Determining if your cat is pregnant

First thing you need to determine in your cat pregnancy is if your cat is really pregnant. It will be hard to determine if your queen is pregnant for the first 2 or 3 weeks.  Here are a few cat pregnancy signs and cat pregnancy symptoms noticeable if your cat is pregnant:

• She is not repeating her cat heat cycles.
• Her nipples will become pink and enlarged.
• May become more affectionate.
• Increased Appetite
• Possible Vomiting (Morning Sickness)
• Abdominal Enlargement
• Start Nesting

Your best bet is to take your queen to your chosen veterinary for a prenatal check-up. There is a lot of physical demands of pregnancy and you need to start her off with good health. Get a cat pregnancy calendar and keep up with everything going on in your cat litter pregnancy.

Your cat needs to start off with a balanced diet to maintain her health and that of her offspring throughout cat pregnancy and cats birth.  Your veterinarian may also be able to feel fetuses by palpating your cat’s abdomen.  The other way would be with an ultrasound. Then and only then will you know that your cat is pregnant.  If your pets not vaccinated you should wait until after pregnancy to vaccinate.

Cat Gestation – The Gestation Period

Unlike dog pregnancy the cat gestation period for queens is around nine weeks, 63 to 69 days.  Your queen could deliver as mush as 4 to 5 days early or late.  Your queen may have from 1 to 8 kittens at a time, average being 2 to 5 kittens. This is normal and not to worry.

Pregnant cats gain weight gradually throughout their pregnancy just like humans.  Special attention should be paid to her changing nutritional needs throughout the entire reproduction process.

Labor and Delivery

When your queen gets close to delivering there are a few signs and clues to be aware of.  She will start looking for a place to bear her kittens, called nesting.  You can help her out some by preparing a place for her in a private area.  She will need a box lined with soft clean towels or blankets and cut the sides of the box down to make it easy for her to get in.

Beware… even though you took the time to fine your kitty a save quite place with a soft toweled box for her to have her kittens she may just have them on the floor next to the box or any other place she feels.  You could put out two or three boxes for her to choose if you would like.

When you think your cat’s ready to give birth try to keep it quiet and give her some privacy.  Make sure she has food, water nearby but not to close to her box.

Your assistance in your cat pregnancy should not be needed unless the mother fails to clean the sac away from the kitten.  You will know when she is ready to have a kitten when she starts to pant and lick heavily.  There is often 10 to 60 minutes delay between the first delivered and could be longer.  The entire birthing process can take from 2 to 6 hours depending on the number of kittens.

Within 24 hours your newborn kittens should be examined by your veterinarian.  You might want to think about spaying.  You would want to spay your cat if you were not planning on mating her.

Newborn Kittens

You should leave your feline and kittens along for at least 3 days and do not handle her litter until they are at least a week old.  The mother will take care of everything else.

In closing I have tried to give you the highlights of your cat pregnancy but it’s just impossible to give you all the information you need on this one page.  If you want more detailed information on your cat’s pregnancy on all stages you may want to check out “How To Take Care Of Your Pregnant Cat”.  This is a downloadable ebook with all the information needed from the beginning to the end.  I highly recommend it for anyone who is expecting kittens in the near future.

So you think that you have a pregnant cat?  You know it’s quite different for a cat than it is for a woman.  Where the full term pregnancy for a women is 9 months it’s about 60 to 69 days for a cat.  It also would depend on what breed of the cat because it’s different for different breeds.

You can figure the average length for a cat’s pregnancy is around 65 days.  It’s understood that you have a variation of about 4 days one way or the other.  You could say that the whole cat gestation period may be on the low end 61 days and on the high end 69 days.

As far as the cat pregnancy calendar and for a better understanding of how the calendar works you need to know what the date that your cat mated.  Lets look at an example.  Lets say your cat mated on February 2 which means the date of birth should be on April 8 (65 Days).

Remembering the 4 days one way or the other birth could be as early as April 4 or 4 days later than the average which would be April 12.  For your information the idea for the cat pregnancy calendar was taken from How To Take Care Of Your Pregnant Cat which is a very good source for information on your pregnant cat and also will give you a one year cat pregnancy calendar.  

One last thing, what do you do if you do not know the mating date of your cat’s pregnancy.  The best way to determine if and when your cat became or is pregnant go see your veterinarian.  Your vet can use a sonogram to detect a pregnancy as early as two weeks into gestation.  You vet can also feel the developing kittens through the abdominal wall by three weeks pregnant.  Around the fifth week your cat’s belly will start getting bigger.