The little kitty didn't look very well this morning. It wasn't moving very much. I was sitting at my PC just now and hear this AWFUL sound - I stand up and SK is EATING the baby kitten. I about fainted. I've heard of this....but WHY oh WHY would she EAT it??????
I'm not that upset about losing the kitten because I hadn't really bonded with it yet.......but seeing her eat it......after acting like such a great mother......I don't know if i can ever look at her the same way again. My husband said to let her eat it!!!!
I didn't even get to get a picture of it!
I feel so sick at my stomach after seeing her eat it. Oh my God, that was GROSS!
Is SK a cat? I would not let her eat the kitten at all. We had a dalmatian that ate her entire litter (of 8 pups), the people who owned her thought coyotes were getting them, when there was two left, they asked us to watch her as they were concerned about the pups. (They were gone all day) anyway, within a week she had eaten the other two, I found half of the one we were going to keep. We had named them Tuffy and Howler. We were going to keep Tuffy. That dog was eventually pts because she had developed a taste for puppies. Sounds sick doesn't it? She tried to kill another puppy we were watching and she did kill another cat. This was when I was younger.......maybe 10 or so but I will always tell people that they should NOT let the mom eat the baby, no matter how sick the baby was.
It is normal, but don't let her do it... Once, one of the feral cats outside had left little mewling, babies strung across the front yard. I collected them up and caged her with them, thinking that maternal instinct would kick in w/proximity. The next morning there were just feet left So I know how you feel. Why don't you check on the psychological reason for that and let us know. I wonder if it is like that stress thing that humans get after birth that makes them whacko Growing up, we had rabbits that we had to be real careful not to go near the cages when the babies were new, if the does get nervous, they ate the litter, too. As far as I know rabbits are not carnivores
Thats awful. And sad. I heard that its a normal thing. I also heard that if the kitties or puppies are sick the mothers will kill them. I'm not sure on that one.
When I was 12 we had a barn cat that decapitated everyone of her kittens and then proceeded to clean them and try to care for them as if they were still alive. I remember my mom trying to coax her away from the kittens and the cat attacking my mom very viciously. The image of those 4 dead kittens has stuck in my mind every since.
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~Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring it was peace~
EEEEWWWWW!! I've heard that it's a natural thing for the mommy to eat or kill the babies if they're not well. But that's still really gross!! Maybe she knew she wasn't supposed to have it and that's the reason it was sickly-because she had already been spayed, and she just ate it, knowing that it wasn't going to survive.
Although revolting, SK's behavior is the feline equivalent of a mother bird kicking a sick hatchling out of the nest. You said the kitten hadn't been doing well, so instinct told SK not to waste valuable resources on a kitten that wouldn't live long, and SK doesn't have the ability to rationalize that you will buy her all of the resources she needs and to conclude that she can just ignore the instinct.
SK wasn't being a bad mother. Often if a litter contains a one sick pup or kitten, the mother will eat the sick one but take good care of the rest of the litter, and the consumed pup or kitten gives the mother additional energy to care for the ones that have hope. Granted, SK only had one kitten, but again, we're getting into a level of reason that SK doesn't have.
Not all females are cut out for motherhood. Some new mothers will accidentally kill their young by laying down on them and smothering them, and others will grab the little ones when they move because the mother's prey drive kicks in at the wrong time. And others do strange things that nobody seems to understand, as in the decapitation case above. But from what you've said about the kitten's condition earlier, SK doesn't seem to fall into this category.
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"Thought is an invisible and subtle power that mocks all the efforts of tyranny." Alexis de Tocqueville
I don't know Proto, about the sick kitten thing. I think a wire shorts out in mom and she is just irrational. I have a Labrador bitch that growled and bit at the pups in her 1st litter. She would have either savaged them or not fed them, had I not stopped her and made her understand her role. She was a bit better with the second litter, and even better than that with the 3rd. I do not trust her, and will supervise and mid-wife to her every baby. There was nothing wrong with any of them. They are animals, not people. Some are brighter than others. Sometimes they do weird things. I think it is very important to try and figure most of it out, but not all of it is reasoned or logical. Some people probably slip a cog and do things that have no proper explanation, too. Maybe a simple calcium imbalance is at fault? It is good to discuss and study. I have seen more important people with the same problem with their bitch that just could not deal with it, took it all to heart, and blamed the bitch as though she were human. I say we are superior, and we can help the lesser species along quite a bit, w/o assigning blame. We need to be bigger than that.
So I know how you feel. Why don't you check on the psychological reason for that and let us know. I wonder if it is like that stress thing that humans get after birth that makes them whacko
"Thought is an invisible and subtle power that mocks all the efforts of tyranny." Alexis de Tocqueville
