My friend wants to give away kittens in his house. He has already given 2 of them. I approached him to get the 3rd kitten but when I went to take the kitten, it was licking and playing with its mother and also the mother cat was cuddling her. Seeing this I couldn't really make my mind to separate the 2 of them. The kitten is 6 weeks old. Should I try and go get it after a couple of weeks or just let it stay with its mom. Will the cat take care of kitten always? Or will both of them miss each other if they get separated? Enlighten me.
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1 Answer
It is hard to say how animals "miss" others, because we cannot really talk to them.
But what struck me is the 6 weeks and 2 siblings already being gone! Even when the kittens are weaned, they are still learning social behavior from their mother! Minimum age to separate a kitten from the mother is 8 weeks, 12 weeks is better.
Now that this is out of the way: after the kittens are old enough, it is fine to separate them, even if they will miss each other for a while. In the wild, the split would happen eventually anyway once the kitten can handle life on its own. They may recognize each other when seeing each other again later on, but cats do not tend to form any strong family-bonds between parent and kitten, beyond the motherhood phase.
After the kitten is 12 weeks old, if you feel up to handling a little playful ball of fur that will leave chaos in its wake but will be cute and adorable all the way through it, feel free to adopt the little one. :)
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Just to slightly extend what you already touched on, cats are inherently solitary animals, their natural instinct is to be separate from other cats (because they each want their own hunting grounds). Lions are, as far as I'm aware, the only exception, mainly because their prey is comparatively large (and amply available) that it's easier to work together without needing to fight for scraps.– FlaterCommented Jan 7, 2020 at 14:56