This is not an official world record so it’ll be anecdotal. With both formal and informal records, you’re bound to get some inaccuracies because people don’t always report what they believe is a record. It is a bit hit and miss. But remarkably Wikipedia state, on their oldest domestic cat listing, that Kitty in the UK (born June 1957) gave birth at the age of 30 to a litter of 2 kittens.
Dr Desmond Morris – who I rely on quite a lot – says in his book Catlore that ‘female cats have been known to give birth when twelve years old’. On my calculation and using a non-linear method of conversion from cat years to human years this would be the equivalent of a woman giving birth at the age of 69.
RELATED: Infographic cat age calculator
Morris goes on to say that the oldest woman to give birth was fifty-seven as at the date of publication of his book 1987. That is now out of date as Wikipedia tells us the following: “Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara is the oldest verified mother; she was aged 66 years 358 days when she gave birth to twins; she was 130 days older than Adriana Iliescu, who gave birth in 2005 to a baby girl.” In fact, there is a story online as at 2023 of a 70-year-old woman giving birth (see image above).
On this comparison, except for the extraordinary age of Kitty mentioned in the first paragraph, there is a similarity between the oldest cat and oldest human to give birth.
Fertility
Morris says that the typical female person experiences menopause at 51-years-of-age. On my conversion table that makes a cat of 5-years-of-age. Morris uses a more outdated method of conversion of multiplying cat age by 7 to get human age. On this method 51 years would be the equivalent of 7 feline years which is well short of the 12 years at which domestic cats can can normally give birth.
For cats, there is a gradual decline in the size of the litter between the ages of 8-12 indicating a slowing of the reproductive apparatus of breeding female cats. Tom-cats have been known to produce offspring at the age of 16.
The references are to moggy felines. Pedigree cats live shorter lives and enjoy a lower level of health in general (there are exceptions of course) and therefore the dates will be shortened.
