If not...
Posted on 03/30/2006 7:51:54 AM PST by processing please hold
Last night I went out to have a smoke and just as I was about to step out the door, I looked down and there was a dead baby kitten on our mat. The mama cat is wild and has never let us anywhere near her. A couple of hours later my hubby went to take out the trash and there was another dead kitten in the same place. He buried them out in the field. I just went outside for a smoke, and there is another one, that makes three.
My question is, since the mama cat is wild, why would she keep bringing her dead babies and putting them on our doorstep? Is that normal for cats?
It's too late to help these kittens, unfortunately, but you CAN help the mother -- by having her spayed. A no-hurt trap is very cheap; just buy one, bait it with a Treat (cold cuts or tuna work great), and be patient. You'll probably catch a few other critters in the process (if possums, release 'em, they're beneficial and harmless; if raccoons -- call Animal Control, they can carry rabies), but keep baiting it until you catch Mother Cat. Then take her, trap and all, to your city shelter or SPCA.
It's not too expensive to have a cat fixed. The best part is that no more kittens will be born, and, in many cities, if Mother Cat gets picked up by Animal Control in the future, they won't kill her once they realize she's sterile.
Well since you said this is her 3rd litter. Then is likely she gave birth to these kittens too fast and that she could not stimulate them fast enough before she gave birth to the next one coming. (too many kittens being born too fast for the mother cat to keep up)
There has to be more kittens and you really should try to locate the rest of them. If you see her out in the open watch where she goes. If she is away from her babies the babies will cry out for her.
One option is to call animal control and have them locate where the rest of the kittens are.
There could be as many as 5 or more kittens that did survive. My guess is the kittens are 5 days old or younger since they still had their cord stubs attached.
You're welcome. I'm just so sad. All five looked exactly like the mama cat.
We don't live in a city. We need cats for rat control in the country. They're mouser's
I found where she had them, in an old camper shell. I stood and listened for quiet a while before making one last look around the shed. There wasn't anymore.
We had feral cats do similar to us. They were diseased, and it was very sad. We had a fairly young kitten at the time, and he caught whatever they had and died as well. The person who had lived in the house before us had made a regular practice of killing all the feral cats in the neighborhood and burying them in his garden. I have to say it was one fertile piece of land. He reportedly had killed over 35 cats.
The humane society has set traps for us and just about any type of dog there is has been caught. From Dalmatians to Chihuahua's(spel?).
People drive out into the country and throw their pets away.
I seriously doubt you'd run out of feral cats. Spayed and neutered ferals are more healthy than intact ones because they don't get worn out breeding and don't get into so many fights which cause injury and spread terminal illnesses. Even when they do die you'll probably have new ones wandering in. Some places will spay or neuter ferals for free, the most it's likely to cost is $30-50 each.
No chance of that.
Some time back the HS brought out three traps, one to catch them in and the other two to hold them till they could come back and take them away. We must have captured over twenty cats that day. I've never let it get out of hand since then. Our property looked like that Steven King movie, the one with all the cats and that Mother and Son vampire. I can't think of the name of it.
I just wish people who won't keep their pets would take them to the pound instead of just throwing them away. We caught one cat a couple of years ago that had been declawed. What kind of cruel person would just toss out a domesticated cat that had no way of defending itself out in the country?
> They're dead. I buried them both in the same shoe box.
:( Well, they're with Freya now...
> Now, she's just laying out in the front yard. Unusual for her.
Likely despondant. At the very least, she's pondering "Well now what do I do?"
Give her some treats. Leave milk, Whiskas, whatever on the same spot where she left her kittens.
If nothing else, note that of all the options available to her, she looked to you as the one who could help. She had *hope,* as vain as it was. She might be skittish of you, but it means that she respects you at some level as something rather more than Big Monster.
Thanks, I would like to think most people would have done it too. I'm just sorry we couldn't save any of them.
> My daughter took the two females home with her and we kept the three males.
Well, that's a big clue right there. She knows you'd care for her babies.
I did that. I had to shoo the other cats away. Eventually they got the message and stopped coming on the porch. What's so pitiful is that she keeps coming back and smelling the mat where she left them. I guess their scent is still on it.
I couldn't agree more. I have little respect for those who dump their pets when they become inconvenient. Every pet is a living creature and, although not deserving of the rights due a person, is still a creature of God and as such is deserving of a certain respect, such as not being treated as garbage. When a pet becomes inconvenient, the moral response is to learn to live with the inconvenience. When a principled person adopts a pet they are adopting them for better or worse.
Declawing cats is a bad idea anyway, but to throw a declawed cat into the wild is just plain nuts. Why not just crush its poor head with a gun butt instead? It would be kinder than allowing the defenseless cat to die in a ditch from infection after being mauled in a fight.
Unless one is a sociopath, cruelty to animals is always cruelty to oneself. In my youth I ofte treated animals (and people) in a callous and unfeeling way. Today, as a middle-aged man, the reality of my misdeeds haunts me. The guilt and shame I feel over them are immense. I know better now, and have asked God for forgiveness, but I will have to live with the psychic consequences of my callow youth for the rest of my life. Those who are considering mistreating animals or people should take a lesson from this and be warned: Life is not to be treated with disrespect.
Life demands respect. The Almighty knows the name of every dog, cat, sparrow, and bacterium that ever lived, and He cares how we relate to them. When we kill living creatures for food, we must do so in the most humane way possible; when we kill living creatures in self-defense, we must do so with sobriety and dispatch, recognizing as we kill them that even serpents and lice have their place in the natural world created by God. The Deity is allowing each of us to run a tab today, but someday the bill will come due, and for what we have done to animals and to others, a just God will require us to pay -- right down to the last penny.
That's a comforting thought. Thank you.
How very much I agree with that.
Declawing cats is a bad idea anyway, but to throw a declawed cat into the wild is just plain nuts. Why not just crush its poor head with a gun butt instead? It would be kinder than allowing the defenseless cat to die in a ditch from infection after being mauled in a fight.
She was starving when she found our place. My son walked right up to her and picked her up, that's how we knew she was tame. He was shocked when he saw she didn't have any claws so we brought her in the house. My husband took her to the pound the next day. I wonder sometimes if they found her a home.
That is so sad. My in-laws often have pets dropped off near them. Since they live in the boonies, they always throw their leftovers outside for the animals to eat. They have fruit trees that they never harvest. They leave the food for the animals. Of course, ground hogs are not their friends. F-i-l has his own method for dealing with them.
I would love for our children to grow up in the country even though I'm a city girl. We would probably have at least one become a veterinarian. We're all bleeding hearts when it comes to animals. lol (I think that's why the neighborhood feral cats had their babies on our front porch.)
Speaking of cats, our cat brings us all her prizes and leaves them right on the front doorstep. It's so pleasant to find dead moles/voles and rats and birds first thing in the morning. Sometimes she leaves them in the bushes, and it takes the smell for us to locate them. Blech. But a very good kitty.
If not...
That's us too.
has his own method for dealing with them.
Sounds like the same method my hubby and sons have for dealing with moles. lol
Sometimes she leaves them in the bushes, and it takes the smell for us to locate them. Blech. But a very good kitty.
I hear ya. When the cats around here kill something, they usually do it under the house. PU, the horrible smell that seems to linger for a week or so. ULK.
There's been a paralyzed possum that drags it's lower half of it's body across our yard for a few months now. We see it a couple times a week. My son wants to put it out of it's misery but I won't let him. I told him he's lasted this long and survived, we'll just leave him alone. Bleeding heart...yep.
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