It's generally beneficial to cats as a species when they reject certain babies, though at the expense of the attacked kitten. ... read more
Mother cats don’t “tend” to eat their kittens. It is not a tendency or a typical event. When it happens, it is an unusual occurrence and it usually happens because something stressed the mother and she may not have felt that she could raise all of the litter so she picked the ones that she thought were more likely to survive and concentrated on them. read more
On the other hand, if a kitten is born dead, the mother cat is likely to eat it; it’s the instinct of a predator to disguise her presence, and a dead kitten would give away her location. read more
Yes, some mother cats, also known as queens, will eat one or more of their kittens. There are a number of reasons why the queen might choose to do this, and this behavior is not necessarily a reflection of her inexperience as a mother. read more