Pregnancy, Birth, and Kittens

Q.: My cat has had kittens, five of them. They were born in the bottom of a closet, and now she has started moving them around after a week. Why is she doing that?

A.: This is quite normal. It's an ancient instinct from the time the cat was a wild animal. A while after the birth it becomes obvious from the smell that there's a litter lying here. That's of course not so good in the wild, because then all kinds of predators are able to find them and eat them.
That's why their mother will move them after a week or so. I hope she hasn't found a too inconvenient place for them, otherwise you must try to convince her to pick another place. A cardboard box that may be covered up in order to offer a bit of "privacy" for the mother and her kittens will be fine. Let them lie on something soft that you can change and wash when it gets too dirty, then maybe it won't smell so much another time that she'll want to move them once more.
One must remember that the cat's smelling sense is much better than ours, so it doesn't take so much to make a cat mother think the den smells too much.

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