My cat might be pregnant! 😃

[Unreasonabubble]

So happy!!! She is 18 months old. Vet checked her out today because she was due her injections, I reminded him that she was not spayed yet as I wanted her to have a litter and he examined her and believes she is pregnant! That means she cannot have her injections for a few weeks more until after she gives birth. Due approx April 11th - 17th.

My grown up children are more than excited, so am I. I have a list of family members who would like a kitten if possible and I am going to keep one for myself and her.

My children bought me her as a present one Christmas during Covid and she has been the best companion ever. I had previously lost my little dog and other cat due to old age. I will get her spayed after this litter though as the intention was to only let her deliberately have one litter.

I hope all goes well and I am just so excited!

@IsThisAkissingBook

Nothing at all wrong with a moggy cat. But there is wrong in that how many end up unwanted. That tom cat was once a lovely kitten that someone shared photos of and loved. But a tom becomes a ragged cat, with ripped ears and scavenging for food. Unwanted and unloved. Moggy cats are left abandoned and in shelters. No excuse not to neuter, it's free if you receive certain benefits and if you can't afford it then there's your answer.

Nothing at all wrong with a moggy cat. But there is wrong in that how many end up unwanted.

Moggy cats are left abandoned and in shelters.

Pedigrees end up unwanted and in shelters too - especially ex-breeding Queens or pedigrees from kitten farms. So let's not go down the road of pretending that pedigree cats are the answer here.

The main reason more moggies end up in rescue is because there are more moggies than pedigrees overall, and also because farm/feral cats (that tend to be left un-neutered and therefore produce more litters) don't tend to be particular breeds either.

No excuse not to neuter, it's free if you receive certain benefits and if you can't afford it then there's your answer.

Unfortunately many vets still won't neuter until six months which is far too late as females can escape and get pregnant from as young as three/four months.

Not all areas of the country have access to free or discounted neutering either - that's very much a big city "thing". If you live rurally with no access to a big chain vet or rescue, then you're limited to independent vets who charge full price.

Our vet doesn't take part in any cheap neutering scheme and also won't neuter kittens of either sex until they're six months of age.

I am NOT selling the kittens.

OP, if your cat has 5 or 6 kittens this means that you will have to neuter 6 or 7 cats soon.

@Mia184

I am NOT selling the kittens.

OP, if your cat has 5 or 6 kittens this means that you will have to neuter 6 or 7 cats soon.

I think from the OPs threads she's planning to give the kittens to family/friends who have said they'd like one ( and keep one for mumcat)

So not profiting from the sale

My friend’s cat had needed an emergency c-section mid-labour with her litter and it didn’t go well. One of the kittens died, one had to be euthanised and the mother was left with awful complications. I’d never put a pet through it, it also cost my friend thousands - I’m sure the final total was about £10k in vet bills. Good luck to your cat.

I love in the back end of pembrokeshire, every vets around here offer the £5 neuter and microchip. I also had my two other cats both neutered before five months. Like I said my kitten came to me neutered at 14months and is from even more rural than here. It's a case of phoning around. If a person can't afford neutering then they probably can't afford a cat. Even if it means waiting until six months to neuter that's not a big ask to keep inside that amount of time.

I'm not saying pedigree cats are the answer but neither is buying a moggy kitten fathered by a cat that could be carrying anything. Someone who can't afford to neuter a moggy and commit to the little upkeep they need if healthy. Definitely could not afford a pedigree cat.

Mistakes above sorry. Live in pembrokeshire and my current kitten came to me at 14 WEEKS neutered

@IsThisAkissingBook

I love in the back end of pembrokeshire, every vets around here offer the £5 neuter and microchip. I also had my two other cats both neutered before five months. Like I said my kitten came to me neutered at 14months and is from even more rural than here. It's a case of phoning around. If a person can't afford neutering then they probably can't afford a cat. Even if it means waiting until six months to neuter that's not a big ask to keep inside that amount of time. I'm not saying pedigree cats are the answer but neither is buying a moggy kitten fathered by a cat that could be carrying anything. Someone who can't afford to neuter a moggy and commit to the little upkeep they need if healthy. Definitely could not afford a pedigree cat.

All my cats are "moggies fathered by a cat that could be carrying anything" - they cost me £10 each from local farms.

I agree with you that if you can't afford neutering then you can't afford a cat, but honestly, not all vet practises offer cheap chip and neuters - a male cat neuter here costs over £100, females a bit more again. No, not massive amounts, but not exactly cheap either.

I tried phoning around - the nearest vet that offered neutering before six months was a 45 minute car journey away and only open Monday-Friday. Do-able if you have the time and transport, but not so easy if you're limited to public transport and have to work during the week.

Whereas my local vet is five minutes away and I dropped off before work and picked them up on my lunch break.

Yes, ultimately it is the owners responsibility but I do think some vets make it more tricky than it has to be. There's really no reason for practises to make owners wait until six months of age and if you have kids or older cats, it's easy to see how young kittens can get out and end up pregnant.

@fairylightsandwaxmelts I agree. But all I have done was comment that the domestic shorthair (moggy) should either become a breed responsibly bred or die out, in my opinion. Everyone has jumped on me like I'm some sort of cat killing monster. But everyone is always saying about all the cats and kittens in rescues. The op is vilified for breeding her moggy. Everyone on here will only ever have a rescue moggy because pedigree cats are so wrong. I genuinely don't understand what they want to happen. You either want a moggy cat therefore you do actually support the likes of op who let their cat have just one litter. Or you agree that actually everyone should neuter their moggy in an ideal world and the result of that would be the domestic shorthair dies out OR becomes part of a controlled breeding programme.

What’s the thread for? Are you looking for praise to contributing to the overbreeding of cats and forcing your cat to endure being shagged by some random Tom cat, impregnated and maybe survive birth and then have her offspring breeding too? How embarrassing for you.

You either want a moggy cat therefore you do actually support the likes of op who let their cat have just one litter. Or you agree that actually everyone should neuter their moggy in an ideal world and the result of that would be the domestic shorthair dies out OR becomes part of a controlled breeding programme.

I do think everyone should neuter their cats, but even if every single pet owner neutered their cats, moggies would still exist. They don't need to become part of a controlled breeding programme to prevent them from dying out.

We have way too many feral and farm cats in this country to ever stop the existence of moggie kittens, so there is never a reason for someone to purposefully breed from their pet. We're really never going to be in position where rescues run out of kittens.

A quick google tells me there are nearly a million feral cats in this country. Say half of those are female who are capable of having five litters per year - that's roughly 25 kittens per female, per year. That's a LOT of kittens to find homes for without people breeding their pets.

Anyway I'm checking out of this thread. Good luck op, all the moggy loving middle class will be glad when your one litter multiplies and end up rescues.

You either want a moggy cat therefore you do actually support the likes of op who let their cat have just one litter.

That logic doesn't follow at all. Well, not if you live in the real world it doesn't. There is such a huge oversupply of kittens being born that, realistically, we are never going to get to a stage where we 'need' cats to have kittens to avoid them dying out. Never.

Even if the message gets through to everyone in the UK, which depressingly shows absolutely no sign of happening, then the overpopulation in the rest of the world is mind blowing. Italy, Greece, Turkey, Tunisia to name but a handful. We could always bring a few over.

But for that to be 'necessary' to meet demand in the UK has to be at least a hundred years away as things are still so bad here. In London, where I do cat rescue, there isn't a street I drive down where I don't know of a stray cat colony we have dealt with. All these colonies started as one female that wasn't neutered and can often total around 40 or so by the time we are called in. And the only reason the number isn't ten times that is because so many kittens get eaten by foxes. All these colonies are producing yet more kittens, until they have all been trapped and neutered, and these are yet more kittens that rescues need to find homes for. And every year there are more colonies. Nothing changes. The message doesn't get through. So no, we absolutely do not need someone like the OP allowing their cat to have kittens to stop the cat population dying out, there are far too many people with not the faintest idea of what being a responsible pet owner means already and I don't know how we are going to change that.

" It is not against the law."

It is where I live.

@IsThisAkissingBook

Anyway I'm checking out of this thread. Good luck op, all the moggy loving middle class will be glad when your one litter multiplies and end up rescues.

Moggy loving middle class and completely unashamed.

Poor baby having to have babies of her own. She’s too young.

Plus as a black cat with a black tom, she’s likely to have black kittens and do you know that black cats are the hardest cat to rehome?

Both myself and lots of people I know have cats that people definitely ear marked as soon as the mother cat got pg
Plenty of people say “oh yes, I will have one” until the kittens arrive and these same people realise they can’t have/don’t really want a cat after all
So having people supposedly lined up doesn’t guarantee OP won’t be left with lots of cats
My neighbours ended up with 7 that way!!

I agree re the difficulty of getting a rescue cat. I've tried twice and been turned down for very spurious reasons.

I've had cats since I was 16. I love therm, dote on them and give them everything they need inc full insurance, jabs neutered etc) but still that was not enough.

Young children (raised to be respectful and gentle - we have pictures of them as babies sleeping with the cats) a complete no no. Ridiculous

An enclosed garden with 6 foot fences. Not safe enough. Could only adopt if we kept the cats inside. Ridiculous and cruel.

A cat flap at the side of the house. Dangerous apparently.

An existing cat in the house. Not allowed apparently.

My DD now an adult wants to get a kitten in the spring so let's see how we get on this time.

Congratulations OP on your impending new arrivals. Smashing.

@Hoppinggreen I don’t think she plans on artificial insemination but rather nature taking it’s course. Hope you don’t eat milk/dairy if you’re against artificial insemination of animals btw!!

You're right OP. It's not illegal. It's just selfish, short sighted and highly irresponsible. People like you make my blood boil. Your poor, poor cat

How awful :( I've heard of people's cats having litters because of lack of care/owners too feckless to have their pets spayed or neutered, but never known someone selfish enough to have actually set out for this to happen. Poor cat.

So you put her outside for any old tom to impregnate her? That's appalling OP but you know that already.

Why can't they do early neutering in the UK. In Australia rescue kittens are rehomed at 9 weeks already neutered. I think it's because of the feral cats killing native wildlife.

Stupid woman, poor cat!

@Svara

Why can't they do early neutering in the UK. In Australia rescue kittens are rehomed at 9 weeks already neutered. I think it's because of the feral cats killing native wildlife.

They do. BVA guidelines to rescues is to neuter strays/ferals and kittens for homing at over 1kg, so in practice that's around 10 weeks. The guidelines for clients' cats is to neuter at 4 months, and some vets, particularly those linked to welfare organisations, will do them at three months. However, unfortunately, there are still quite a few dinosaur vets around who stick to the very outdated guidelines of six months.