my cat.....

Question
My cat has just givin birth less then 24 hours and is not used to being in a room alone... very spoiled.... She is now a mom to 2 kittens and I also have 2 other cats as well...so I gave her very own room with litter, food and water.. I have closed the door so the other cats don't go in and she wants out and left the kittens alone is this normal for her to leave her newborns and explore the house?

Answer
Hi Catherine.  She shouldn't leave the babies for too long.  Moms do go and stretch their legs, look for food, use the litter box, etc.  Some moms are willing to leave their babies alone for longer than others.  It may depend on how safe they feel their surroundings are for their babies.  Some mothers will leave their little ones for only a couple hours total each day, while others will leave for as long as a couple of hours at a time if the temperature is okay, the babies have been fed and there doesn't appear to be any danger.  But if the little ones are crying and mama is nowhere to be found, then there is probably some neglect going on.  You should immediately pick up some kitten milk replacement and a kitten nurser.  Babies this age need to be fed every two hours or they start to fade.  The instructions on the formula say newborns can be fed every 4 hours, but my survival rate feeding them on this schedule was only about 50-60%.  I started feeding them every 2 hours for the first two weeks.  While it was torture on the sleep schedule, my success rate raising the kittens went up to 100%.  I haven't lost a kitten since.