know it sounds strange, but it happens quite frequently. In that case, all babies might die. My sister's last foster cat killed her 3 babies by sleeping on them... My sister just didn't understand as it didn't even happen all at once: she did it several times!

However, don't be discouraged, some are amazing moms too. My sister's foster just got 7 kittens and, even though she only has 6 nipples, she will wait for ALL of them to be finished drinking before moving!

Anyhow, nature has its ways to "eliminate" the weakest. Even though we might be at the right place at the right moment to help some unfortunate ones, many litters will lose a sibling through abandonment...

Hope this helps a bit!

[Karen]

Thank you for the long answer, Annie. I'll pass the info on to Sean.