How Many Kittens Can A Cat Have In Each Litter
This is a hard question to answer with usually because so much depends on the individual mother cat and the circumstances around the pregnancy and birth.
How many kittens can a cat have in each litter. The first birth i witnessed was that of our calico cat fluffy delivering her first litter of kittens when i was about 6 years old. This means kitties can give birth to kittens during their entire life. This could result in up to 180 kittens in her lifetime. Can a litter of kittens have multiple fathers.
Cats usually only have four sets of teats so feeding larger litters is challenging. Yes this is entirely possible. Additionally with age the regular size of a cat litter decreases. That s a big range.
In my experience which involves mostly feral mothers who have stressful and often malnou. Theoretically your feline companion can give birth to three litters of kittens per year with an average of four kittens per litter in an average lifetime of 15 years for an indoor kitty. Although these are average ranges cats normally have anywhere from one to nine kittens per litter. On the other hand a cat that is 3 or 4 years old will most probably have nearly 4 or 5 kittens in one litter.
First time moms usually have smaller litters ranging from 1 3 kittens but the cat s health age and breed can also play a part in the number of kittens that will be born. Generally cats can have a maximum of 3 litters in a year. They can have 6 or more kittens each time. A queen is in heat estrus for 1 4 days during this period she will mate several times and potentially with several different males cats are induced ovulators which means that the act of copulation induces ovulation cats release several eggs per ovulation and these eggs are released after she mates.
If an unneutered queen cat has twelve kittens at her first mating and ten survive of which five are female and if the same pair of cats continues to breed and their offspring continue to breed unchecked even despite a twenty percent death rate and a thirty five percent sterilization rate after only ten years 10 680 female cats will produce 57 672 kittens of which 49 021 will survive and. Very young cats and very old cats both have reduced average litter sizes. A cat can have up to five liters in 1 year. The most kittens on record from a single litter is 19.
They can reach sexual maturity as early as 4 months of age. Basically that works out at 300 kittens if a cat was sexually productive for 10 years.