- Joined
- Apr 24, 2023
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I recently trapped and brought in four cats that were living under a covered loveseat on my patio. I originally thought that I had a mom and kitten under there and my intention was to get them both fixed and vaccinated, return the mom to my yard and keep or adopt out the kitten. Well, I ended trapping mom, kitten and two other cats - lynx point siamese that appear to be siblings which may or may not be from mom. After closer inspection we noticed that mom has a bulging belly and we suspect that she's pregnant. We have a large enclosure set up for them in my home office (closed off for just them right now as I have three cats of my own). They have been indoors for about three weeks now and all but the mom are slowly warming up to us. The kitten and the lynx points have an appointment this week to be spayed/neutered. I'm thinking that if mom is visibly pregnant then she must be pretty far along. Is that a reasonable assumption? If that is the case, I don't feel comfortable having the kittens aborted that late in the pregnancy and we intend to keep her and the new kittens until they are old enough to be adopted out. Mom is pretty feral and I don't see her warming up to us so we would let her go back outside and continue to care for her if she hangs around. My question is, should I separate mom and the new kittens (when they arrive) away from the other three cats or would it be okay to keep them together in one room? They have clearly been living together as a family. We intend to continue working on socializing the other three so that they can have a permanent indoor home with either us or someone else. I'm wondering if it would be more stressful for mom for us to be continuously coming into the room to interact with the other cats or for her to be separated from the three cats that are her family? Is there a danger to the kittens to be in a room with the three other cats? Do cats raise kittens as a community? Thanks for any advice. I've had cats most of my life (most of them rescues), but have never dealt with kittens.