I'm new to this forum, so I hope I am posting this in the right place...
Back in May, we adopted two female kittens from my sister. Her cat was not spayed, and she got outside and got pregnant. They are both great cats, very friendly, and love each other to bits. We were initially only going to adopt one cat, who we named Aleister, but we saw that she was great friends with her sister, who we named Faust, so we decided to adopt them both.
Well, fast forward a couple months...My sister is pregnant and very near her due date right now. She has decided to move out of state (on a whim) and given herself only a month to get everything taken care of, including finding an apartment. She found one, but she is only allowed to have two of her cats and she has four right now. She plans to, in her words, not mine, "get rid of" two of her cats, one of whom is a kitten and is the brother of my kittens, and the other is the mother of my cats.
We are seriously thinking of taking in the mother, since we know it is harder for an adult cat to find a good home, and people tend to adopt younger cats. She is a very sweet cat, as is the kitten that is being surrendered, and I feel bad for her.
My question to you is: Do you know if mother cats and kittens will recognize each other as being related after being separated for three months? I have noticed that when I visit, the mom cat likes to smell me, and is very affectionate (she didn't really notice me either way before I adopted her kittens) and that when I return home to my kittens, they also seem to be more affectionate than usual, so it seems that they recognize her smell, but I'm not sure if I'm just projecting the way I think they must feel on them, without being correct. I haven't ever heard anything about this, and I don't know if it would be a good idea or a bad idea to reunite them after they've been separated for awhile.
By the way, I adopted the kittens when they were almost 9 weeks old, and now they are almost 5 months old. They are from the mom's only litter, which had 5 kittens, and the mom cat currently live with two of her kittens.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Back in May, we adopted two female kittens from my sister. Her cat was not spayed, and she got outside and got pregnant. They are both great cats, very friendly, and love each other to bits. We were initially only going to adopt one cat, who we named Aleister, but we saw that she was great friends with her sister, who we named Faust, so we decided to adopt them both.
Well, fast forward a couple months...My sister is pregnant and very near her due date right now. She has decided to move out of state (on a whim) and given herself only a month to get everything taken care of, including finding an apartment. She found one, but she is only allowed to have two of her cats and she has four right now. She plans to, in her words, not mine, "get rid of" two of her cats, one of whom is a kitten and is the brother of my kittens, and the other is the mother of my cats.
We are seriously thinking of taking in the mother, since we know it is harder for an adult cat to find a good home, and people tend to adopt younger cats. She is a very sweet cat, as is the kitten that is being surrendered, and I feel bad for her.
My question to you is: Do you know if mother cats and kittens will recognize each other as being related after being separated for three months? I have noticed that when I visit, the mom cat likes to smell me, and is very affectionate (she didn't really notice me either way before I adopted her kittens) and that when I return home to my kittens, they also seem to be more affectionate than usual, so it seems that they recognize her smell, but I'm not sure if I'm just projecting the way I think they must feel on them, without being correct. I haven't ever heard anything about this, and I don't know if it would be a good idea or a bad idea to reunite them after they've been separated for awhile.
By the way, I adopted the kittens when they were almost 9 weeks old, and now they are almost 5 months old. They are from the mom's only litter, which had 5 kittens, and the mom cat currently live with two of her kittens.
Thanks in advance for your help!