Answer: Usually, the first prey catching movement is made at about three week’s old. This is a tentative forward grope with one paw, which is the way and adult cat will investigate any new small object. The instinctive movements of hunting; i.e. lying in wait, chasing, stalking and pouncing, appear soon afterwards, but at first they are performed clumsily. The are practiced in playing with litter mates, but the movements, are the linked in a random fashion, along with other play movements, and not still later do they become arranged in the correct sequence for hunting.
Undoubtedly, the ability to hunt is learned chiefly from observing and interacting with the mother cat. The presence of kittens intensified the mother’s hunting instinct, and dead prey animals are brought to the litter when the kittens are abut four weeks’ old and eaten in front of them by the mother with the growling noises. At first this behavior frightens the kittens, but later the are attracted to it. At about six weeks of age the mother brings the first live prey to the kittens, by which time their hunting movements have been perfected apart from the vital killing bit which requires special learning.
The stimulus for a kitten to kill appears to be elicited by the presence of live prey, and also by the rivalry between itself and its mother or litter mates to be first to catch the prey. The peak time to learn to kill is at nine to ten weeks of age. If the mother cat doesn’t bring live prey to the kittens in the critical period between six and twenty weeks’ old, the either do not learn to kill, or only learn to do so very laboriously in later life. Cats, unlike many other animals, learn a lot by watching the behavior of other animals that are learning task and in the wild kittens accompany their mother on hunting expeditions both before and after weaning. Only with the onset of puberty does the group disperse to lead isolated lives.
