pregnat cat concerns

Question
QUESTION: First of all I would likt to say that I feel like such a bad persone for this happening again.  My 14 year old daughter adopted a kitten 3 years ago from a stray cats litter on my neighbors porch.  The kitten was about 5-6 weeks old at the time.  The reason why she picked this one was because she was very tinay and seemed like she struggled to get her moms attention and milk.  So she took her and took very good care of it and fed her high quality kitten food and some supplements to help her grow strong.  Anyway in May of 2007 she surprised us with a litter of kittens of her own.  Granted she is an indoor cat, when we moved here she got out a couple of times.  When she was having those kittens she(mom cat) "freaked" out.  Her first kitten was still born and the next 3 died within 3 days of eachother.  So they all passed. She took the second kitten and was whipping it oround like she was trying to hurt it.  Why?  No we never took her get her fixed, I know it was a bad decision.  Well she did get out through the garage one night and here she is pregnant again.  She is huge.  All she does is lay around and goes to the litter box an awfully lot recently.  I am going to make sure she is fixed after this is all said and done but I would like to know if you can answer why all the kittens died in her first litter?  And do you think this will happen again?  Do some cats just not have motherly instincts?  Did she kill them?  She did not seem like she wanted to stay with them at all when they were born and I forced her to umtil they all dies and she did not even seem to care.  Thank you for you time on this matter.  I hope you can help me.  Take care.
Christy Beccard

ANSWER: Christy,

Some cats, especially first time mothers, are not good mothers. Sometimes this happens when people are around when she is having kittens.

Give her a place to go that is quite and away from everything. And sometime mother nature knows best. Getting her fixed will help the heartache for you and for her.

By this time she may have already had her kittens. Let me know how it turns out.

Carol

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: HI.  I would like to say that yes she she did have her kittens on sept.21/22.  She did a wonderful job this time except that she had them on my daughters bed.  I was with her the whole time but she would not move to her box so I did not force her I just put a blanket down and she had a total of five but the funny thing is that she had #4 at about 2:15 am on Sat morning and when I was leaving for work on Sat at 1:pm she had #5.  Pretty strange.  They are all doing well and I went and had fot her some Vitamins for nursing cats.  She has now been with them since but she does get up to eat right next to her we put everything.  I do have a strange question, do some of the nipples "not" produce milk.  2 of the kittens fight so bad over this one nipple and I try to put one of them on a differnt one but it does not want it.  Ok. I would like to thank you for your help and your answer have a good day.

Answer
Congratulations Christy!

I'm glad she did OK this time. But remember that she can get pregnant again 7-17 days after having kittens.

A momma cat can have kittens by each tom she bred with during her cycle. If she bred the last one nearer the end of her cycle she would have a kitten due up to 24 hours later which is why she had one the next day.

The kittens pick 'their' nipple and that is the only one they want to nurse from. It sounds like 2 kittens picked the same nipple. Try switching them when one is asleep to share that nipple. They WILL get ferocious with each other and really have some 'cat fights' over the nipple...poor mom!

A tidbit of info: momma cats eat up to 4 times the amount they normally eat to keep up the milk production and so they don't get skinny. Babies take alot out of them. Give her a good quality kitten chow until she stops nursing. It has alot of protein and is good for her now.

Also worm her when she is done nursing because she licks the babies fleas (if they have any) and she will get worms from them. It's normal.

And she will probably move the kittens a couple of times. That's normal too.

You probably will have more questions later so feel free to write back.

Carol