Expert: Jessica - 10/24/2011

Question
My one-year-old female cat recently gave birth to a litter of kittens. It was her first litter and she only had two kittens, one died. Since then she has been "Searching the house" as though looking for her dead kitten! We're worried about her, how can we help?
Also, the living kitten has been drinking from only one nipple, and its getting very limp and red and sore. We've tried moving the kitten, but she/he likes to drink from taht one! What can we do? We massage the mother regually around all her nipples and taht seems to help a bit.
Thanks for your help!

Answer
Hi Aimee,

Unfortunately, cats grieve much like humans do, and as with people, there is not too much we can do to console them. Time is what it takes to heal them. Try to keep all other stress to a minimum. Keep her routines as regular as possible - feed at a set time every day, avoid strange visitors to the home or drastic shifts in schedule, try not to take vacations, etc. After several days, or in some cases it may take a few weeks, mama will start to move on from the loss of her kitten. As a warning, you can also expect this same behavior if you plan to give away her other baby once it's weaned. Separation of her from her babies is very difficult. You can make it less stressful by waiting until the baby is 12 weeks old, as mama and kitten are a bit more ready to part ways than they are at 8 weeks, when most people believe it's okay for kittens to go to a new home.

As for the teat, it's actually rather normal. Very often, kittens will claim one nipple and will always feed from the same one. In a full litter, this isn't very noticeable because the kittens are all feeding at the same time, but each kitten will usually go for the same nipple that he first fed from. Very often, the strongest kittens get the lowest nipples, which produce the most milk (if there is only one kitten, I would suspect she is feeding from one of the lower nipples). Redness and chaffing are very common, and the nipples do become stretched from suckling. Normally, all the nipples would become the same way from a full-sized litter, but you are only seeing one become irritated because only one kitten is nursing. While it is a little uncomfortable for mama, it's normal, and it rarely is bad enough to cause her to stop nursing. If mama begins to kick the kitten away, you may need to consider bottle feeding the baby for a few meals a day to lighten the load and give mom a little relief.

Good luck!

Jessica