The Art of Personal Cleanliness

In a similar way, mothers teach their kittens to acquire cleaning habits, that at first they do themselves, showing them how to use the tray in which she deposits her faces and how cover them.

This operation is also part of the instinct for survival, due that this way they avoid washing and cleaning and don't like to have any relation with other animals or people from the same house.

The mother and her kittens
The great maternal instinct that the cat shows on the first weeks of life of her litter establishes a form bond between mother and sons that, in case of staying together, is each time better.

Even at an adult stage, the mother keeps on bringing bits of food, she permits him participate on her hunting parties and gives repeatedly early motherly behavior samples.

Anyway, the normal separation from the kittens, at the tenth or twelfth week, doesn't seem to provoke any suffering to them.

This is so much so, that later on if somehow they get together with their grown up kittens, they might not recognize each other and they might even begin to fight.

It seems that the original bond of union is based on the odor of the litter, in such way that when taking the kittens to another place, they get used to other smells that break this bond.