This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 5:05 am and is filed under Cats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
read comments (0)
If your female cat isn’t spayed, is an outdoors cat, and was allowed outside whilst in heat then there’s a possibility that pregnancy is on the cards. Gestation for a cat is relatively short at 9 weeks, so you will soon be seeing changes in your queen’s behaviour if pregnancy has occurred – although many times, unsuspecting cat owners have missed the signs completely, dismissing the pregnancy symptoms as just a temporary quirk in their cat’s personality (goodness knows they have plenty!).
If there was opportunity for your cat to get pregnant, then there are signs you can look for. The first of these is that her heat cycle doesn’t appear. This means that you know when it’s due, so if you have a queen it’s worth keeping a note of this when it happens so that you can check back when in doubt. Another physical sign is that her nipples will enlarge and change colour, becoming pinker. She’ll be hungrier than usual, but could also be prone to vomiting.
If you’ve gotten to the stage where your cat has a nicely growing round belly, there’s a strong possibility that this isn’t because of the extra food that she’s been eating for the last few weeks, but rather that she’s 5 weeks pregnant – gestation is only 9 weeks remember – and so she’s preparing herself now to become a mother.
As the birth draws closer many pregnant queens begin “nesting”. They look for a suitable place to bring their babies into the world. Now would be a good time to start restricting her outdoor life if you haven’t already done so – you want to be sure that when her time comes, those kittens are born in the house, not somewhere else in your neighbourhood!
If you are at all concerned that your cat could be pregnant, take her to your veterinary. If she’s not, you’ve got nothing to worry about but might want to consider having her spayed so that you don’t have another false alarm next heat cycle. If she is, the vet will be able to advise you on any additional vitamins etc that you can give her to help her prepare for both the birth and feeding the kittens when they are born.
This post was written by Steven Knifton. Steven is also one of the primary writer for Passing Time and has written many different press releases concerning mole removal UK .
- Birth Preparation
- Two Kittens – Twice the Fun!
- Does Your Cat Have Diabetes?
- Cat Myths
- Big Dog, Little Dog – Assessing the Situation