Showing posts with label cat giving birth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cat giving birth. Show all posts

Tuesday 22 June 2021

How many litters does a cat have in a year?

The answer depends upon whether we are talking about domestic or wild cats. And I don't think it is possible to produce a one size fits all answer to the question. In fact, you will see a variety of answers to this question on the Internet. My conclusion is that domestic cats have 2-3 litters per year. Wild cats in general have one litter per year. It is hard to find definitive answers with respect to the wild cat species because even the best reference work that I have doesn't provide answers sometimes on a species-by-species basis.

Litter of kittens
Image by David Mark from Pixabay.

However, the sand cat and the bobcat appear to produce 2 litters per year but this may not happen every year. In fact, a semi-tame bobcat in a zoo produced 2 litters but Mel and Fiona Sunquists, the authors of a great book on the wild cat species, Wild Cats of the World, said that this is probably unusual. This indicates to me that one litter per year is more normal for the American bobcat.

Theoretically domestic cats could have 5 litters per year but practically it is probably as stated above although Dr. Desmond Morris in his book CATWATCHING argues that they have 3 litters per year and if they have 14 kittens within those 3 litters then within 5 years, there could be more than 65,000 kittens!

You will see that there is a difference between the theoretical numbers and practical numbers.  Many kittens die, for example. And there are variables which influence the number of litters per year. For example, when a group of male lions take over a pride and they kill the cubs, the lionesses are brought into heat. They become receptive to mating. This artificially forces them to have a litter. 

But if their offspring become adults then usually they don't have another litter until their existing offspring have reached the age of 18 months. This would imply that they have one litter every 18 months if their cubs are not killed by incoming males in acts of infanticide.

Friday 7 May 2021

Help! Five conjoined kittens born at Little Whiskers Animal Rescue, Arizona

🚨 🚨 EMERGENCY VET HELP NEEDED!! A few days ago we had a person come to our rescue to surrender a mom and babies and...

Posted by Little Whiskers Animal Rescue on Thursday, April 1, 2021
The Facebook post provides you with the story which first emerged about a month ago from this Arizona animal rescue, Little Whiskers Animal Rescue. The rescue still needs financial help I am sure.
 
It looks as if a cat hoarder was divesting themselves of the cats that they had hoarded (29+)  and among them was a female who gave birth to 5 conjoined kittens. I think they phoned the rescue to say they were coming in with the cats.

This presented a problem for the rescue because of the extra expense in vet bills. So they appealed for help and you can see that appeal in the Facebook post above. 




By the way, sometimes these sorts of embedded posts stop working because they are removed from the source which in this instance is the Facebook website. If that has happened I apologise. 


Apparently the kittens were joined by the skin of their belly so I believe that they have been separated although one sibling had to have a leg removed in order to separate them out. 

The prognosis looked hopeful but as is normally the case I can't right now find a follow-up article on the Internet to tell me what happened. It would be nice to know that they all survived and are doing well so that, in due course, they can be rehomed. 

The causes of conjoined kittens or of babies are somewhat mysterious. My quick research on this indicated that the experts are unsure why it happens but it is clearly a developmental problem which may be caused because of a genetic defect or possibly drugs or chemicals in the cat which interrupted the development of these kittens. 

Clearly the development of the kittens will include their separation and that seems to have stopped and parts of them has been merged. No doubt this is a rare event which is why it got a loss of news coverage online.

There is definitely a dearth of information on the internet on the causes of conjoined animals. There is almost nothing on the causes of conjoined kittens. This may be because it is so rare. There is no need to do research on this congenital defect.

Monday 15 August 2016

Cat Trivia: Domestic Cat Milk Contains Eight Times More Protein Than Human Milk

Domestic cat milk contains eight times more protein than human milk and three times as much fat. Did you know that? I think is an interesting bit of domestic cat trivia as I've called it. I also think it's pretty impressive.

Kittens grow rapidly (hardly surprising feeding on that kind of milk) as their mother uses her body reserves to produce milk. In one study it was found that mothers lost about 5.7 g per day when lactating. Kittens from larger litters are smaller and put on weight more slowly than kittens from smaller litters.

Female cat can give birth to between one and ten kittens. The average litter is about four or five kittens.

The largest litter ever recorded was 13 kittens. Each kitten weighs about 3% of their mother's body weight at birth or around 90 to 110 grams.

Source: Wild Cats of the World pages 108 and 109. Get this book.

Saturday 26 November 2011

Pictures of Cats Giving Birth

Here is a video of a serval giving birth. That is better than pictures of cats giving birth, isn't it? It is moving pictures. Below the video are two pictures of a cat having just given birth.



See it on my YouTube channel.

Below are two pictures of cat that seems to have just given birth:

Cat giving birth - photo by wiccked

Cat just after giving birth - photo by wiccked

Hopefully I have a great picture to come...just waiting for permission from the photographer...

Picture of cat giving birth
Picture of cat giving birth. This is a screenshot from a Daily Motion video.


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