Jealous Cats

Has anyone else had this issue. Pepper has apparently become jealous of her own kittens. It has gotten to the point where she is hissing at them and they walking away. We love Pepper a great deal, she is after all the one who was first with us. But apparently right now she doesn't like it one bit when we should her kittens any attention. Last weekend she didn't show up at all on Saturday and didn't come back to Sunday afternoon. When she did show up she didn't seem to want to be around her own kittens.

Yesterday she got really mad a one of her kittens Squiggy because she was trying to take attention away from Pepper again, and Pepper didn't like it. We don't know what to do, we love Pepper, and we didn't ask her to have these kittens, but now that they are here we can't ignore them. Anyway, there is my dilemma I got a mother cat who is jealous of her own offspring and doesn't want to be around them.