Cats that Kill Kittens

Some kittens are born with abnormalities that humans cannot detect. For this reason they may not thrive, they may even act or smell 'wrong' to the queen. Where one or two kittens are either killed or abandoned, these kittens are often found to be somehow 'faulty'. The mother simply does not want to waste energy on raising kittens that have little chance of survival. In addition, she has expended a lot of energy during pregnancy and she may eat all or part of some of these kittens in an attempt to recoup some of those losses (just as she eats placentas) and to dispose of 'carrion' that could potentially lead predators to her nest.

Kittens born at a 'bad time of year' e.g. early spring/late fall/winter in the wild state, have a poor chance of survival due to lack of prey. A number of female cats will kill litters born at 'bad times of the year' in order not to use up valuable energy in raising kittens when they themselves have problems in finding adequate food. This has been noted in feral cats.

It is well known that a mother cat may kill kittens if the nest is disturbed, especially if she is confined and cannot move or hide her litter. This is attributed to a frustrated 'protection' instinct. Unable to protect her kittens against a perceived threat, she kills them in a futile attempt at protecting them. Perhaps instinct tells her that it is better to kill offspring herself and make good her own escape than to attempt to defend them against insurmountable (in her view) odds and possibly endanger herself in the process. A few mothers have accidentally killed kittens by trying to push them underneath a doorway in an attempt to move them to a new nest and some over-anxious but non-confined queens have killed kittens as a result of maternal incompetence or perceived threats to the nest. These mothers are generally either desperate or inexperienced or both. A few nervous queens are disturbed enough by the scent of a tomcat nearby that they will resort to the eat-is-protect mechanism.

Sometimes she will kill the kittens because they have been handled by another person or animal. Her own scent has been obscured and she either no longer recognizes them as her own or she feels threatened and unable to escape. They either become prey - in size, sound, smell and movement - or she attempts to 'protect' them by the last resort method of killing them.

Where several litters have been born in one colony it is not unknown for one queen (generally the more dominant one) to either kill her rival's kittens or to 'kidnap' them. This may enhance the survival prospects of her own litter; it may remove the genetic competition from the other queen; it may be that the predatory queen's maternal instincts do not extend as far as recognizing the other kittens as something other than prey or alternatively it may be that her attempts to kidnap the kittens and raise them as her own (over-developed maternal instinct?) result in the accidental death of the kittens as one queen tries to kidnap them and the other tries to defend them (even to the point of killing them herself).

In a number of such cases the queens may move into a single communal nest and take turns in nursing the kittens, but in other cases some of the kittens (usually the smaller, more fragile, ones or those of the less dominant queen) die. The kidnapping of offspring is better document in dogs, but has been observed in cats as well.

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