Moms with Litters

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What is the right thing to do when you find a Mom with a litter?

What is the right thing to do when you find a stray cat with a litter. If they are friendly please bring them in to a warm clean environment. Seclude them to a bathroom or a room where you can close them off to the rest of your home and offer the “Mom” fresh food and water.

Give her a litter pan and some clean towels for bedding for her and her kittens. Talk to neighbors and see if she belongs to someone in your neighborhood. If she does, talk to that person and ask them why their family pet is in this condition. If you feel it is not a good situation, call your local animal shelter and talk to an employee about that cities laws and how to handle the situation so that you abide by city laws when animals and pets are involved. They will provide you with the proper guidelines to go by.

If the cat does not seem to belong to anyone (abandoned, strayed, etc.), try to care for the litter if you possibly can and contact us or any other local rescue organization for help. Don’t ignore the situation and hope it will go away. You could be allowing a feral cat colony to begin. Unless those kittens are socialized by people, they will grow up wild and keep reproducing. If we or another rescue group cannot help at that time, then take the cat and its litter to your local shelter. At least you are getting them off the street and they will have a chance of finding good homes.

What is the right thing to do when you find a feral Mom and her litter. You will need a humane trap to safely catch the Mom and if the kittens are close to being newborn you can gather them up in a box with some warm bedding. If the kittens are older they will need to be trapped too. Now what do you do? Again, try to contact us or another local rescue organization for some help. If we or another group cannot help you, take them to your local animal shelter. The Mom and the litter stand a very big chance of being put down. Sometimes rescuer’s can relocate the feral mom after she is through nursing her litter or you can have the mom spayed and released back to your neighborhood and make sure she has clean food and water to finish living out her life. At least her kittens will have a chance to go to good homes. 

You should always do something when you see an abandoned cat whether its friendly or feral try to do something to help.