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I was going to take my calicos, but it's been very warm here and the mama was acting suddenly super affectionate. That's never a good sign, so I confined her to the house for a week and took her instead, and the vet confirmed that she's probably in heat.
It's definitely the wrong time of year for that, but as I said, it's been very warm all winter. This is how sometimes you can get as many as three litters a year, if you have a warm winter!
It occurs to me that I knew this cat was pregnant before she was bulging, and a lot of people find this difficult. It's really not that hard to tell if you know what you're looking for, and this is what I was looking for: She had enlarged, visible nipples (normally the nipples on a cat are not prominent), and it was just the right time of year for kittens, albeit a late litter. You're more likely (at least in this area) to see kittens in mid-June than the end of August, but it's not that unusual or unlikely to see them at any point in the warm months.
So it's as easy as that. If the timing is right for kittens, and the female cat has enlarged nipples, there's a good chance she's pregnant and she'll get bigger in a month or so. This goes double if she just spent a few weeks with a dramatic, drastic behavior change, and it's pretty much guaranteed if she ran away from home and then returned.
You want to be able to recognize the early stages of pregnancy for a few reasons. First, because if you intend to have kittens it's good to know exactly when they were conceived. Second, because if you do NOT want kittens, you need to move on that NOW to get your cat fixed. Kittens develop faster than humans, and by the time most people realize their cat is pregnant it is much, much too late to have the kittens aborted. It'd be like you aborting an 8 month fetus - unless it is a literal life or death situation, virtually everybody finds that unacceptable and squicky. At that point they could be born already! Many vets won't do the procedure, or will only do it if they are certain that the kittens will not survive.
Ideally, of course, it should never come to that. Cats can go into heat as young as 5 months, and a pregnancy at that age is detrimental to mama and kittens. (Mama IS a kitten at that age!) Get them spayed early.
It's definitely the wrong time of year for that, but as I said, it's been very warm all winter. This is how sometimes you can get as many as three litters a year, if you have a warm winter!
It occurs to me that I knew this cat was pregnant before she was bulging, and a lot of people find this difficult. It's really not that hard to tell if you know what you're looking for, and this is what I was looking for: She had enlarged, visible nipples (normally the nipples on a cat are not prominent), and it was just the right time of year for kittens, albeit a late litter. You're more likely (at least in this area) to see kittens in mid-June than the end of August, but it's not that unusual or unlikely to see them at any point in the warm months.
So it's as easy as that. If the timing is right for kittens, and the female cat has enlarged nipples, there's a good chance she's pregnant and she'll get bigger in a month or so. This goes double if she just spent a few weeks with a dramatic, drastic behavior change, and it's pretty much guaranteed if she ran away from home and then returned.
You want to be able to recognize the early stages of pregnancy for a few reasons. First, because if you intend to have kittens it's good to know exactly when they were conceived. Second, because if you do NOT want kittens, you need to move on that NOW to get your cat fixed. Kittens develop faster than humans, and by the time most people realize their cat is pregnant it is much, much too late to have the kittens aborted. It'd be like you aborting an 8 month fetus - unless it is a literal life or death situation, virtually everybody finds that unacceptable and squicky. At that point they could be born already! Many vets won't do the procedure, or will only do it if they are certain that the kittens will not survive.
Ideally, of course, it should never come to that. Cats can go into heat as young as 5 months, and a pregnancy at that age is detrimental to mama and kittens. (Mama IS a kitten at that age!) Get them spayed early.
