Long story short, there are a lot of domestic cats where I live. We've taken in two females with kittens to have them and their kittens fixed after weaning. All was well and good until a first-time mother had five kittens and ran off. She doesn't seem to have much interest in them and she's semi-feral, so we've had a hard time catching her.
I've been switching the five newborns between our two queens; one queen has six one-week-olds, and the other queen has two three-and-a-half-week-olds. The first queen will happily nurse them for as long as needed, but her own six are twice the size of the young ones and may keep them from eating. The second queen doesn't have this problem, but won't sit down and nurse them for a long time (she basically treats them like her other two), and they may not get enough chances to nurse. In the case that we can't catch their real mother, which queen should I put them with? The pound or humane society would just put them down, and I can't get up multiple times in the middle of the night during the last two weeks of school for me, and neither can anyone else in my family.
All advice is appreciated.
