Cats And Kittens

It is an undisputed fact that cats love their kittens. From the moment of birth the mother cat watches over them, knowing they are weak and blind. When, eight days later, they open their eyes to the world she hardly leaves them for a second except to eat, and even then keeps one eye on them.

Anxious and ready to spit at any stranger who comes near, she is a living wall between them and the world. And when her little ones start to move and play she redoubles her watchfulness. The mother cat is a born teacher. The first thing she teaches her kittens is how to play. This is an important part of their physical development, building muscles and improving reflexes and also teaching them, as they chase each other's tails, the skills they will need later for hunting.

Hunting is a primordial occupation for cats who live in freedom, in the country for instance. But the role of the mother cat is much reduced for those pedigree animals who have to live in towns, perhaps in an apartment. When the mother cat and her kittens have access to barns and cellars and trees she really comes into her own. Through her, the kittens learn to creep up on things, to move silently and freeze into immobility, or move swiftly along the ground.

The mother cat will bring her kittens pieces of dead prey, and later on whole dead mice. Finally she will bring back living prey, teaching her kittens that when she lets it go they have to retrieve it and kill it. This is not cruelty; it is a simple lesson in survival. Occasionally the model mother apparently behaves curiously out of character. Some cats kill and eat one or several of their kittens.

This, happily very rare, occurrence is thought to be due either to thyroid problems in the mother cat, or more simply that she has insufficient milk to feed them or -and this seems the most likely given the cat's concern for her offspring -the fact that the mother knows the kittens are unhealthy or deformed in some way not necessarily apparent to us. By sacrificing them at birth she saves them from a miserable life and by eating them removes all trace of her action. It is known that rats practice this kind of population control, so why not cats, too?