Sometimes, mother cats reject their young.
This was the case for Sansa, a tiny kitten who had been pushed away by her mom. However, she was saved by a man who became her new dad.
After she was born, her mother directly rejected Sansa.
When Alan found her, she was merely skin and bones. He decided to nurse her back to health. In the beginning, she would not eat and her condition seemed to worsen. But after receiving all the love she needed from Alan, she quickly grew stronger and turned into a beautiful and sweet calico cat.
There are a variety of reasons why mother cats abandon their kittens.
It is said that technically, kittens should stay with their mothers until they are about 10 weeks old. Kittens that are abandoned before that time period have much lower chances of surviving.
One of the reasons for cats to abandon their kitten is because of illness. If kittens are born ill or with severe deformities, the chance is high that the mother will reject the kitten because she will feel that the kitten will most likely not survive. Birth defects can include deformities in body parts such as the spine or the limbs. Other causes of sickness include kittens suffering from anemia.
An underweight mother or kitten is another reason why cats abandon their small ones.
If the mother is underweight when pregnant or after pregnancy, she won’t be able to give the right amount of milk she needs to her kittens. Sometimes, a mother gives birth to such a large litter than she automatically knows that she will have to reject the weakest ones due to her own incapacity to offer the right nutrition to all of them.
Another reason for kittens getting rejected happens when the mother herself is sick.
She will reject her kittens because she knows that she won’t be able to care for them. If the mother is ill, as explained before, the chance is high she will reject her entire litter or reject the weakest kittens in her litter. A healthy mother can usually only nurse approximately eight kittens at once, so if on top of that the mother is ill, she will have to reduce that number even more.
Sansa’s mother did not think she would survive, so she rejected the kitten in order to focus on the healthier kittens that she birthed.
When Alan found Sansa, she was almost half the size of his foot! The kitten was looking for someone to give her the love that she needed, and that’s exactly what Alan did. As time went by and Alan took care of her, she started showing him love by purring constantly in his vicinity and by constantly falling asleep on him.
When Alan found the kitten, he had to take on the role of a mother.
Therefore, he had to feed Sansa with a bottle around the clock. He then bought her a little bed, a litter box, and plenty of toys to play with. As the weeks went by, Sansa started to grow into a beautiful and very happy cat. She started eating much better and became the best cuddle buddy to Alan.
A couple of months after Alan found Sansa, he decided to give her a companion: another calico cat. Sansa decided to show the newbie around the house and take care of her. Today, Sansa is happier than ever with a new cat sibling and the most caring father in the world!
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