New farm two pregnant barn kitties. New pics 7/20

[moonlitoaksranch]

It gets more complex. The seller asked if we could give them a kitten from each litter. Both mama cats are heavily pregnant. We’re feeding and checking on them daily. I would call them semi-tame. The daddy cats are feral. Our stuff gets here Monday. My cat trap will be put to use for those males. There is a local TNR program here.

Mama #1 is gray. No white markings.
Mama #2 is light orange with extra toes. Female orange kitties are uncommon.

Our own barn kitty, Ralph, is restricted while we’re settling in at our new farm. I hope to neuter the two males before Ralph gets released.

How do I time the spaying of the two females? Kittens due any day now. I can’t spay a cat this close to giving birth. I know some can, but I just can’t. The bulges are visible and moving. Can they still nurse their babies if they are spayed while lactating?

[wsmoak]

I would get them spayed as soon as the kittens are mostly weaned and can eat on their own.
(If this is an outside cat she may already be pregnant again by that time.)

[JJ_sLuckyTrain]

Moms can be spayed anytime but ideally I wait until kittens are 6-7 weeks old. Make sure you handle the babies a lot to socialize — critical window for socializing kittens is 5-7 weeks of age.

[moonlitoaksranch]

I think the seller told me the orange kitty is the daughter of the gray. The toms are the same, so perhaps the extra toes are a sign of inbreeding here? Does that mean the kittens will all have extra toes?

[GraceLikeRain]

Personally

1. Sure owners. They need to stay with mom until 8 weeks.
   1a. Pediatric spay/neuter before placement with a local clinic. Use an adoption application and screen them like any potential home. it’s your property and now your cats and you are under no obligation to gift them a living animal.

2. Contact a local rescue and say “I’ve got two pregnant barn cats on a new to us property. If I foster these guys until 7-8 weeks, do you have the capacity to help us with medical costs and placements.” Let cats live in bathrooms or a spare bedroom.

3. Either integrate two adult cats with your incoming cat or start networking now to find 1-2 barns willing to take a spayed female in two to three months.

If this was truly my situation, I’d spay abort. I’ve fostered 50 cats and have seen how terrifyingly few homes are available. Even with my extensive network at this stage in the game id feel highly I’ll equipped to identify 8-10+ high quality homes at the same time. Additionally, a lot of rescues won’t sponsor medical for cats not voted in. Even using local low cost clinics this will likely be a thousand dollar venture if everything goes perfectly.

Above all, please (please please please) do not place anyone, mother or babies, intact. We Have to break the cycle and it’s very easy for new owners to become part of the cycle because time slips away or they don’t believe they can get pregnant so young.

My last litter of seven took three months to place over three states with me driving them to the new homes. A lot of people will freak out on Facebook if you post pictures but very few will actually follow through. Even fewer will pass a basic screening through an application and a vet check.

[moonlitoaksranch]

Our son is taking this very seriously. His job is to find where the kittens are, if they come before we can catch the mamas. If I could lock the pregnant mama cats up somewhere, that would be best. There’s an outbuilding I could use. Then, the kittens are safe and mamas don’t reproduce until spayed. I can also TNR daddy cats.

[RHdobes563]

Taking a kitten from each mother will probably guarantee that they (the kittens) won’t bond to each other. But that is the sellers’ problem. If they want a kitten out of ‘sentimentality’, let them have them. But like others have said, get them spayed/neutered as soon as possible. (I was able to get a mother and her five kittens [dumped in a small crate near a water tower and found by co-workers]) when the kittens were “2 lbs.” Luckily, it was through a low-cost spay/neuter organization.

HINT: Post pictures of kittens here—we’re all SUCKERS, and who knows…! This said by someone who needs/needed a break from ‘cats’—I had/have 6, the youngest being 10 years old, and the oldest mid-to-late teens—but while walking my Dobermans last fall, came upon a tiger kitten sitting on a front porch railing. Turns out, the “owner’s” cat had kittens, ‘her dog didn’t like the kitten’, so she threw it outside. Was told by a neighbor that the ‘owner’ didn’t want anyone to feed it (I had gone back the second day with a can of cat food—insinuation was not feeding it would ‘encourage’ the kitten to go away). He knocked on the door, and somehow or another, I walked away with an 8-week old kitten stuffed under my jacket. #7.

I WAS going to find this little girl a home, but… SIGH Cougar Kitten (from the first she found the highest places in my house, like a mountain lion) is a purring machine, throws herself into my lap and over my shoulder to be loved and held, and thinks that all of the other felines here are “cat toys.”

Sorry to have digressed.

[Larksmom]

I would ask previous owners to pay for some of the spays at least for the kittens they want. If they wouldn’t pay, They won’t be good owners.

[GraceLikeRain]

Having fostered a lot (like a lot a lot). I regularly adopt out kittens from different litters together. I’ve never had an issue with kittens not bonding due to different parents.

I would bet my next paycheck that if the prior owners are gifted kittens that are intact, they’ll have one or more litters before 2022 is done. They did not intervene to TNR cats on their property and now want kittens because they are cute and little. Barf.

[moonlitoaksranch]

I was actually thinking about sending their chosen kittens to the spay and neuter clinic when they’re two pounds and then tell the seller where to pick them up, lol.

[moonlitoaksranch]

Update: we caught one mama cat and she’s in the grain silo now with a bed and food. Hopefully, she doesn’t slip by us.

[2DogsFarm]

1 Down!
Just wanted to comment on the “outbuilding”:
I had 2 kittens (~6-8 weeks) wander onto my farm 1st year I was here.
I had no cages & 2 older housecats, so put them in the garden shed/chicken coop (former owners’) until they got vet-checked, then until I could get the barn setup for them < still under construction.
I assumed it was escape proof, then came home from work to see both scaling the chickenwire fence to get back INTO the shed

[RHdobes563]

@GraceLikeRain

Having fostered a lot (like a lot a lot). I regularly adopt out kittens from different litters together. I’ve never had an issue with kittens not bonding due to different parents.

I would bet my next paycheck that if the prior owners are gifted kittens that are intact, they’ll have one or more litters before 2022 is done. They did not intervene to TNR cats on their property and now want kittens because they are cute and little. Barf.

A woman I knew who bred Manx cats would try to place her kittens two at a time (for bonding purposes). I got my Ziva (last kitten of a litter) from an animal shelter one day and went back to get another kitten, Abby (from a different litter), for her to play and bond with. They didn’t.

My experience differs, as I have gotten nearly all of my cats as “single” kittens. I DO have a bonded pair, but they are mother and son from the 'abandoned-in-a-small-crate-mother-and-five-kittens that I mentioned somewhere else.

If it works, great. If I DELIBERATELY get a kitten again, it will be two kittens from the same litter. (But as I said upstream, I DO need a bit of a ‘cat-break’…)

[2DogsFarm]

IME, kittens don’t have to be littermates to bond.
I got my current 2 nearly 7yrs ago from a shelter.
But they were being kept at 2 different locations of that shelter. Both around 6mos, but one from a hoarder, the other from a feral litter.
This them now:

VID_20201011_184209196_HDR

[Displaced_Yankee]

I don’t mean to derail the thread, but why all the discussion about bonding kittens/bonded pairs and why is it important?

(not trying to snarky or rude, I’m genuinely curious @moonlitoaksranch I am so happy you had safe travels!)

[moonlitoaksranch]

Thank you. It was quite a journey with all our pets! The only state that required us to stop was before leaving Florida. I had all the papers ready, so it was fast.

[2DogsFarm]

Because: COTH

There’s a poster whose sig line says:
" The horse World - 2 people, 3 opinions "

We ramble, therefore we are

[Displaced_Yankee]

Hahaha ok gotcha

[colorfan]

In my experience extra toes or polydactyl is not a sign of inbreeding, just lucky. I say that because any time I see a kitten advertised as polydactyl it is snapped up so quickly I don’t have time to dial the phone! As for the kittens, I think it is 50% whether the kittens will inherit the extra toe.

[SusanO]

Yes tell the sellers - we took the kittens to the vet. Kitten shots was $$, spay/neuter was $$. So we will need to be reimbursed for this. If they balk - then they didn’t need a kitten anyway. They already had two cats they didn’t want. That cycle needs to be broken.