mom and baby kitty

A friend of mine just recently got 2 cats: Mom who is 2 1/2 years & 1 of her kittens which is 9 weeks old.

For some reason unknown to me he got the mom a week before he got the kitten, the mom settled into the house fine but since he got the kitten the mom hasen't been the same:

1) she now tends to sit on her own instead of lying with someone
2) licks the kitten BUT, even now and then while she is cleaning the kitten she will bite the kitten and kick him with her back legs...

He has had kitten for 3 days now and is concerned about the mother cat and if she will settle back down easily and what does that biting and kicking mean (and what to do about it).

I personally told him that both will settle in just fine and to them time to re-adjust. What do you guys think - I would really like your opinion on this. Any comments/ suggestions are as always very much appreciated.

Perhaps the kitten does not 'smell'like mom anymore and that is one reason for part of this behavior. I will await better answers than mine though!

I'm not sure the reason but, I fostered a friends pregnant cat & they gave birth while in my home. Momma had 5 beautiful girl kitties. We kept 2 because we couldn't bare to part with them.

I sent momma & 3 kittens back to my friends at 12 weeks old. Only 5 days after she took them home I went to visit my friend overnight. I packed up the 2 babies I kept (thinking they would get to see mom & also they had never been alone).

To our surprise momma got quite upset over one of the babies, hissing at her, but then let the other one nurse. All siblings got along just fine.

I am not sure it will help telling you all this but my thoughts were just to share that it seems that momma's can be biased at times.

Hope you find the answers needed and that the kitties will do well in their new home.

All of the experience that I have had indicates that once you take the kittens away from mom for more than a week, they really don't "know" who they are. The mom cat is most likely acting as if he brought some "strange" cat into the house. Also, because she stopped nursing, she is done with that stage of the process. My guess is she is either setting her boundries with this kitten or letting the kitten in no uncertain terms will she nurse. He should treat this as if he were introducing a new cat into the house. Since they are not killing each other, I would just pay close attention and let them get used to each other.

I learned the hard way that there are no "family reunions" in feline land. My cat Mollie Rose was born in Vermont. I went up there one weekend and took her with me (this was long before I had any knowledge about feline behavior). I was so happy that her mama, Miss KitKat was there, that I took Mollie Rose over to her to see her. Well, I thought there was going to be a cat fight right in the middle of the kitchen. It's a good thing I got out of the way when I did or I would have shredded wheat for arms. It was definitely NOT love at second sight.

Thanks much - I'll pass your experiences on.

Helen