I’ve heard of mother animals killing their babies or just abandoning them, but never have I heard of them killing their mate. Holy shit.
It was a really strange story honestly. It was my friend/neighbor that had the kittens. She told me about it and so of course I wanted to see them. They were super little at the time, Oregato fit in the palm of my hand.
The father cat was a super sweet tom cat, very vocal and purring like a loud engine. The mother cat seemed sweet, but my friend told me that this was her third litter. The first litter she ate. The second litter she brought out to the woods and abandoned them. And now the third. We kept a close eye on the kittens, taming them and making sure they were ok. Oreo was the runt, the tamest of the bunch, and loved to come see us. The other two were a bit wilder.
Anyway, one morning my friend called and said that she had heard fighting the night before, and that it sounded like cats. We panicked and rushed to find the kittens to see if they were alright. They’d been moved to a different location that was easier to access a while back. Right away when we got there, Oreo came to me, perfectly fine and meowing at me to hold him. The other two kittens weren’t there.
We kept looking and calling, and eventually we heard meows coming from the tall grass. We looked and finally found Oreo’s sister. She was slowly walking towards us, and the moment I picked her up she went limp in my arms. She had a deep wound in her neck/throat. We weren’t sure she would make it. And we still could find the brother, the mother, or the father.
In the backyard, we eventually found the father in the bushes, deep gashes across his stomach. He was already gone. It could have been coyotes, but the markings were weird, and he hadn’t been (sorry) eaten.
Then the mother cat showed up, completely fine. We showed her the wounded kitten, and if memory serves right, she tried to attack her before we separated them.
Oreo was the only one left unharmed, and I decided I couldn’t leave him there any longer. He was my favorite, and I was already attached. I didn’t want something to happen to him. So I took him home. He was still so young, but I didn’t trust the mother anymore.
A week later my friend found the brother kitten down the road at an abandoned house. Already deceased with similar gashes and wounds like the father cat. We assumed that the mother led him there, killed him, and left him.
The mother cat was rehomed to a different family who needed a mouser cat (and who unfortunately had bad luck with cats. I had given him a few kittens in the past that had all died. So in a way, we were trying to get back at the mother). I didn’t want her to die by any means, but when I heard she bolted the moment he let her out and didn’t come back, I wasn’t upset at all. He did see her on the trail cam a week later, but was never seen again.
The sister did end up living, but she had a permanent limp if I remember right, and couldn’t heal properly from the neck wound. She lived several months (I think around 6 months) and then unfortunately got killed by coyotes.
So my boy was the only one left of this crazy family, and I never regretted taking him from that place.
