Speaker 1: Live. This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: Hello, my beeline friends, this is Michelburn, your host on Catitude.
Speaker 3: All right, guess what time of year it is? Yep, Spring,
but it's also kitty season. We're going to talk about today.
What is kitty season, what you should be aware of,
and what you can do to make it easier for
all of the thousands and probably millions of kittens being
born this season. Stay tuned, we'll be right back.
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Speaker 5: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 3: Welcome back everyone. It is kittyseason.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: What is kitty season? This is the time of year
an unaltered female cat, which is called a queen, goes
into heat. Now this time in at least the northern
hemisphere is about April through October. It can vary a
little sometimes as early as March, and it's generally, you know,
in the warmer months. So my guess is in other
hemispheres would probably be opposite. And there's a lot of
reasons you should be aware of it, and there's a
lot of things you can do, as you know, a
pet parent or as a caring pet advocate person to
do your part two help the kittens that are being
born out there in the wild, and to protect your
cats and protect the T and R cats in your neighborhood.
So here's some facts that I found while doing my
research that I thought were pretty interesting. Cats can go
into heat female cats, of course, female cats can go
into heat as early as four months old. As soon
as the cats are able to go into heat, there
called a queen that's only for cats, you know, female
cats of course that are not fixed. Just so you know,
cats can be fixed pretty early in age, just as
they give birth pretty early in age. They can give
birth as soon as four months old, which I mean
that's pretty short, but they can be fixed as early
as eight weeks old or two pounds, which is definitely fixed.
The sooner the better. There's been discussions between different veterinarians,
different schools of thought whether cats should be able to
go through their first heat or not. I'm on the
side with fix them as soon as you can, because
if you're not able to control your cat during the
heat season, you may end up with a litter of
kiddies you weren't expecting.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 3: Cats can also give birth to multiple litters at once,
and what happens is when the cat is impregnated by
different males within a seven day period, they're likely to
have actually multiple litters within the same litter. And this
happened to Sammy, the cat that gave birth my pregnant
Tea in our cat that I didn't know was pregnant.
More about her a little bit later. Also, another great
interesting fact is that when female cats are in heat,
they will do whatever they can do to find a tomcat.
And a tomcat is an unaltered male cat. I think
it has to do with the pheromones and hormones produced
in their body to just find a guy and have
it done, you know, were lack of better words. And
there's also I believe the pheromones that are produced in
the female queen cats the pheromones that are luring the
tomcat to her as well, so kind of going both ways. Also,
cats can go into heat up to five times within
a cycle. Now, when cats going into the heat cycle,
that's like never ending. Some cat can give birth and
get pregnant within just six to eight weeks, so while
they're actually nursing and recuperating with their babies, maybe just
six weeks later, before the babies are even fully weaned
from them, they can get pregnant again. And yes, that
also happened to my cat, Sammy, and I'll tell you
the story a little bit later. Now here's some tips
on how to tell if a cat is pregnant. There's
a few different states, actually five stages. There's one fertilization
and you know what, cats, just like females female humans,
do get morning sickness and it's generally the first two
to three weeks. So during this time she'll have, you
know what, it seems like morning sickness. You won't be
eating too much, and by the middle stage, which is
the third stage, she starts to be gaining weight. By
the fourth stage, you can tell that she's labor because
her nipples become visible, and she'll stop eating about two
days before she gives birth. Now for labor and delivery,
she'll find a secure place. She'll lick her babies and okay,
this is a little gross to us, but she eats
the placenta because this gives her nutritional benefits. You know,
cats in the wild are very about survival, so this
is just something that's normal to the female cat. Little gross,
but hey, now, what do you do once the kitties
are born? Okay, here comes the fun part, But it's
a challenge. You know, the kitties are born, they're adorable,
they're cute, but you have to be responsible for them
with her in a sense, and there's things that you
will have to watch out for, and they become mobile
very quickly. But first thing you should do don't disturb
the kittens unless necessary for a little while. Know that
if the mom seems to have abandoned the kittens, she
might just be on the hunt for food and will return.
Even if it's a cat mom that you're feeding, she
still may go on the hunt to look for food.
This is something that's in her nature to do, so
don't become too worried. You only need to go into
action if you see that the kitties are in harm's way.
And this is something interesting that happened to us. When
Sammy gave birth. She had the kitties on the side
next to the side of my house by where there's
some you know, brush, so she felt protected well. During
a heavy rainstorm, she didn't know, but she was near
a water spout and the kittens almost drowned. So if
I hadn't moved them to a more secure place, there
would be no kittens. And you know she's a cat.
She wasn't aware of this. Of course, the next day
we got some some hosing to move the water away,
so if she still went to that spot, she would
still be fine, and so with the kittens, of course,
But just try to keep an eye out for where
the kittens are, don't disturb them, and just make sure
they're secure. Kittens can be weaned as soon as four
to six weeks old, and they should be handled from
five weeks old to socialize them. This isn't something else
that's really important. Kittens they grow so fast. By I
would say two to three weeks, they're already walking all
over the place. And if the momcatcave birth, you know,
someplace near your home by some brush or bushes, or
just some secure area where she feels a little hidden.
You want to keep an eye out for the kittens
and see how far they're going, because it's very easy
for them to go under a car during any time
of wet weather or very warm weather. That's where they
go under the car to keep them dry, to keep
them away from the sun. So really it's time too
when they're about two weeks old, and if she's going
to keep them in your area, try to find a spot,
if passed, where the kittens can be somehow contained. I
was lucky enough to have a little dog run, so
I made a little house for the kittens in there.
You know, they had a tarp, so they had I
made it, you know, put a tarpa actually the husband
made of tarp so he gets a credit. We put
a tarp up so that they would be protected from
the sun and the rain. She was able to feed
them there, she was able to climb out and do whatever,
but the kittens weren't at least for a while, and
it was a grassy area. There was a couple of
plants we bought for they would have little bushes around
them for jumping on some toys and things like that,
and they were fine. This way kept them somewhat protected
from you know, definitely kept them protected from the driveway
or going undering your cars. And it also kept them
somewhat protected from wildlife such as raccoons and ducks and
possums and so forth. At least that's what I find
in my aria, my neck and woods. You might find
deer or something else that you need to protect them from.
All right, we're going to be right back right after
this break, real people, real stories.
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Speaker 3: Welcome back, everyone. This is Michelle Burn, your host on Catitude,
and we're talking about kittie season and what you can
do to get through it. When you find community cats
in your neighborhood that you want to assist or just
to keep your cats safe, and especially if you have
indoor outdoor cats. So we've been talking about you know,
what to do when the kitties are little and the
mom has just given birth and the kitties are a
couple weeks old. Here's another thing to be careful of.
Watch out for kitties hiding inside your car. Yes, I
said that right inside your car. Where I live, it's
an area that gets torrential rains and hurricanes and horrible weather.
And I found this also true for people that live
in areas where there's a lot of hail. So during
the time we were prepping for a somewhat mild hurricane,
we couldn't find Sammy or what she did with her kittens,
and so we were looking around, looking around, and we
finally noticed that she hid them up inside my husband's
SUV inside the car. I don't even want to think
about what could have happened if the car had been
turned on. That's oh, I can't even go there. But
one thing that I've read many places on the internet,
and I've also heard from others show hosts on pet
Life Radio, this is a good tip before you start
your car, bang on the hood. Just give a little bang.
This will startle any cat that happens to be climbing
up inside your car and will get them to jump out.
So that was something I mean, I don't know how
this mama cat, Sammy the mom and cat managed to
bring all of her babies one by one up inside
and she found an area she's a skinny little thing
to curb her body and have the cats still fit
and wean from her. But the other thing that happened
is the cat babies also fell out. You know, they
just like plopped out. They were so little, maybe at
this time they were a week and a half old.
So we put some cushioning that was covered so from
the even with the elements, it would still be you know,
cushioned for them, so if the babies fell out, at
least they wouldn't get hurt. Just be aware that kittens
and cats can hide inside and under your car so
that you don't have any horrible surprises. You know, during
the lifetime of a cat, she can have up to
fifty litters of kittens, and most litters are anywhere from
three to five kitties. And considering they can go into
heat maybe up to five times during their cycle, that
is a lot of kitties. And multiply this times all
of the millions of cats out there, queen cats out
there that are not you know, their queen cats are
not fixed. That's a lot of kitties, and what happens
to most of them is they are killed, euthanized, or
run over or taken his prey by other wild animals.
The best way to put a stop to this is
to get your cats spade or neotered. That's, you know,
the best thing you could do. I can't think of
anything better fix your cat, but one thing better, One
thing that I am really a huge, huge advocate is
is adopt, don't shop. There are so many kitties out
there that need to be adopted in shelters, especially during
kitty season. This is a great time if you ever
wanted to volunteer at a cat shelter or if you
want to adopt, because there's an overwhelming amount of kitties
that are available at places, you know, like your local
humane society or local you know cat shelter. There's a
lot of vets that do TNR, so you might want
to inquire there or just you know, even there's neighborhood sites.
One that I know of is called next Door. That
was actually where I did the responsible thing in getting
the kitties adopted. So I'm going to talk about that
in just a second. So there's a lot of ways
you can reach out within your community to let people
know you have kitties. They're safe, they're okay. If you're
able to take them to the vet for their first look.
A lot of vets don't charge for the first visit.
Then you can let the people that are adopting the
kitties know that they're healthy and you know, fine and
ready to adopt. So there's a lot of things you
can do just to be I guess, a really good
pet person, pet pet parent, pet advocate, and think about
maybe adopting yourself, you know. I mean, this is how
my kitty family grew by by four. I had one
and now there's five. So this is what happened. So
now I was talking earlier about Sammy and I mentioned
little bits of her, but I want to share a
little bit of the story. Some people might have heard
it in an earlier episode, but you know, it deals
with kitty season. When I moved into my now home,
it was around kitty season. It was right around April,
and there was you know, a little I thought it
was a little kitty, but and she might have been.
I don't know how old Sammy was. And we started
feeding her and then we thought wow, you know, she's
she's getting kind of she must be doing okay, you know,
and lo and behold, maybe a couple months later, she
gave birth right in front of my doorstep, right there.
And she must have been impregnated by two tomcats because
and remember earlier I mentioned that the queens can be
impregnated and have multiple letters in one berth. Well, two
of her kitties looked just like her and just like
who I think is the father. And the other kitty
was black and white. That's miss Molly. If you've seen
her on Instagram, which is at catatude seventeen, she's a
little black and white diva with the most gorgeous like
green alien eyes as I call them. Anyway, So she
gave birth and it was awakening for me because I
had never been around kittens that small. So these kittens
are growing and they're mobile, they're walking all over the
place by about three weeks, maybe a little less, and
that's when I decided we either have to put them
in some place, which we luckily had a dog one
And some people said, you know, why didn't you take
them in your home? Why didn't you bring them in
your patio? We do have a covered and screen patio,
and the reason is because of Mama. Sammy wouldn't have
liked it. She's very much a wild cat. She's I
don't want to stay wild. She's a feral cat. She's
a community cat. She's come a long way and she's
become much more socialized towards us, but she's still an
outdoor cat. So if I had tried to bring the
kittens inside the patio, they would be separate from the mom,
and Sammy would have done whatever she could to get
to the cats. So we couldn't put her inside a
contained place. The only time we did is kind of
and it feels a little mean, but we kind of
trapped her and put her in a very large cat carrier.
Is during a hurricane that was going to be very,
very pretty bad and there was nothing else we could do.
But we did put her with the kiddies and put
food in water, and she had plenty of room and
she wasn't in there very long. It was just during
the part of the storm that was you know, horrible,
and probably a couple of hours. It wasn't very long,
but we you know, built a little community for them
under a tarp well they had a tarp area, big
grassy area, plants, toys, the whole bit, and they did well.
And so I was wondering, you know, when can I
get her fixed? Well, I tried to catch her myself,
and that didn't work so well. And so by the
time I did try to get her fixed, guess what,
she was pregnant again. Yep. And that was only a
period of maybe oh geez, maybe like four weeks, five weeks,
six weeks, maybe six weeks later she was already pregnant.
And people told me, you know, you can't really take
her in to get fixed until the babies are old enough,
so you have to wait six weeks, eight weeks. And
then she gave birth today again to another three cats
off tabbies like herself. Oh and by the way, we
did adopt the black and white one from that, you know,
miss Molly, so we adopted one, and we adopted the
kitten that she had when that was with her, Charlotte,
so we adopted two from her litter. Plus we have
Dennis in side, so that's three indoor kiddies anymore. And
I don't know if I would be able to breathe,
because I just about manage my allergies with the three
of them. So she had the second litter, and we
took care of them the same way. And when they
were very very little, we did get them, you know,
some kitten formula and as they got older, you know,
special food for kittens and so on. We did this
with the first litter as well, and I began seeking
out a way to get her fixed earlier than I
did before, because I didn't want her to go through
another litter. I made sure that all of the kittens
were adopted the first letter, and you know, of course
we adopted one. And then for the second letter, I
did the same thing. I reached out on nextdoor dot
com to my local neighborhood and adopted sim kittens that way,
reached out to friends let them know. I also made sure,
and this is common during kitting season, make sure that
whoever adopts your kitties want a kitty that will turn
into a cat and no longer be an adorable little kitten.
There's still adorable cats, but don't just let anybody adopt them,
you know. I recently did a wonderful interview with Crumbs
and Whiskers, and they go through a little screening process,
which is wonderful because a lot of times people will
impulsely say, oh, I want that kitty so cute, and
not realize all the care that goes into caring for
a kitten, a cat, a dog, a puppy or you know,
a durabil or rabbit whatever, But make sure that they're
willing to deal with everything that's involved and the cost,
the visits and so forth. So I had to do.
And this is also an interview that I had because
I've never heard of it and I thought it was interesting.
This is an earlier interview. I hired a cat trapper
and the cat trapper was able to catch Sammy and
Sammy was fixed. I got her baby daddy fixed. So
Sammy was fixed, and just to summarize where everybody is now,
her baby daddy was fixed. That's Jethrow. So Sammy and
Jethrow are like our outdoor cats, you know, they prefer
it that way, and they have a house outside where
they can go into. They have a special heating unit
in there that specially for cats and very safe that
we use during when it's a little bit cooler, which
where I live is about fifty degrees. I know, not
that called but for the kiddies, it's fine. They can
go into there when it's raining, they get fed, they
get flea treatment, and of course they were both fixed,
so no more unwanted kitties being born trying to find
a home. And they seem to be much happier as well,
you know, and they're just the cutest little pair. They're
on my Instagram at times. I have pictures of Sammy
and Jeffer, but they're a happy cat family. Mollie is
now Wow, she's about almost two and a half. Whow
does time fly? And she's doing great. And Charlotte is
her bigger sister. There's a little subling rivalry there, but
Charlotte is doing very well also, and that's kind of
what's going on. So I'm just so glad to be
able to share this with you and to let you
know all about kitty season. Also keep in mind that
there's a lot of pop up kitty cafes and kitty
adoption centers that will occur during this time period from
April to October then compared to any other time, so
be sure to reach out volunteer. If you can't adopt,
you can bring, you know, old blankets or towels to
your local shelter. They could always use things like this.
And now you know a little more about Kitty season.
Thanks for listening. Thanks to my kitties that taught me
about the kitty season, which Charlotte and Mollie, and they're
all part of one family. Dennis, he's another story. I
opened the door and he came in, so that's how
I found Dennis. But now you know more about Kinny Seusan.
Thanks everyone for.
Speaker 2: Listening to this episode of Catitude on Kitten Season. This
is episode two.
Speaker 3: Hundred and ninety eight.
Speaker 2: Wow, stay tuned and keep listening because episode three hundred
has a super celebrity guest.
Speaker 3: You will not want to miss this show.
Speaker 2: I want to thank my cat crew, Dennis, Charlotte, Mollie,
and I want to thank everyone listening to Catatude for all.
Speaker 3: Of these years and all of these episodes.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, and of course thanks to my
producer Mark Winter for working his magic and making every
episode sound amazing.
Speaker 3: Now remember keep listening.
Speaker 2: Episode three hundred this is that's your episode and hey,
lose attitude, have aatitude.
Speaker 5: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on Petlight
Radio Dot com