Depressed Queen

Question
I have 2 2yr Queens Phatty and Kitty and  last Sunday 5 of  Phattys 6wk old Kittens were taking to homes and the last 1 today, all week she has been very vocal and roaming around the house alot sniffing everything  which is very out of character for her how do i stop her from doing that? is she looking for her baby's? is she depressed? she sound sad, also my other Queen Kitty has 7 , 6day old kitten who also feed off of Phatty is that aloud? they have only about a 3 mnth gap in age and have been very good step sister :) they hunt together and phatty helped kitty with her birth cleaning some of her babys while in labor would that be why they feed off her as well, i remeber when we first got kitty and she tried to feed of Phatty but had no milk but she still sucked on her but stopped eventually would that be why kitty allows Phatty to nurse her kittens? Phatty moves them to different rooms in the house and kitty doesn't do anything is that normal should she be doing that? it doesn't; seem to upset her would Phatty be over powering kitty ?they don't fight very much , sorry it is very long i just wanted to explain everything so U can understand better.

thank you very much for taking this time to answer my questions
thank you very much

Sincerely

Suzzane

Answer
Suzzane,

Yes, Phatty is probably looking for her kittens. She will soon get back to normal. Note: ideally kittens should stay with the mother for 8 to 12 weeks for well adjusted social kittens. The mother takes care of them the first 8 weeks and from 8 to 12 weeks she teaches them about life.

And in case it ever comes up, kittens can nurse as long as the mother lets them. It is comforting to both the mother and the kittens. There isn't any problem with it. The mother will produce milk as long as she is being nursed on. I once had a 'kitten' that was still nursing when he was bigger than mom!

It is fine and no problem for kittens to nurse from different mothers. Mothers and kittens are interchangable.

Yes, it is common for one mother to move the other's kittens. I quite often get questions about it,...one moved them every with no problems from the real mother. As long as the one mother doesn't mind then it's OK. It is not common for mother cats to 'argue' or fight among themselves. It seems to be natural for them to take care of each other's kittens. When there are different ages of kittens you just need to watch that the bigger kittens aren't pushing away any littler kittens from the nipples. I once had a mother cat that would take any orange kitten from their mother and claim it, no matter the size. I would put them back, and she would go get them again....only the orange ones!

Note: cats can come into heat and get pregnant again from as little as 48 hours to two weeks after giving birth.

I hope this helped.
Carol