kittens found in garden, what to do?

[MysweetAudrina]

My dh found a young female cat with 2 kittens in our open shed on Saturday. They were up high in a box. The mothers is not tame and she scampered. I didn't pick up the kittens but they appeared to be quite young. My problem is that we have a Tom cat and I am worried that he might harm the kittens. We have been leaving food for the mother and we have observed her eating it from a distance. She is very skittish. My cat is aware they are there and he spent some time sitting in the shed yesterday but not really bothering them or looking to bothered by their presence.

I am just wondering what the best thing to do is. I don't want to remove the kittens from the mother as they are too young and she probably has the best chance of protecting them. I would hate however if my cat hurt or killed the kittens.

Any advice please?

Do you have a spare room you could move them all into if you are able to catch mum cat?

I don't know anything about the DSPCA but if they are anything like the RSPCA then they won't be able to help with this sort of thing. It does though sound as though mum cat is timid, rather than feral, which bodes well.

www.catsaid.ie/contact-us/

These guys do TNR on feral cats, may be worth getting in contact :)

We got our ex feral kittens from a small cat rescue charity. Their human foster mother told me she used to volunteer with the RSPCA, but she gave up as they put down 46% (iirc) of the cats, that came to them. She said if anything ever happened to us, like we got divorced, the cat rescue charity would take our cats back to rehome - they never put cats down!

After hearing that, I would never give cats over to the RSPCA!

The Kitten Lady on Youtube is brilliant.

I was just thinking, you probably want to secure mum and kits fairly soon because otherwise she'll go and get pregnant again (obviously you can't get her spayed til they're weaned!) and you want to be handling them loads after the 3 week mark so they're well habituated to people, but this might upset mum so she just moves them. If she moves them somewhere unknown and she's still unspayed that's the worst of all worlds. Do you have a room in the house that you could turn over to the cat room for a few weeks, one that's quieter than the main areas so she won't feel so stressed, but she can't run away, and you can go in to handle the kittens regularly when they're old enough?

DS10 managed to take a few sneaky pictures last night. Kittens have their eyes open but they are not really moving around much. They seem to be feeding from Mum or lying snuggled up together. If we can build up the trust of the mum over the next few days I will try and get them into the spare room away from our cat and dog. Our cat is very originally named tiger (tabby) and the kids want to call the kittens puma and jaguar as they are black (but one does seem to have dark stripes forming). DD11 arrived home from school yesterday with a cardboard box that had been carefully decorated and divided into rooms with various play things like a cardboard scratching post set out in it. The child in the class that made this for the cats is the "boldest" child in the class but just goes to show that kids that cause trouble can have the kindest hearts underneath.

Also just got a whatsapp message from DD who said mum let her kiss her and pet her for 5 mins and she included a photo so it's looking good. I did put a post up on our local FB page to see if anyone was missing a young female cat of her description but no replies so far.

Now we're talking, the pics!
Look at the tiny thing 😍

Shadow. You should call her shadow.

DD11 arrived home from school yesterday with a cardboard box that had been carefully decorated and divided into rooms with various play things like a cardboard scratching post set out in it. The child in the class that made this for the cats is the "boldest" child in the class but just goes to show that kids that cause trouble can have the kindest hearts underneath.

I don't know if I'm just having a bad day but this made me cry. How lovely 😭

Awwww... little black kittens!

Oh look at the little things

I want kittens in my shed now

Mummy cat is lovely!

Hi, just to update Mum let dd bring her into the house on Friday and I followed with the kittens in the box. We moved them into the office and set up a litter tray and food etc... We have been taking the box into the living room for a couple of hours a day to let them get used to us. Mum is still very protective over her babies and if we lift one out she comes out and takes him by the scruff and jumps back into her box. She is now purring and eating well and using the litter tray. We have named her Luna and the kittens are Lynx and Cleo. Cleo is fatter and doesn't like to be away from the mother. Lynx seems more independent and is trying to walk.

I want to find kittens.....

Beautiful

Oh how lovely 😻

So the mum is not feral at all, just nervous? Wonder where the poor thing came from?

So glad you got them in the house, well done OP 👏🏻

Oh look at that little baby 😍

DD11 arrived home from school yesterday with a cardboard box that had been carefully decorated and divided into rooms with various play things like a cardboard scratching post set out in it. The child in the class that made this for the cats is the "boldest" child in the class but just goes to show that kids that cause trouble can have the kindest hearts underneath.

@1984isnow I shed a tear or two as well.

Awww, I’m in love 😻

Beautiful cats and beautiful names!🥰🥰🥰

Aww

Sounds like they are about 3 weeks old

They are beautiful. Now why don't I ever find any kittens?

You're fantastic for taking them on OP. Lovely Mummy cat was very lucky she picked your shed
They are all absolutely gorgeous. Hope you and your dd have great fun with the kittens, they bring so much fun when they are that age, and so much love when they are older.