miscarriage I think

Question
QUESTION: My queen is only about 47 or 48 days into her pregnancy and last night she dropped out a precious baby that was to small.  She is still very lovey and never stops purring and I can still feel a few babies inside.  Will these babies have a chance of maturing another week or so or will she continue to have these babies. This was nine hours ago that she lost the baby.

ANSWER: Marj,

All you can do is hang back and see what happens.  I have heard of cats expelling a mal-developed kitten part way through the pregnancy and continuing until term. I would expect that there is nothing more you can do except wait it out.  Kittens more than a week premature have little or no chance of surviving.

Please let me know how she does.

Best regards... Norm.

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

QUESTION: Now that she has lost her babies she is back to her mean old self.  She can be very mean and vicious to everyone and we all have scars to prove it.  What I am wondering is if there is some way or some drug we can give her to not make her so mean.  One minute she is this loving cat and the next she is like this mean feral cat.

Answer
Marj,

This cat was never socialized with humans.  When cats/kittens play with each other they tend to play very roughly.  They have to learn to play gently with people. This means no roughhousing with the cat and, at the first sign of aggressive play, the game ends immediately and you walk away.

You can also look into clicker training as a behavior modification tool (see Karen Pryor's web site):

www.clickertraining.com


The problem with drugging the cat is that the long term effects may be problematic and, if the cat thinks the drug is messing with its head, it will fight the effects and actually become worse!

Best regards... Norm.