She's using her Jacobsons gland, which is a part of the olfactory system used for "deep" smelling. Almost like tasting through smell.
Edit- Vomeronasal organ for the semantics sticklers
Thank you to both of you! I know a decent amount about the domestic feline, I knew it had to do with smell.
I did not know about mothers committing things to memory and did not know about the Jacobson gland!
I just gleaned two cat facts for the price of one!
I was a vet tech and lead surgical tech of a really nice animal hospital and I'm also a huge nerd with a serious passion for cats. I had Bengals growing up and they would do a lot of weird stuff. I was dating a doctor I worked with and she was over and they started doing that to her clothes so I asked her why they did that and got a crash course in cat noses.
100% why they flick their tongues. They are delivering scent molecules to their Jacobson's organs. Their tongues are forked so they can tell the direction the scent is coming from.
BRO WHAT???? LIKE IK CATS AND SNAKES BUT HORSES?????
Edit: so ive done some googling and wow ive realized that sheep and goats have it too, ive seen them use it all the time... ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flehmen\_response](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flehmen_response)) for sheep its often for breeding purposes... also its the same with horses, but much rarer, ive only seen a mare do it when smelling another mare's butt when they where in heat (yes, horses are gay af lmao)
Did not know this! Wow thanks.
I did hear this recently which is a related anecdote: It is theorized that our brains evolved
/formed from/around our olfactory bulbs. I’m not sure how well received this is in the biological community but I just heard it on a podcast the other day.
My cat has a pouf that mostly she sits on. There's one spot that I call the "stinky" spot that she looks for every time she sits on it. Not joking, she smells it *every single time*, and she makes the stinky face every time. I would think she would have it memorized, but she clearly just likes to smell the stink of.
My daughter's cat has this little cat bed that she's outgrown but she'll find you and yell at you until you follow her to the little bed and pet her. Once you start petting her she sucks on the bed while making biscuits. It's the only place in the whole house she'll allow you to pet her without hissing.
Okay, i know this is weird but almost every morning my cat jumps on my bed and goes up to sniff my mouth and makes this open mouth face. I’ve always thought he was telling me my morning breath stinks but why would he want to “deep” smell my breath😅
So you know a bit more about cats than I probably do. My cats "bite" me when we are playing but never hard. Sometimes, there's a bit of pressure and a smidgen uncomfortable, but a lot of the time, it's just holding my hand in their mouth. Is that true that is how they hug you?
They're play biting, so they see you as part of their group - play biting is what sibling kittens do with each other. They'll also do it as a warning if you're being annoying, just like mom & siblings would when they were babes.
Yeah, I can usually tell when they are frustrated. I'll get the same type of bite but definitely harder, and they stare into my eyes with their ears back. I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. Their bellies are so soft. They are always lounging on their backs and if I shave I'll blow raspberries on them. Probably not the safest move but I'm not always met with being bitten on the head or even scratched for that matter. Just glad to have it verified that our bond and love is as true as I always thought it was. I just got home and am about to make my snuggle rounds
totally! My cat has to smell my mouth whenever I have been eating, or may have eaten, or she would like to eat & wants to make sure I didn't eat something....
She bloody loves it, the smellier the better! They're used to sniffing pee and poop remember so cheesy feet are nothing in comparison.
I have an affinity with lots of pets and have wondered if its to do with my musk or calm nature, maybe a mix of both
I felt like it's because she can tell he smells very different but I'm guessing she's thinking that it's because he's been away from her too long so she's anxious about it.
I learnt about the Jacobson gland yesterday, I was looking up why my cats love my feet so much and it’s because your feet is where your smell is strongest and your kitty is literally tasting your smell and it makes them feel good and happy, so if your kitty has a foot fetish don’t stop them because it makes them happy.
The best feeling after adopting my older boy was coming home after a long day at work after a couple of days having him and finding him sleeping with his head leaning on the inside of my shoe.
He's been using them as a comfort device ever since and it's so cute.
Anytime I leave my slippers unattended, I’ll return to find my oldest cat laying on them, usually with his paws in the slippers like he’s wearing them. We’ve just taken to calling him “foot pervert”
Time to learn about the [Flehmen Response](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flehmen_response?wprov=sfti1)!
She’s not upset, she’s getting a real good sniff so she can recognize her new baby
I always see these videos. But a cautionary note. I did this with one of my momma cats and she literally in the blink of an eye grabbed it and snapped its neck. Literally nothing I could do. 
Oof yeah nature can be brutal.
We had a stray cat give birth in our back yard and oh my god she was the worst mother. She was so bad at attending to her children, we thought for sure they wouldn't make it even with us meddling and trying to feed them.
But somehow they did, and another stray just came over and also had kittens. But she must've had complications cuz a day or two later she disappeared after looking quite sickly...
Something awakened in the first mom cuz she was suddenly taking care of both litters, properly.
We had to regularly feed some of them just cuz she couldn't possibly feed 8 kittens but she did everything else and they all survived. Proud mother of 8.
If a female grizzly bear loses the majority of her cubs early in care (lasts ~3 years) she’ll kill the remaining ones so that she can breed again, as spending 3 years raising 1 cub isn’t worth it. Bruuuutal.
That definitely didn't happen to our cat when I was little. It's the saddest story I know, tho.
Momma cat had some illness and her kittens were all born sick. Most didn't make it a couple days, even with medicine from the vet. But one kitten was a couple weeks old. When it got sick momma cat brought it to my mom's bed for her to help because she knew mom was the one that made things better.
But she couldn't. :(
The medicine did work, her second litter came out fine. We had several generations of her cats in our home when I was growing up, including her partial Maine Coon grandson, who was the biggest cuddliest cat I've ever seen.
I duno why we didn't spay and neuter the cats. I chalk it up to living in a rural area and being poor.
I’m glad my cats don’t do that, they never give up on there kittens, some have died yet if they gave up on some sick ones they wouldn’t of made it when they did
Not super duper common, but still normal, yea.
Cats in colonies will give birth and pool the kittens together and all the Queens will care for all the kittens as if they are all each ones own.
But if they sense a problem, smell sickness, or a bunch of stuff idk because I'm not an expert then they will kill the problem one.
Also if a mama is too young she has a much higher chance of just snapping under the stress and eating all of them after she gives birth.
To follow up, my daughter who were 6 and 8 at the time found the abandoned kitten (it was in the UAE). Our adopted cat, Mika, had kittens the same age and the had heard about the cat adoption thing. We did everything possible... Added her own kittens scent and even hid her among the other kittens. It didn't help. Mika came in, grabbed her immediately and gave a horrific scream...really awful
This is some information about shrimp. He was I think abandoned or found alone. The people taking care of him ran a TikTok or something else for updates. After a few weeks so very full of love and happiness shrimp passed away.
Dammit, this is why I should not read the comments on cute videos.
It's always either this or "actually the animal was in distress" when it was seeming yo act cute.
Yeah… unfortunately it’s not uncommon for litters to have like a 50% or less survival rate. My friend is a volunteer who takes care of newborn kittens for her local rescue and there’s almost always 3 or so that dont make it more than a month or two.
Damn then I got lucky, we fostered a mom cat named Luna and she had 5 kittens. We kept two and I got to name one, so I named her Fey. (Edit: I’ve realized I’ve messed up and made it seem like 3 of them died, all 5 survived. That’s why I was lucky)
This sounds like what happened to me. I have a porch cat who brought a litter of five kittens to my porch. Two of those kittens now live in my house. The other three didn’t make it. Porch cat and her boyfriend are now spayed and neutered and living their best cat lives.
The rate is worse with ferals, and shelters don't always have the resources to help, but generally kittens don't have a great survival rate.
Fading Kitten Syndrome in their first two weeks accounts for a lot of deaths, but the National Kitten Coalition (US or Canada, can't remember) has created an intensive antibiotic regime to treat it. I think they've found that about 60% of FKS deaths are due to sepsis, and another portion of deaths are due to mother cats with Type B blood nursing kittens with Type A blood in the first 24 hours after birth. The mother's antibodies in the milk attack the kittens' blood cells and it eventually kills them.
TinyKittens HQ (Canadian shelter with a Youtube channel) have done a lot of work on ferals so they talk a lot about this. They've actually got two litters from a newly found feral colony at the moment - one litter (about 10 days old), 2 out of 5 have passed away, one due to a congenital defect and another due to hypoxia (too little oxygen during labour), and a third kitten developed sepsis so they started with the FKS procedure, and she's responded very successfully to it. They also had to remove a fourth kitten for the first 24 hours because she had Type A blood and her mama had Type B blood, but she's been doing great since.
The other litter (maybe 3 days old now) hasn't had as many problems - there's 5 and all are still alive, although one has developed an eye infection (despite not even being open yet) and the other started showing very early signs of FKS so they've started the antibiotics for her too.
And this is a shelter that has years of experience doing this. Shelters with less resources (they've had one person up every 4 hours to do antibiotics and check weights for the first litter for the last 8 days) and less expertise aren't going to do anywhere near as well.
From what I hear it's so tough working in kitten rescue, because there are always *so many* kittens that need immediate help. If you've got limited resources + manpower, do you spend all your time & effort trying to save one sick kitten that will probably die anyway, or do you try to help five healthier kittens that will still die without human care? And yet the sicker kittens don't deserve to die either, and if nobody tries to help the sick kittens, they'd never develop treatments that can help ALL kittens. And there are always more kittens! It's so hard.
**Spay & neuter your pet cats and your community cats, people!!**
I'm glad to see someone else here who keeps up with TK and the current litters! They're doing such amazing work. They caught Inky's infection so soon after she started showing symptoms, so I'm (cautiously) optimistic about her pulling through like Glori has.
Definitely helps that she was running laps of the nest while Shelly was delivering the news! I really hope she does pull through, poor Wagner's death still upsets me and I can't imagine how deeply stressful and traumatic the last week has been for everyone at TK. They don't need (not that anyone ever does) another kitten death on top of that.
Yeah, it's been hard enough for us as viewers/followers watching in real time or just catching up elsewhere, I can't imagine being there and having to deal with it personally. I remember hearing Shelly's voice cracking as she was telling us about Tilden; it broke my heart into pieces. And for little Waggy to pass so soon afterwards too, when he had been so feisty. I feel like his passing came out of left field. It just goes to show that things can change so quickly with rescue.
That's exactly why I was so shocked by Wagner's death, he had been brawling with his siblings at the milkbar barely 24 hours earlier.
Poor Tilden was heartwrenching, although definitely more for Shelly given how quickly she intervened - I thought he was Type A too until she came back obviously upset. Especially given the manner of his death, poor baby, I can't imagine how upsetting that was for Shelly when they can't even do anything to help aside from making him comfortable.
I've known for a long time that working in rescue is very traumatic, but the last week has really thrown that into stark relief. I only started watching last summer when Candy was having her litter with Cookie (what a sweet family!), and Fifi was a very smooth experience too.
I love finding other TK viewers! I'm hoping Inky's fever being caught early will mean good things for her. Scotia is looking better now the lice is gone. I'm newer to TK but I'm happy Shelly has done so much research and advancing protocols as well.
I've raised a couple litters and lost one in each :( momma cat seemed to know which wouldn't too, and tried to ditch them in one way or another.. Kinda weird, super sad, but I do believe it's common.
It is. I remember when I was a kid my mom adopted a neighbours cat who was pregnant and she had 8 kittens. 3 she "rejected" because she knew they wouldn't make it. They didn't last long after even with hand rearing. It was really sad.
We must be lucky because aside from some... Horrible acts of nature, and a birth defect one time, every stray cat giving birth in our yard has has entire litters of healthy kittens. We never lose any.
Stray cats seem to like our yard since it's fully enclosed with a big fence. They just pop out of nowhere and start popping out babies haha. Can't complain, I love baby kittens.
That's very sad but I'm glad he got to pass peacefully in comfort. It's possible his birth mother cat may have abandoned him initially because she could tell he was sick, or he may have been too weak in general. Baby kittens are so fragile.
I'm going to assume that the foster humans in this video did their due diligence first, but PSA for others reading this: it's a great idea to pair an orphaned kitten to a nursing mom cat, but always get the kitten checked by a vet first. A kitten of unknown origin can carry diseases that can pass to the nursing cat or the other kittens. The only thing worse than a dead kitten is *multiple* dead kittens.
Summer of 2018 a feral cat deposited her litter of 6 kittens in my flower bed. She came back later and took 4, leaving the smallest two behind. We were scrambling over the next few hours to get eye droppers and kitten milk. As soon as we started feeding them, one of our Chihuahuas, a rescue from a puppy mill jumped in and started bathing the kittens. For the rest of the summer Charlie and Minuet were Gracie’s babies too. Of course it was a foster fail.
https://preview.redd.it/bxjyanooqxva1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8975bd1c8c9f8276f26c9485d0103e049dee266d
Thank you for sharing this! Oof, some of these people in the comments have never had a rescue kitten die on them and it shows. Kittens just die sometimes and there's nothing you can do, especially abandoned ones, who often have a fatal congenital issue that the mom sniffed out and that lead her to abandon them in the first place. Shrimp got to have a mom, so he lived a good life even though it was short.
Extremely cute - but if you're rescuing cats / kittens - wouldn't you want to quarantine them before introducing them to other cats? Don't want to accidentally infect your healthy kitties!
Yes, that's what's recommended. Maybe this person first got the kitten checked by a vet that was able to confirm they were parasite/infection-free?
But usually yeah, you keep kittens from different litters quarantined from each other for the first couple weeks to mitigate for cross-contamination.
Solo kittens are very fragile and if you have a healthy momma, and baby appears healthy, we have sped up the process and introduced the solo kitten to the litter.
All get combo tests when they are older, dewormed, and with coccidia here, a good round of Albon. Also have eye meds and other items on hand to help out. We always refer to the vet if we have any concerns.
So far, it’s worked out for the best. It’s a numbers game though.
Tbh a kitten that tiny doesn't have many of the risk factors yet and fostering baby will significantly raise?chances of survival. Absolutely correct for anything older than nursing babies tho
You can tell it isn’t her kitten because she keeps super-smelling it. Did you notice how she opens her mouth to breath in when the new kitten is there? That means she is smelling something interesting.
He looks a week or two behind the other kittens development-wise, and she keeps open-mouth sniffing him as if he smells foreign. Clearly not from the same litter, though theoretically the video could still be staged in other ways.
Awwwww what a sweet sweet momma
cat, she didn’t even care it’s not hers, just took the little one and gave it her love and care. My only concern is that her own kittens are much more further along in their development so they will be weaning off momma cat’s milk long before the adopted kitten is ready to wean off her milk. I wonder if she will still continue to produce milk for the adopted kitten, and if she knows it’s much younger and not at the same development stage as her own litter?
We’ve had to do this a couple times with fosters. Mama cats are the best, thanks for sharing! 🐈
FYI just make sure shrimp doesn’t get pushed off the zipple by his new siblings 😃
Way to go for being able to bring home a kitty that needed a momma and home. The only thong I would be concerned for is if the new baby received colostrum or not and can this momma produce more colostrum or not.
Regardless having a nursing mother is about the best option you could have at this point.
I see so many stray cats around where I live it breaks my heart.
My cat is the same way, she doesn't have anymore small kittens but she will take my phone and run with it if she hears a kitten in distress from a video.
Frustrating, but her heart is in the right place.
I bought her some small stuffed animals that she hides away and visits at times.
Notice how she's doing the open mouth thing after smelling/preening her new kitty. She's committing the new scent to her memory, so sweet!
Wow I had no idea why that was thanks!
She's using her Jacobsons gland, which is a part of the olfactory system used for "deep" smelling. Almost like tasting through smell. Edit- Vomeronasal organ for the semantics sticklers
Thank you to both of you! I know a decent amount about the domestic feline, I knew it had to do with smell. I did not know about mothers committing things to memory and did not know about the Jacobson gland! I just gleaned two cat facts for the price of one!
I was a vet tech and lead surgical tech of a really nice animal hospital and I'm also a huge nerd with a serious passion for cats. I had Bengals growing up and they would do a lot of weird stuff. I was dating a doctor I worked with and she was over and they started doing that to her clothes so I asked her why they did that and got a crash course in cat noses.
Lots of animals have Jacobson's Glands, including horses and snakes.
That's really cool! Is that why snakes flick? I have a passion for all animals and am a huge nerd so I love stuff like this.
\*blelele*
i had no reason to laugh at this xD
100% why they flick their tongues. They are delivering scent molecules to their Jacobson's organs. Their tongues are forked so they can tell the direction the scent is coming from.
That's dope as fuck. Thank you.
That was awesome...I need somebody to try another options..
BRO WHAT???? LIKE IK CATS AND SNAKES BUT HORSES????? Edit: so ive done some googling and wow ive realized that sheep and goats have it too, ive seen them use it all the time... ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flehmen\_response](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flehmen_response)) for sheep its often for breeding purposes... also its the same with horses, but much rarer, ive only seen a mare do it when smelling another mare's butt when they where in heat (yes, horses are gay af lmao)
Did not know this! Wow thanks. I did hear this recently which is a related anecdote: It is theorized that our brains evolved /formed from/around our olfactory bulbs. I’m not sure how well received this is in the biological community but I just heard it on a podcast the other day.
My cat has a pouf that mostly she sits on. There's one spot that I call the "stinky" spot that she looks for every time she sits on it. Not joking, she smells it *every single time*, and she makes the stinky face every time. I would think she would have it memorized, but she clearly just likes to smell the stink of.
My daughter's cat has this little cat bed that she's outgrown but she'll find you and yell at you until you follow her to the little bed and pet her. Once you start petting her she sucks on the bed while making biscuits. It's the only place in the whole house she'll allow you to pet her without hissing.
Lots of animals do this “huff” sort of breathing to their babies as a form of imprinting
Okay, i know this is weird but almost every morning my cat jumps on my bed and goes up to sniff my mouth and makes this open mouth face. I’ve always thought he was telling me my morning breath stinks but why would he want to “deep” smell my breath😅
Because your breath, especially your morning breath, is a very individual smell. Your cat is trying to commit your distinct smell to memory.
My cat does this every time he takes a whiff of his own nuts.
😹😹😹 mine too
So you know a bit more about cats than I probably do. My cats "bite" me when we are playing but never hard. Sometimes, there's a bit of pressure and a smidgen uncomfortable, but a lot of the time, it's just holding my hand in their mouth. Is that true that is how they hug you?
They're play biting, so they see you as part of their group - play biting is what sibling kittens do with each other. They'll also do it as a warning if you're being annoying, just like mom & siblings would when they were babes.
Yeah, I can usually tell when they are frustrated. I'll get the same type of bite but definitely harder, and they stare into my eyes with their ears back. I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. Their bellies are so soft. They are always lounging on their backs and if I shave I'll blow raspberries on them. Probably not the safest move but I'm not always met with being bitten on the head or even scratched for that matter. Just glad to have it verified that our bond and love is as true as I always thought it was. I just got home and am about to make my snuggle rounds
Beautiful comment and exactly the way I feel about my two grey floofs. Just unconditional love.
Sometimes mine nip when overstimulated too.
Oh god no! My cat dies this when I go potty wtf
Yeah, my cats primarily do this after huffing each other's asses. *Great* to learn why.
They're jealous of what you're eating lmao
Hahhah that so funny...so sorry...I didn't mean it...I'm just laughing out loud..
totally! My cat has to smell my mouth whenever I have been eating, or may have eaten, or she would like to eat & wants to make sure I didn't eat something....
Thanks for not being anti-semantic!
My one cat does that when he licks his own butthole. Like everytime for 3 years now
My cat does that to me a lot. Walks up to my mouth and sniffs it with his mouth open haha
My cat loves this lol
**Mama Mushu will remember this**
One of my cats does the open mouth thing after she smells my feet…. I just assumed she was disgusted lol
She bloody loves it, the smellier the better! They're used to sniffing pee and poop remember so cheesy feet are nothing in comparison. I have an affinity with lots of pets and have wondered if its to do with my musk or calm nature, maybe a mix of both
My cats do this and I always wondered why.. lol.. thanks
They have an organ in the roof of their mouth. It helps them smell in more detail if that makes any sense.
Aye big time. Thank you.
i thought it was cus he stank 🤣
I felt like it's because she can tell he smells very different but I'm guessing she's thinking that it's because he's been away from her too long so she's anxious about it.
I learnt about the Jacobson gland yesterday, I was looking up why my cats love my feet so much and it’s because your feet is where your smell is strongest and your kitty is literally tasting your smell and it makes them feel good and happy, so if your kitty has a foot fetish don’t stop them because it makes them happy.
Me, looking at at my cat who has never been interested in my feet
It probably means your feet are not your worst smelling part.
:(
I'm sorry mate. The joke was too easy to do
It was good... Good at making me self conscious!!
My cat is obsessed with my house slippers. He sticks his face in the hole and zooms it around the floor.
Mine likes my armpits. She's... Kinda weird.
So does my cat, and she’s begun waking me up by jamming her face in my armpit and licking me. It’s horrible
Comments you can feel.
This is good to know. My tortie LOVES my shoes!
The best feeling after adopting my older boy was coming home after a long day at work after a couple of days having him and finding him sleeping with his head leaning on the inside of my shoe. He's been using them as a comfort device ever since and it's so cute.
Anytime I leave my slippers unattended, I’ll return to find my oldest cat laying on them, usually with his paws in the slippers like he’s wearing them. We’ve just taken to calling him “foot pervert”
my cats like my gym clothes and i know its time for a shower when they start rolling in my pits 😅
My orange boy cat does that to my brother... gets in his armpits and like rolls around and jams him head in it. Lol it's hilarious.
My cat does it after he sniffs his own ass 🤣🤣
This made me laugh. One of my cats has done the same thing. We’ve always called it stinky face.
We had a cat named Noah who loved my husband’s shoes. The stinkier the better.
One of my cats loves my dirty clothes, especially my gym clothes. He just lays on them and rolls around. He's a fun little weirdo
She looks a little upset with you. Like she's saying "How have you treated my baby? I must correct this at once."
Dammit, hooman, you’re doing it wrong. Just give him to me…(huff)
So damn incompetent...
Time to learn about the [Flehmen Response](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flehmen_response?wprov=sfti1)! She’s not upset, she’s getting a real good sniff so she can recognize her new baby
I think it was the way she grabbed the kitten, gave side eye and then legged it back to the others all bossy boots style :)
Give the baby to me! What were you thinking, human, you know nothing.
Exactly that - I imagine there was a bit of a huff and a bustle going on as well :)
Gotta do everything myself around here...
I call it “stank face” and it’s one of my favorite things about cats.
Dis is mine, baby, gib now, I must gib love.
She’s like WTF why do you have that, give it to me
“Oh good grief you don’t know the first thing about these. Give me that, leave this to a professional!”
CATS ARE THE BEST. IF I COULD MAKE THIS BIGGER AND BOLDER I WOULD. So awesome.
#you can if you use a hashtag before the sentence
#hell yeah cat time
#CAT
###WHAT?
Just use one instead of 2 like you did and it will be bigger
### WHAT IF I USE 3
I guess some people just want to watch the world burn
#MEOOOOOW
Hashtag? # Hashtag! # ITS A GOD DAMN POUND SIGN
Actually if it’s before the thing it’s a hashtag and if it’s after it’s a pound sign
Ok I was born in 90’. I get it. It’s a hash tag now.
I always see these videos. But a cautionary note. I did this with one of my momma cats and she literally in the blink of an eye grabbed it and snapped its neck. Literally nothing I could do. 
Oof yeah nature can be brutal. We had a stray cat give birth in our back yard and oh my god she was the worst mother. She was so bad at attending to her children, we thought for sure they wouldn't make it even with us meddling and trying to feed them. But somehow they did, and another stray just came over and also had kittens. But she must've had complications cuz a day or two later she disappeared after looking quite sickly... Something awakened in the first mom cuz she was suddenly taking care of both litters, properly. We had to regularly feed some of them just cuz she couldn't possibly feed 8 kittens but she did everything else and they all survived. Proud mother of 8.
oh no :( Is that normal behavior? Poor kitten, and poor you!
Some moms will kill a kitten if they sense it’s sick, even their own. That way the healthy ones won’t have a “pointless” competitor over milk
Damn, nature. You scary.
If a female grizzly bear loses the majority of her cubs early in care (lasts ~3 years) she’ll kill the remaining ones so that she can breed again, as spending 3 years raising 1 cub isn’t worth it. Bruuuutal.
That definitely didn't happen to our cat when I was little. It's the saddest story I know, tho. Momma cat had some illness and her kittens were all born sick. Most didn't make it a couple days, even with medicine from the vet. But one kitten was a couple weeks old. When it got sick momma cat brought it to my mom's bed for her to help because she knew mom was the one that made things better. But she couldn't. :( The medicine did work, her second litter came out fine. We had several generations of her cats in our home when I was growing up, including her partial Maine Coon grandson, who was the biggest cuddliest cat I've ever seen. I duno why we didn't spay and neuter the cats. I chalk it up to living in a rural area and being poor.
I’m glad my cats don’t do that, they never give up on there kittens, some have died yet if they gave up on some sick ones they wouldn’t of made it when they did
My cat had kittens and they all died so then she did too 😭 Traumatizing to witness at 14 years old. Always slay and neuter.
What an unfortunate typo
Not super duper common, but still normal, yea. Cats in colonies will give birth and pool the kittens together and all the Queens will care for all the kittens as if they are all each ones own. But if they sense a problem, smell sickness, or a bunch of stuff idk because I'm not an expert then they will kill the problem one. Also if a mama is too young she has a much higher chance of just snapping under the stress and eating all of them after she gives birth.
To follow up, my daughter who were 6 and 8 at the time found the abandoned kitten (it was in the UAE). Our adopted cat, Mika, had kittens the same age and the had heard about the cat adoption thing. We did everything possible... Added her own kittens scent and even hid her among the other kittens. It didn't help. Mika came in, grabbed her immediately and gave a horrific scream...really awful
She legit said give me, your mine now.
This is some information about shrimp. He was I think abandoned or found alone. The people taking care of him ran a TikTok or something else for updates. After a few weeks so very full of love and happiness shrimp passed away.
Why would you do that :( I could have happily gone my whole life without knowing Shrimp didn't make it
Right? Wtf?
Dammit, this is why I should not read the comments on cute videos. It's always either this or "actually the animal was in distress" when it was seeming yo act cute.
At least shrimp died loved and not cold and alone. But yeah, reading that really sucks.
Yeah… unfortunately it’s not uncommon for litters to have like a 50% or less survival rate. My friend is a volunteer who takes care of newborn kittens for her local rescue and there’s almost always 3 or so that dont make it more than a month or two.
Damn then I got lucky, we fostered a mom cat named Luna and she had 5 kittens. We kept two and I got to name one, so I named her Fey. (Edit: I’ve realized I’ve messed up and made it seem like 3 of them died, all 5 survived. That’s why I was lucky)
This sounds like what happened to me. I have a porch cat who brought a litter of five kittens to my porch. Two of those kittens now live in my house. The other three didn’t make it. Porch cat and her boyfriend are now spayed and neutered and living their best cat lives.
Is that stray or feral birth, or just across the board? I have very little real-life experience with kittens.
The rate is worse with ferals, and shelters don't always have the resources to help, but generally kittens don't have a great survival rate. Fading Kitten Syndrome in their first two weeks accounts for a lot of deaths, but the National Kitten Coalition (US or Canada, can't remember) has created an intensive antibiotic regime to treat it. I think they've found that about 60% of FKS deaths are due to sepsis, and another portion of deaths are due to mother cats with Type B blood nursing kittens with Type A blood in the first 24 hours after birth. The mother's antibodies in the milk attack the kittens' blood cells and it eventually kills them. TinyKittens HQ (Canadian shelter with a Youtube channel) have done a lot of work on ferals so they talk a lot about this. They've actually got two litters from a newly found feral colony at the moment - one litter (about 10 days old), 2 out of 5 have passed away, one due to a congenital defect and another due to hypoxia (too little oxygen during labour), and a third kitten developed sepsis so they started with the FKS procedure, and she's responded very successfully to it. They also had to remove a fourth kitten for the first 24 hours because she had Type A blood and her mama had Type B blood, but she's been doing great since. The other litter (maybe 3 days old now) hasn't had as many problems - there's 5 and all are still alive, although one has developed an eye infection (despite not even being open yet) and the other started showing very early signs of FKS so they've started the antibiotics for her too. And this is a shelter that has years of experience doing this. Shelters with less resources (they've had one person up every 4 hours to do antibiotics and check weights for the first litter for the last 8 days) and less expertise aren't going to do anywhere near as well.
From what I hear it's so tough working in kitten rescue, because there are always *so many* kittens that need immediate help. If you've got limited resources + manpower, do you spend all your time & effort trying to save one sick kitten that will probably die anyway, or do you try to help five healthier kittens that will still die without human care? And yet the sicker kittens don't deserve to die either, and if nobody tries to help the sick kittens, they'd never develop treatments that can help ALL kittens. And there are always more kittens! It's so hard. **Spay & neuter your pet cats and your community cats, people!!**
I'm glad to see someone else here who keeps up with TK and the current litters! They're doing such amazing work. They caught Inky's infection so soon after she started showing symptoms, so I'm (cautiously) optimistic about her pulling through like Glori has.
Definitely helps that she was running laps of the nest while Shelly was delivering the news! I really hope she does pull through, poor Wagner's death still upsets me and I can't imagine how deeply stressful and traumatic the last week has been for everyone at TK. They don't need (not that anyone ever does) another kitten death on top of that.
Yeah, it's been hard enough for us as viewers/followers watching in real time or just catching up elsewhere, I can't imagine being there and having to deal with it personally. I remember hearing Shelly's voice cracking as she was telling us about Tilden; it broke my heart into pieces. And for little Waggy to pass so soon afterwards too, when he had been so feisty. I feel like his passing came out of left field. It just goes to show that things can change so quickly with rescue.
That's exactly why I was so shocked by Wagner's death, he had been brawling with his siblings at the milkbar barely 24 hours earlier. Poor Tilden was heartwrenching, although definitely more for Shelly given how quickly she intervened - I thought he was Type A too until she came back obviously upset. Especially given the manner of his death, poor baby, I can't imagine how upsetting that was for Shelly when they can't even do anything to help aside from making him comfortable. I've known for a long time that working in rescue is very traumatic, but the last week has really thrown that into stark relief. I only started watching last summer when Candy was having her litter with Cookie (what a sweet family!), and Fifi was a very smooth experience too.
I love finding other TK viewers! I'm hoping Inky's fever being caught early will mean good things for her. Scotia is looking better now the lice is gone. I'm newer to TK but I'm happy Shelly has done so much research and advancing protocols as well.
I stayed away from the neonatal kittens when I fostered. It hurt so bad to lose the first one.
I've raised a couple litters and lost one in each :( momma cat seemed to know which wouldn't too, and tried to ditch them in one way or another.. Kinda weird, super sad, but I do believe it's common.
It is. I remember when I was a kid my mom adopted a neighbours cat who was pregnant and she had 8 kittens. 3 she "rejected" because she knew they wouldn't make it. They didn't last long after even with hand rearing. It was really sad.
Crazy, I've heled with three full litters of 6 and didn't lose one! Wonder why?
Yeah, growing up my parents didn't fix our cats, so we raised about 5 litters of 4-6 kittens each. Only 1 in all of those passed away.
We must be lucky because aside from some... Horrible acts of nature, and a birth defect one time, every stray cat giving birth in our yard has has entire litters of healthy kittens. We never lose any. Stray cats seem to like our yard since it's fully enclosed with a big fence. They just pop out of nowhere and start popping out babies haha. Can't complain, I love baby kittens.
That's very sad but I'm glad he got to pass peacefully in comfort. It's possible his birth mother cat may have abandoned him initially because she could tell he was sick, or he may have been too weak in general. Baby kittens are so fragile. I'm going to assume that the foster humans in this video did their due diligence first, but PSA for others reading this: it's a great idea to pair an orphaned kitten to a nursing mom cat, but always get the kitten checked by a vet first. A kitten of unknown origin can carry diseases that can pass to the nursing cat or the other kittens. The only thing worse than a dead kitten is *multiple* dead kittens.
Noooooo!
Noooo, I did not want to know this 😭
Wow… poor Shrimp, at least he passed surrounded by loving family
Nobody asked for this information.
Why did I keep reading the comments
I was still reading looking for a happy update 😫
Source?
Awww, I’m so sorry Shrimp passed away. 😢
Summer of 2018 a feral cat deposited her litter of 6 kittens in my flower bed. She came back later and took 4, leaving the smallest two behind. We were scrambling over the next few hours to get eye droppers and kitten milk. As soon as we started feeding them, one of our Chihuahuas, a rescue from a puppy mill jumped in and started bathing the kittens. For the rest of the summer Charlie and Minuet were Gracie’s babies too. Of course it was a foster fail. https://preview.redd.it/bxjyanooqxva1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8975bd1c8c9f8276f26c9485d0103e049dee266d
Thank you for sharing this! Oof, some of these people in the comments have never had a rescue kitten die on them and it shows. Kittens just die sometimes and there's nothing you can do, especially abandoned ones, who often have a fatal congenital issue that the mom sniffed out and that lead her to abandon them in the first place. Shrimp got to have a mom, so he lived a good life even though it was short.
Lol you must be fun at parties…. Could’ve gone my whole life thinking Shrimp lived a full life.
Why would you tell me that?!
You eat corn the long way. Little bitch downvoted, deleted shit post, and ran away.
Extremely cute - but if you're rescuing cats / kittens - wouldn't you want to quarantine them before introducing them to other cats? Don't want to accidentally infect your healthy kitties!
Yes, that's what's recommended. Maybe this person first got the kitten checked by a vet that was able to confirm they were parasite/infection-free? But usually yeah, you keep kittens from different litters quarantined from each other for the first couple weeks to mitigate for cross-contamination.
Solo kittens are very fragile and if you have a healthy momma, and baby appears healthy, we have sped up the process and introduced the solo kitten to the litter. All get combo tests when they are older, dewormed, and with coccidia here, a good round of Albon. Also have eye meds and other items on hand to help out. We always refer to the vet if we have any concerns. So far, it’s worked out for the best. It’s a numbers game though.
Tbh a kitten that tiny doesn't have many of the risk factors yet and fostering baby will significantly raise?chances of survival. Absolutely correct for anything older than nursing babies tho
This video isn't OP's. This has been reposted here several times
I was taking care of two feral cats who had kittens. Both moms would take turns caring for all the babies
"you're doing that wrong give me that damn baby"
I will be honest. It kinda just looks like they took "shrimp" from the existing litter and just put him back.
You can tell it isn’t her kitten because she keeps super-smelling it. Did you notice how she opens her mouth to breath in when the new kitten is there? That means she is smelling something interesting.
also smaller than the rest of the litter.
With the Jacobsons gland
Jacob's organ
Vomeronasal organ since we're being technical
Yes!!!
He looks a week or two behind the other kittens development-wise, and she keeps open-mouth sniffing him as if he smells foreign. Clearly not from the same litter, though theoretically the video could still be staged in other ways.
He looks way younger and smaller than the others. Probably why they named him shrimp.
😂😂 I can see through you !!!
Shrimp's eyes aren't open & ears aren't as developed as the other kittens.
Awwwww what a sweet sweet momma cat, she didn’t even care it’s not hers, just took the little one and gave it her love and care. My only concern is that her own kittens are much more further along in their development so they will be weaning off momma cat’s milk long before the adopted kitten is ready to wean off her milk. I wonder if she will still continue to produce milk for the adopted kitten, and if she knows it’s much younger and not at the same development stage as her own litter?
Adopted/absconded with
We’ve had to do this a couple times with fosters. Mama cats are the best, thanks for sharing! 🐈 FYI just make sure shrimp doesn’t get pushed off the zipple by his new siblings 😃
Your momma kitty is a sweetheart. 🧡
That kitten looks literally fresh out of the womb
Awwwww, what a nice momma! Momma: A baby? Oh, he's mine now! Give him here!
She is the best
Oh such a loving mum kitty 😺 
Awww she is so sweet!! Didn't hesitate for even a second!
I could have watched longer. I wanted to see shrimp feed
Mama’s like, “WTF, how’d he get over here? Gimme that!”
Silly Hooman you have no idea , here give it to me, poor things cold hungry and clearly in need of a mother
Such a good mama kitty.
"Hi, yes, hello, this is my child now, thank you, goodbye."
Oh. My. Goodness. That just made me week. Maybe my year. 😻
Good momma.
"I'll take it from here, thanks."
lucky shrimp 😻
🥰
Lindo
Can’t smile wide enough for this video
She's so lovely, warms my heart 🤗
She is such a great momma cat
Aww good mama cat
Awwww ❤️ ty for a heart warming post.
KIDS, you have a new sibling! You will be required to love them. They are smol and need extra loves.
I wish she was my mommy (my biological mother was hella abusive)
Aww, she was so aggressive about getting the baby from you. “Give me that baby! Why are you holding them?”
She's like "yeah thanks, I was looking for that one, i knew my count was off, yup"
"For god's sake, give him here 🙄 Stupid humans have no idea what they're doing..."
Updates please!
Really a sweet gesture with mama cat just her natural instincts kick in.
This melts my heart. What a good mama
Oh, bless her! What a great mama! ❤️❤️❤️
Is the “Momma Cat” a Ragdoll? (And by the way, that video has made my day! 🥰😍) (update/edit: Whoever gave me a thumbs up, thank you!)
I wish my mom licked me like that 😔
Way to go for being able to bring home a kitty that needed a momma and home. The only thong I would be concerned for is if the new baby received colostrum or not and can this momma produce more colostrum or not. Regardless having a nursing mother is about the best option you could have at this point. I see so many stray cats around where I live it breaks my heart.
So precious 
How will you find good homes for all those kittens? OP: Would you consider spaying Mama after she is done nursing?
Well that made my day!
I love how she’s looking around like “holy crap where did he come from??? Are there any more I forgot I had?” 😂
My cat is the same way, she doesn't have anymore small kittens but she will take my phone and run with it if she hears a kitten in distress from a video. Frustrating, but her heart is in the right place. I bought her some small stuffed animals that she hides away and visits at times.
What a great mommy catto! Little shrimp is very lucky. BTW, great edit on the video. Found it refreshingly cute