The mother cat instincts is wonderful

You may really love watching how a mother cat and its kittens bond and coexist. I used to believe when the mother gives birth it becomes super dangerous that it's forbidden to get near. Perhaps for a wild cat which has never been a house pet it would behave that way but for your own pets, they won't.

The way when the mother cat gets food, even if it's hungry, it leaves the food for the kittens until the kittens are done. Of course it's not all the time because I've seen mother cat so hungry when it gets a bone, it starts growing at the kittens just like it would do with other cats. Selfishness to a degree is in all of us.

The thing is when kittens are about to reach 5 weeks of age they start showing some interest in their mother’s food, and I don't mean breast milk, I mean the one the mother is eating. They sense the smell, the have already learned how to chase some prey. If it's too big and weird they stay away.

At the earlier part they will just be mostly watching from the sidelines but eventually become participants and if the food is little it becomes competitive between the mother and the kittens.

The cute part is most mother cats see no problem in this by stepping away from their food and letting their kittens eat. I have so so many times a mother kitten drag a rubber of food from the trash and just leaves it around and the kittens go to eat it. She's literally hunting for something for the babies. It's all biologically wired into them.

There's a risk of hunger for the mother because paying too much attention to all the kittens could lead to the mother cat forgetting to take care of herself and being deprived of food.

I know you might assume once a mother cat becomes too weak, she would instinctively start caring and protecting her own health, but that is still not the case because she's sort of biologically driven to preserve the health of her kittens over her worn out body.

Nature doesn't handle everything and bring some good luck the way of the good animals, it is possible that before food got scarce the mother cat gave it all to the kittens and now starves badly. It's her instincts that overrides everything.

But really, instinct overrides everything.

Mothers are not selfish, but care of their kittens comes at the expense of them becoming weak at some point. So a pet owner that knows this will simply give to the kittens, keep the mother cat somewhere else to feed her separately before the kittens come to take that food too.

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