[bigboy6212]

Why would mother cats eat there babies??

[Aurora_Bell]

Did this happen to you?
I am not really a cat person, but did you or anyone else handle the kittens a lot when they were fisrt born?

Someone told me a mother cat will eat her litter if they are sick or if she does not have enough milk to feed them once. I am not sure if that is true or not. I also heard that it could be scent related. It could be a territorial thing as well. Is this an outside wild cat or an indoor cat? How old is the mom cat?

[nittney735]

Many animal mothers will do this; it's an instinct that protects the survival of the species as a whole. If a litter has a kitten that is runty, sickly, or weak, it is very likely to die eventually. If the mother continues to feed it, not only is that expending her own body energy for no reason, but it's also giving less milk to the other babies, who might in turn become sickly and die. If the mother eats the kitten instead, she can better ensure the survival of her other young.

When a cat eats her whole litter, it's basically the same reason on a wider scale. Mother cats (or pigs, mice, etc) will eat the entire litter when they feel that they are unlikely to survive. This can be because they are unhealthy, or because the mother feels threatened. A nursing mother and her young are vulnerable to predators, diseases, and all kinds of bad things, and there's no point in the mother risking her life on kittens that probably won't make it. If she eats them, however, she regains some of her lost energy and can live to try again later, hopefully producing healthy young the next time.

[hheath541]

Everything nittney said is true, and the same goes for bella. I only have one thing to add.

Not all animals are good mothers. Some are simply unable to recognize the babies as their own and only see them as smaller animals and potential prey. They lack the basic maternal instinct to protect young and, instead, attack and eat them.

[Emily94]

I found a stray awhile back on the side of the highway, she was pregnant and in labour. I took her home and she had 2 little babies. We never touched them and kept her in a room by herself, the next day we went in there and both kittens had there feet eaten off. We took them to the vet to be put down. The vet said it was probably environmental stress, the mother probably was never around people or in a house so she felt trapped and scared and feared for her safety so she tried to kill the kittens to save herself.