This morning I noticed that our feral cat, Tractor, looked pregnant. At noonish I went to the barn to find two kittens! Tractor was sitting between the crying kittens. We were worried that she wasn’t going to feed them, but she wouldn’t let us near them. Later I went back to find the kittens and Tractor gone! They weren’t anywhere in the downstairs of the barn. Later I was getting some stuff from the upstairs of the barn and found Tractor nursing her kittens in the hay! Later I went back and she had moved them. I found them in some hay on the ground nursing. I probably won’t look again on purpose since she is so protective.
Do you have any male cats on your farm? If so, do you consider them a threat to your kittens, and how do you deal with that?
We have one adult male and the four male kittens. The kittens stayed away from the new kittens because of the angry mama cat. The adult male is super gentle. All of the cats stay away when one of our cats gives birth. I don’t think they like the birth smell. Our only threat with our males is inbreeding, but there are several big, stray males who come around our girls, so we haven’t had an issue with ours inbreeding yet.
Thanks for the quick reply! We might be getting a couple of new kittens soon, and weren’t sure how our adult male would react to them. He is very gentle with us, so hopefully he won’t react badly to the new kittens.
How exciting! Our cats react great with new cats. Our bossy female, Willow, doesn’t like new cats, but she doesn’t like anybody. Do you keep your cats outside? We do.