These were left to starve by the mother.
We could only speculate on what exactly went wrong. What we do know is that they were very close to a construction site. It seems the mother visited less and less and eventually lost her milk.
This one was a screamer, though. Allerted the whole neighbourhood. As I visited them daily, they saw me more and more as the actual mom, which was a situation I had never had when feeding strays. Something was very wrong.
There was no resistance when we took them. She didn't search. They didn't call. Sick and malnourished, the three survived and have homes now. Two didn't make it. I still don't know if they would have had, had we taken them earlier, or if more would have died, as every day counts at that age.
This isn't a single tragedy. There are way too many strays on the streets.
Even in Austria, cats like these "belong" to certain farmers that don't feed or feed too little. They refuse to get the females fixed. There are too many cats, too little space and too little food. If they don't starve, the road gets them. It's the same every damn year. The few that make it prolong the cycle of misery. I am not sure which fate is worse. The construction was just a trigger.