When Should A Kitten Leave Its Mother

The earliest a kitten can leave its mother.

When should a kitten leave its mother. So when can kittens leave their mothers. Mama cat knows best kittens can acquire a lot of negative behaviors because of this early separation as well as health deficiencies. The best time to separate a kitten from their mother and siblings is when they are 12 13 weeks old. That clever lady mother nature has designed cat mommies to encourage her kittens to leave the nest so that she can get busy with the next lot.

Even though kittens are relatively independent by 8 10 weeks and can survive without their mother. The short answer is that kittens should stay with the mother cat until they are 12 16 weeks old. Expect to separate the kittens from their mother when they are around 12 weeks old. We have collected all the information you need to know about kittens between the time of their birth to the time when they are considered ready to leave their mother for your perusal.

While you may want your kitten to stay as long as is needed with the mother the conditions on ground may leave you with no option. However a kitten is typically ready to leave his mother at about 8 to 12 weeks of age. Twelve to thirteen weeks of age is the time that is almost universally considered to be the optimum earliest time to remove kittens from their queen and by this age the kittens should be ready to go out into the world and begin the next stage of their learning development. By the way don t worry about mommy being upset when her babies leave.

In fact according to the cat fanciers association one of the ways to tell if a breeder is reputableis that he or she will never sell a kitten younger than 12 weeks old. A kitten should stay with his mother until a minimum of 10 weeks but preferably 12 weeks. Despite this however you should ensure that the earliest your kitten leaves its mother is 4 weeks old. This is because they will need to stay with their mother to feed on her nutritious milk as well as stay with their siblings to learn valuable social skills.

This does not mean that this is the time that the kittens can go home though. The perfect age seems to be between eight and twelve weeks. Mother cats will typically start to wean their kittens off their milk at one month of age. The next month of life is still full of essentials for a growing kitten even if it isn t consuming its mother s milk all of the time.

Timeline for weaning kittens. A mother cat wean her babies naturally when kittens are about 2 3 months old by starting to reject her kittens. So what happens when you separate the kittens too early. While most kittens are weaned by 8 10 weeks most experts recommend leaving kittens with their littermates until 12 13 weeks so they can be properly socialized.