2 Dead California Mountain Lion Kittens Test Positive For Rat Poison

The kittens were part of a litter of four who were found under a picnic table last November in a southern California office park.

Two mountain lion kittens who died after they were found at a southern California office park tested positive for rat poison, the National Park Service reported.

They were part of a litter of four who were orphaned or abandoned and discovered under a picnic table last November in the Thousand Oaks complex. All females, the wild felines were just 6 weeks old.

According to necropsy results reported Wednesday by the Park Service, Cubs P-100 and P-102 were found to have three types of rat poison in their systems. They were also emaciated and suffered from inflammation of their brains and feline parvovirus. Parvo is highly contagious and can cause feline panleukopenia and death, particularly in young kittens.

Cubs P-100 and P-102 died a short time after they were found. P-101 and P-103 survived and are now living in the Orange County Zoo.

Although researchers have been studying mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area since 2002, the kittens provided them with unique information.

“This is the first time a mountain lion in the park’s 20-year study has been affected by parvo, and these two kittens are the youngest mountain lions in the study to have anticoagulant rodenticides in their system,” biologist Jeff Sikich, who’s in charge of fieldwork for the study, said in a statement.

Officials told The Los Angeles Times that the kittens “died of abandonment; a major cause of their emaciated condition postmortem was the lack of care from their mother.”

An office worker discovered the litter and contacted wildlife officials. He was told to leave the kittens be in the hope that they would return to the open space and reunite with their mother.

The kittens were eventually tagged, collared and numbered P-100 through P-103 by the Park Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. They were rescued a few days later when biologists noticed that one of the kittens was in poor health. P-100 and P-102 were taken to a veterinary hospital and died overnight.

“We did everything we could to reunite these kittens with their mother, but I’m afraid she was already dead or abandoned them,” Sikich said last year.

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