This article isn’t aimed toward those who rescue a pregnant cat. It’s for those who refuse to have their cats spayed or neutered, especially those who want their female cat to experience the miracle of kittens being born. Many cat owners think it necessary to allow their cat to have one litter before being spayed just so the cat can experience being a mother.
Here’s what REALLY happens when you refuse to spay your cat. A female cat reaches sexual maturity anywhere from around five months to one year and can become pregnant. An unneutered male cat can pick up the scent of a female in “heat” or estrus cycle from up to a mile away.
Once every unneutered male within that radius picks up the scent, the male cats head off to find the female, where she is repeatedly chased then raped by every tomcat who can catch her and pin her down. Repeatedly. For DAYS!
Don’t count yourself lucky if you only have an unneutered male cat. Tomcats are known for getting into vicious fights with competing males, making them susceptible to injuries as well as FIV/FeLV.
Female cats are seasonally polyestrous, meaning they go into heat every two to three weeks, usually between mid-January through August. After delivering a litter of kittens a female will go back into heat within weeks. It’s not unheard of for a female cat to be nursing one litter when she becomes pregnant with another.
This “miracle of birth” later leads to the litters (and sometimes the mama cat) being dumped at the shelter when the family decides the cats/kittens aren’t so cute anymore. These cats are called “owner surrenders” and aren’t subject to state hold time as strays are. The shelter already knows who the owner is, meaning they can kill the family at any time.
Many of these cats and kittens are euthanized for space or the kittens get sick in the shelter environment and die on their own or are euthanized. So please consider the problems you’re creating for everyone involved when you’re considering the decision not to spay or neuter your cat.
Communities usually have low-cost spay/neuter clinics. You may have to ask around to locate one near you but it’s well worth it. Your cat will have a healthier life and you can thank yourself for being part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
Anything I missed? Please leave it in the comment section. This is an excellent article if you’d like more information about what happens during estrus.
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Source for idea: petplace.com
All feral cats are the product of the careless human. Cat domestication was not meant to be like this. Cat domestication is arguably a failure because half the 500 million cats on the planet are feral. And the numbers drown out all the wild cats combined.
BRAVO ELISA & MICHAEL! Something being natural doesn’t mean it’s necessary. It also doesn’t make it any less violent & painful, nor heavily health-taxing & resource consuming for the mom. In case the morons in the comments hadn’t heard, the feral cat overpopulation crisis is now in the hundreds of millions. Tht is not just thanks to cat breeding behavior being too effective, but also thanks to HUMANS & human behavior. It is on us to end the unfathomable misery tht results from overpopulation. And WE CAN so why shouldn’t we? Yes, natural cat breeding behavior is horrendously violent, painful, & in every way certainly resembles what humans would call rape. Humans have been instrumental in permanently altering the evolutionary story of not just dogs, cats, & animals kept for consumption, but literally every species on this planet. Just b/c something is natural doesn’t make it a good thing. Why shouldn’t we free female cats from the misery tht is “natural feline breeding behavior?” They’ll live longer, safer, healthier, happier lives; millions less will suffer the horrific deaths tht are common for feral/stray cats & kittens; & the literal billions of individual animals from the many species they prey upon, some even endangered, will survive!
Why anyone is getting hung up on semantics is fucking beyond me. Your pseudo-arguments are dumb & pointless. Shut up. Like seriously just please shut up. . .
Thanks for the encouragement. My family thinks I’m crazy because of the expensive way it cost. Since the pandemic a crew comes around once a month and you have to know some to get an opportunity to have just one cat fix. Most of the vets have sold put due to the pandemic so I go 200 miles one way to a big city to get these cats taken care of two at a time and it coat a grand for the two plus motels. Check Ian 68 and my husband is81 and we figure we need to give back. After my last cat past for ten years I shut my doors. My husband brought in a Tom cat we call timeshare and this venture continues. We only wish we had brought a larger home but I have a good size front price to any cat who needs food or shelter it feels good. And I’m going to keep it going with a trust once we both are gone.
Great work and well done. I have a lot of admiration for people like you. You go about your work quietly almost invisibly sometimes but you do good work and you improve the lives of these poor cats. And sometimes you work against the odds because neighbours don’t like to see it. This makes it even harder. People who object to the kind of work you do are ignorant. You are doing good work.