What happens as your kitten grows?

Cats come into ‘call’.  This is when the cat is in heat – when they are receptive to a male.

Cats do not come into call the same way as dogs.  They do not cycle every 6 months or so like dogs.  They can cycle any time.  Often if they are not mated the time between calls can becomes shorter – sometimes as close as every 3 weeks.  Also if they are not mated they increase their chance of getting Pyometra.  An infection in the uterus.

After coming into call and all the boxes are ticked like health etc of the female, its time to introduce a male.  Now not all females will allow any male to mate them.  Sometimes the female – or the male – does not like the partner that the breeder has chosen.  When I stared to breed no one ever told me that I would experience ‘feelings’ between the male and the females!

Once a mating has occurred breeders keep their fingers crossed that the mating will take.  Sometimes they do but sometimes they don’t too.  At around the 3 week mark a queen’s nipples often ‘pink up’ from the hormones.  This is often an indication that the girl is pregnant. 

Cats are pregnant for about 9 weeks – anytime between 63 to 65 days but even up to 72 days.

When we are getting close to birth the girl starts to ‘make her bed’.  This usually means she starts to dig up the blankets and rearrange her quarters.  All my girls have their own space – a place where they feel safe and calm.  A mother is often very protective over her babies so having her own quarters helps to settle her ready for birth and those first few weeks.

So we have babies born.  The first few days mum and everyone settles.  Mums milk comes down and the babies learn to feed.  Mum spends a lot of her time feeding and cleaning her babies.  She rarely comes out of the bed to eat.  She needs a lot of nutrition at this time so that her milk is plentiful and nutritious.

Their ears start to unfold and open around 7 days.  You will hear mum talking to the with meows and purrs.

In about 10 days babies’ eyes start to open slowly.  One eye may open before the other.  They start to look around and even though things are blurry they are still getting a feel for what is out there including their breeder who has cleaned and held and spoken to the for the whole of their life thus far.

In about 3 weeks they start to get out of the bed.  They move around and start to venture into the big wide world.

Once they are out of the bed they will start to follow mum around.  They start to look at mums food and mum shows them the litter tray.

The next few weeks the babies are getting used to eating.  They still suckle from mum, but they also learn to eat the wet food and biscuits.  They will often eat the wet food first as its easier, but mum will persevere with getting them to eat the biscuits also just like a good mum gets her babies to eat their vegetables!

As soon as they start to eat solids their poos change consistency, so mum doesn’t like to clean them anymore – Thus the litter tray lessons begin in earnest! Another lesson that mum teaches them is to groom.  Mum has done all the hard work up to now but its time for the babies to get that lesson learned.

As the babies grow mum teaches them many lessons including how to play and manners.

As a breeder I often get asked if they can take their kitten home at 6-8 weeks old.  Purebred pedigree cats take a long time to get where they are going.  They are slow to mature and get all their lessons learned before they are taken from mum.  They need time and if they don’t get that time then often some of the lessons are not learnt to the best of their ability.

Note: These are general time frames. Different breeds – or even different litters – can do things on a different time frame