Starving Young Mother Cat Very Grateful

The lactating cat I caught is likely the mom of the four kittens. I took her into the bedroom tonight in the trap and fed the kittens in front of her. They were then crawling around on the floor, eyes still shut, crying when Brambles, the young male from HTN came up. He adores kittens and has taken to sleeping with and grooming the polydactyl seven week olds.

But the mother, in the trap, still slightly looped from anesthesia began to growl, defensive of the kittens. I took this as a good sign and put them all together in the rabbit hutch. The kittens have been fed and mom is still under the influence of pain meds, so they can bond as she sleeps off the anesthesia.

Mom is starved to death and wolfs food. She wolfed food even in the moving car right after I caught her last night and had loaded her into the back of my car in the trap. I often offer a cat in a trap more food, as a good will offering. It is rare an enemy would offer food. So I do it to ease their minds and they are generally too frightened anyway to eat it. Not her. She is so hungry.

No cat was caught last night in the trap I left set there. However, I went out again tonight and set more traps, in case there is another mother out there. It was already late when I got out there. I'd picked up the three cats fixed today and delivered the male brown tabby to the same barn home in Turner where his two siblings are still in containment along with four of the orange tabbies from the Lebanon barn. He was caught this morning at Heatherdale. I then delivered home a male who showed up at a large all fixed colony in Albany. I came home, fed the kittens and set her up beside them in my bathroom, then headed out to the wrecking yard. Darkness had already come.

There is so much drama in the cat world, if there is another mother, the real mom of these kittens, she would know this cat and know her kittens and where they are. So, if this is the wrong mom for these kittens, the right mom is likely now with this mom's kittens. Trust me, the cat world is soap operic. Kitten stealing is common. Jealousy, you name it, whatever goes on in the human world, does so also in the cat world, including the horrors of starvation. Young mothers without choice in their pregnancies, starving to death as they attempt to raise kittens without any easy food source.

Mom cat is so grateful, so unbelieving there is food everywhere and that she can eat her fill and sleep and eat some more.

Such a brave soul can bring an old cat trapper to tears.
The mother cat.

Brown tabby male, formerly of Heatherdale, now with his two siblings in Turner.
Albany male, fixed today also.