With the current kitten season in full swing, free kittens are now being posted on the internet and bulletin boards around town. This might sound very tempting to someone in the market for a new pet, but some of these animals come with potential problems. I, too, have fallen for a basket of kittens being given away at a dance years ago. Taking two on impulse, I was lucky; they were healthy.

Many of the kittens advertised are too young to leave their mothers. Sometimes even she is being given away. She had the kittens because no one bothered to have her spayed, and now her family is dumping her because she became a nuisance. How sad.

Before being adopted, all kittens should have had their first vaccinations, been wormed, and have been spayed or neutered. Of course, then they would not be free and people would have a hard time selling them for enough to just break even. It’s expensive to feed and get vet care for a litter of kittens and their nursing mother!

Every cat should receive core vaccinations at least once in its life. It is unlikely that the mothers of free kittens have ever even been to a vet. While she may have been healthy, during mating with a disease-carrying male her health could have been compromised. This puts her babies at risk if she is now carrying FIV or FeLV in her system as the viruses can be passed through the milk.

Just because a kitten is eating solid food at four-five weeks and using the litterbox does not mean it is ready to leave momma. Kittens should nurse for a minimum of eight weeks for their health and also their mother’s.

Nature schedules the weaning process to last for a period of about four weeks. To abruptly remove still nursing kittens from a queen can result in a painful drying up period for her. She will then go into heat again quickly, become pregnant and produce yet another unwanted litter. For the kittens, the much-needed antibodies in the milk and the tender attentions of momma will be lost. It is not unusual for them to phantom “nurse” throughout adulthood. You might find it funny that your cat still sucks on a blanket at age four, but consider the possible root cause of this behavior.

Littermates and momma are vital for teaching kitty social skills, something that will not happen if separated too soon. This is one of the problems we see with single bottle-babies, as humans are devoid of the knowledge of how to impart proper play etiquette. I back this statement up with a quote from Your Ideal Cat written by Drs Benjamin and Lynette Hart of UC Davis…

“Regardless of the amount of cuddling we may try to give, there is no substitute for the constant interaction between a kitten and a natural mother. … Orphaned animals raised without mothers, and without their littermates, have a tendency to be overly cautious, fearful, and aggressive as adults.”

While this is not always the case, uninformed people do tend to offer their fingers as toys, inviting the cute little toothless kittens to attack and bite. Since it doesn’t hurt us, we laugh, thinking it very cute behavior. In reality this is teaching the kitten bad manners which may be carried over into adulthood. Who hasn’t seen the videos of attack cat ankle biters on YouTube? Some of these cats end up in shelters or are dumped on the streets when they become too much to handle. If you must rescue these kittens, at least take a pair that have been raised together, and choose ones that have had a lot of gentle human contact.

There can be many reasons why a kitten or a whole litter becomes orphaned. Nursing mothers must leave the nest to hunt and relieve themselves. During one of these sojourns she may be hit by a car or attacked by a dog. People finding kittens often don’t want to take them to the shelters for fear that they will be killed. Instead, they post them on Craigslist after discovering how time-consuming it is to bottle feed.

If a mother feels that her kittens are in danger, she will seek out another hiding place and then carry them in her mouth, one at a time, to the new digs. This is a very dangerous time for her and the kittens. Sometimes she is interrupted before the last kitten has been moved and it will be left behind. These are the single kittens that are also posted on Craigslist. They come to us, lonely, frightened and very hungry.

The mantra of Catalyst for Cats is “to make every cat a wanted cat.” These free kittens need homes, so go ahead and adopt but please take them in to your vet as soon as you can, especially if you have other cats at home. Have your new pet vaccinated, wormed, micro chipped and sterilized.

Please call us immediately if you find kittens in your yard. We can help find their mother and get them all off the street.