5 week old kittens - need help

[PurpleOne]

Couple of things really.

Starting to wean them which is going just fine here. They love Whiskas kitten loaf and have even caught them eating adult Whiskas and Iams too...and they are partial to chicken, canned tuna and Asda cocktail sausages!

My main concern is mummy cat. Again. After she cannibalised 2 kitties at birth and we lost one of them, the other has no tail.
The past couple of days I' ve noticed her pinning a kitten down and growling and biting its neck. To the point where the kitten is squealing. I removed the kitten but obv as she's still feeding them, they have to be together. I caught mummy cat doing it again this morning. Is this normal?

And another thing. Trying to wean and litter train is very diff at the mo due to mummy cat. She is waiting in the wings and won't even wait for kittens to finish, she will just barge in and hoover their food right up from under their noses....so have removed them all at feeding time.
Mummy cat has her own litter tray too. Got her chateau as she took to pissing all up the wall and over the carpet and missing the tray with a basic one.
So she has a hooded one, the kitties are trying to use her old tray. One has weed in it tonight! YAY!
Trouble is, mummy is digging in their tray too and is totally misisng the spot and my bedroom is absolutely reeking of cat piss in this hot weather. Mummy is not using her own tray and has shat right in it, while a kitten was sat there!

So how do I litter train the kitties without her having her massive arse in there and weeing all over my bedroom floor? They were all wormed and deflead last week too, after I saw mummy dragging her shitty arse all over my new 2nd hand leather sofa...

Oh, I don't know. I love the kitties dearly, they are so cute, but am sick and tired of all this now. Every day they up my curtains and wrecking my coat and shoes.

Oh bloody hell, she's in there scratching again FFS

She's missed the tray and has shat right on my carpet.. very choice at this time of night.
How do I do this?

And I've just found a nicely coiled kitten poo right in my bloody slipper!!!!

AAAAARGH

This is just not funny anymore. My house fucking stinks.

can you not keep them all together in a bathroom so that any accidents are on a hard floor?

It took my kittens a while to work out how to use their tray properly but shutting them in the bathroom helped

got a carpeted bathroom and the only uncarpeted room in the house is a tiny kitchen without a door! i wouldn't have suggested my bathroom anyways as the bath panel isn't flush with the floor and kitties could get under there. i know there is a hole in the floorboards as had a leak last year and had to rip it all out to fix it.

and it's a rented place.

went out today for a few hours and when i got home, i found a pile of poo and 3 piles of sick in my bedroom. theres is kitten poo on my skirting board and mummy cat piss up my bedroom wall.

and there is flies everywhere.

i'm just hoping that those puppy training pads i bought earlier, surround the tray enough for mummy to wee on that instead....just depends on where she puts her bum me thinks.

am just at a loss right now.

I would suggest you get some kitten foster milk (cimicat or lactol - pet shops/vet sell it)and try and encourage them to drink this from a bowl/saucer. If they are managaing to eat a reasonable amount and lap this milk then I would suggest that you consider separating them from the mother given the situation you have - it is not an ideal age to be doing so, but if she is really getting properly grumpy with them as it sounds you may not have a choice. They shouldn't really be going onto new homes at this stage though, not until they are at least 8-9 weeks old. You may also find you are able to keep them apart some of the time and she may feed them when supervised so you have less worries about the food intake/litter tray issues etc, but there is no guarantee if she starts to spend more time apart from them that they will be allowed to feed on her still - that could be a bit hit and miss. A last resort if things are not great is to bottle feed the foster milk to them, but this is hard work and they are getting to an age where hopefully they can start to do a bit more for themselves. Beware in the hot weather they do not dehydrate though - you can water food down to a soup for them to lap up too of course and this will help with fluid intake.
Hopefully once they are able to be apart life will return to a more normal state for you all - then as soon as kittens are not feeding from her get her speyed - she will be in season pretty much immediately and you do not want to be going through all this again! Worth calling the vets and booking her in for the day after the kittens go to new homes in my opinion.

todays not been so bad. have kept them separated most of the day.
fed kitties one main solid meal and all of them have pooed in the dirt box.

went to pet shop and asked about lactol and is too expensive for me (am on benefits) so separation is the way to go.
kittens def aren't ready to be rehomed yet i know but have homes for them to go to.
as soon as mummy stops feeding, she will be spayed. had an appt for her before she got pg and she came into heat and vet wouldn't do the op...and the kids left the window open.
however, i found a black bug which jumped onto my leg earlier and think we have fleas.

are they old enough for a flew treatment? and is mummy cat safe to have a flea collar on while nursing?

No - don't use flea collars - not all that effective and many are not safe around kittens either. Source yourself some Frontline to use - best bought online in terms of ££. Will be more expensive than a collar, but seriously if you have an infestation starting now a collar will be a waste of money. Ideally you really need to consider spraying the house too - the environmental population will continue to re-infest her/the kittens even if you use a good flea treatment on her. Frontline is safe to use on nursing mothers.

PurpleOne sounds a lot more knowledgeable than me, but just speaking from my own experience (our cat had kittens nearly 12 weeks ago now) - I think its quite normal for the mother cat to go for the babies. Our mother does exactly as you describe (the neck biting etc) to one of her kittens, and also hissing and swiping at it, but other times they are quite civilised to each other.

If you are already starting to wean the kittens, and they can be away from the mother for a few hours, then she can probably be speyed now. At least, that's what our vet told us, and our cat was done about 3 weeks ago. Then you can let her out again and hopefully your litter tray issues will be over.

Can't really think of another answer to the litter tray problems. Have you got some of that spray to use on the spots she has already peed/pooed on, can't remember what its called but got it from Pets at Home. Its supposed to mask the ammonia smell so she doesn't keep peeing etc back in the same place, which they do tend to do.

Good luck, hope things improve for you. I love our kittens dearly but, like you, sometimes I wonder if all the hassle is worth it. Yours sound much more advanced than ours in terms of using the litter tray - they've finally got it now I think (at 12 weeks) but have had about six weeks of poo and pee everywhere, not nice!