The mama has started weaning her kittens

[conuly]

Starting at three months (a week earlier, actually) is pretty normal in my experience, though you wouldn't know it from Google, where you find people swearing that kittens are weaned by 8 or 10 weeks. Some even will say that the mom initiates this process at a month! Well, kittens will start on solids at around that point (although it's perfectly normal for them to not start solids until six weeks), but that isn't weaning in the sense of something the MOM has to do, not letting them nurse as much.

Most cats that I've seen wean, they do it by simply moving every time their kittens attempt to latch on. They get up or they roll over. This takes about as long as you expect, as kittens can be very persistent! This one is taking a more forceful approach - often, now, when a kitten approaches her and nuzzles, she growls at them. Moving is ambiguous, but they all get the message in a well-timed growl. Of course, this has the side effect of making them unsure of their mother, which means they're spending a lot more time snuggling with me. I might shove them off my lap from time to time, but I don't growl at them, not even in words!

The boys are being taken in to be fixed this weekend. Then it's just the girls and mom who need to be done.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Country cats teach their kittens to hunt when they're weaning them. If they were wild or feral cats, the mama would first regurgitate food for them, then bring back dead game and teach them to eat it, but since the invention of cat food, that part hasn't been so crucial.

The hunting-lessons can be pretty lively, though. Teaser was a great hunter, and before her kittens were born, she went on this relentless rat-killing spree - didn't eat them, just decimated them, presumably as an instinctive way of protecting her babies. The kittens were born and kept safely in the house, so they didn't actually need protection from rats, but when she started weaning them, she started catching rats out in the barn, crippling them and bringing them into the house as 'practice prey' for teh kittehs. LOL, Do Not Want!

[conuly]

Rats is pretty impressive for a cat.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

Mabye I'm kinda biased, but growing up out bush as I did, I got used to a cat that looked on rats as a snack, and a fox as a worthy challenge. My second cat actually showed the teaching behavior, leaving half mangled mice in our "nest", ie my bed, until I proved to her that I was quite capable of killing mice all by myself by stomping on a very lively one.
I don't think my current cats would even know what to DO with a mouse, but they were dumped as very young kittens.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

From what I've read, ratting is a skill that tends to run in family lines--places with rat problems would sell kittens of skilled ratters for quite a lot.

I've never lived anyplace with rats, so dunno how my cats would handle one--but our current cats went through the squirrel population like a dose of salts, leaving tails everywhere*, and have caught mice, voles and shrews frequently also.

*Including bringing one in to eat it ON THE BED. Arrrgh, DO NOT WANT is right.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

My kitty Fern was an incredible ratter - where we lived, our neighbors across the street put grain products in their compost bin, which turned it into a rat-feeder, so Fernie brought home a dead rat or two every night - sometimes not quite dead; a few times not at ALL dead - and left it in the mud-porch for me to cope with before getting my daughter off to school. Some people have cats to keep rodents out of the house; mine was actively bringing them IN - also garter snakes and (too funny!) giant nightcrawlers.

My first kitty, Woodsmoke, caught a few mice, but she was primarily a bird-hunter. My third kitty, Misty, was the best of mousers; she caught one almost as big as herself when she was only six weeks old (she'd been abandoned at a month old) and kept right on catching 'em. Female tabbies seem to be particularly good hunters; maybe they've got a more recent genetic trace of wildcat.

My sister Claire's skinny Siamese cat Jack was a rabbit-hunter; he'd bring home rabbits bigger than he was. My first mother-in-law's cat killed woodchucks, which are even bigger. I think the size doesn't matter if the ambush is fast enough.

[conuly]

Also, I forgot, this one also is teaching her kittens to hunt. We have serious gaps in the house, so mice will persist in getting into the basement. This one is a dedicated mouser, and will go after a single mouse with a persistence that's amazing, stalking its hole for days until she gets just that one.

It's strangely endearing to see kittens playing with a neatly killed mouse corpse, though I remove the mice as soon as I see them. Poor things.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Aww, she iz stealz our toy again, Mom!"

[conuly]

*giggles*

I actually have succeeded in teaching Callie (Ms. Poor Social Skills) NOT to fetch.

She was very proud that she could catch the ball I threw, and happy to show off that she knew to come when called... but after I tuggled the ball out of her mouth a few times and tossed it off again she ran off with it before I could trick her into coming over again.

It only took her 4 repetitions to figure it out!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Our kittens still occasionally nursed when they were five months and older. Only when their mama was dozing and lazy though - otherwise she'd push them away. No growling though...