Answer: A mother cat carrier her young during the first weeks of life (principally the first three weeks) after picking them up by the scruff of the neck with her teeth. At this early age they are incapable of walking any distance unaided. The mother uses this method to retrieve kittens that have fallen out of the ‘nest’ (Incidentally, she is attracted to such ‘lost’ kittens not by the sight of them, but by their cries.)
If the site of the ‘nest’ is changed, the mother will carry each kitten in turn from the old nest to the new in this way and, because cats cannot count, she will also return to the old nest after all the kittens have been moved to search for any that have been ‘forgotten’. (Wild cats commonly change their quarters regularly to make if difficult for predators to find them.) Later, the mother will carry the kittens to somewhere outside the nest to begin toilet training.
After these first few weeks of the life, packing up a cat solely by its scruff put an undue strain on the neck muscles. It is better then to pickup a kitten in a similar way to an adult cat, i.e. to take the weight of the kitten on the upturned palm of one hand and to use the fingers of the other to hold the scruff and limit the amount of wriggling.
Kittens benefit from plenty of handling from an early age, certainly from around weaning (six to eight week's old) which encourages socialization with humans. However, very young children (babies and toddlers) should not be allowed alone with kittens and cats as they tend to make raped grabbing movements. Older children should be in a sitting position before being allowed to handle a kitten. As the kitten being to wriggle or protrude its, claws, children will invariably let go and drop it.
