Why Some Kittens Are Born Dead

Video Transcript

"Let's talk about why some kittens are born dead. There are lots of reasons that this can happen. The first thing to think about is if your cat is pregnant it is a good idea to get your veterinary clinic to check your cat over and the reason is because it's good to know how that queen mother is doing. Is she dehydrated, is she malnourished. Kitten death is very commonly associated with poor nutrition or problems with the mother. There obviously can be lots of things going wrong like genetic factors, genetic deformities, things like that. Certain viral infections like feline leukemia that the queen mother could have could cause kitten death. Other infections, infections of the uterus let's say and like I said problems with the mother very commonly associated with that. Now also, a kitten that is dead, that is born dead could have been dead inside the queen mother. And that's another reason it's good for your veterinary clinic to check your cat over to make sure there's nothing like that going on. A dead kitten inside a pregnant female can affect the rest of the kittens. One possibility is that this dead kitten could not be delivered and any alive kittens behind that dead kitten can not be delivered either and so those kittens could die. So always check with your veterinary clinic and make sure the queen mother is healthy on a good plan of nutrition and that there are no abnormalities to begin with."