How Many Kittens Do Cats Have In A Lifetime
10 2 surviving kittens of which 4 7 are female the average litter size is 4 kittens with 15 loss before reaching weaning age 3 4 kittens per litter.
How many kittens do cats have in a lifetime. Once your cat reaches puberty she can go into heat at any time. In fact cats like rabbits are efficient reproducers and heat cycles can occur every 14 to 21 days. An unspayed female cat that lives for 15 years will have around 180 kittens during her lifetime. With adequate sunlight a cat can give birth to roughly to or three litters a years 4 5 kittens per litter.
When you consider the fact that there are so many cats that don t have homes refusing to desex your cat will only contribute to the problem. The average gestation period for a cat is 63 days so theoretically she could have 3 litters a year with an average litter being 4 to 6 kittens. For more read about the 4 most common cat birth difficulties. As most domestic cats have life spans from 12 to 15 years we can use this statistic to find a rough estimate of how many kittens a cat produces in a lifetime.
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 22 795 will be females who will go on to breed again. This means kitties can give birth to kittens during their entire life. 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. Experts say that the age of the mother cat affects her litter size.
Although the average size of a cat litter is 3 to 5 kitties if the mother is young or if it is her first time giving birth she will have nearly 2 to 3 kittens 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. This could result in up to 180 kittens in her lifetime. Realistically however it is more likely that she. The average mature cat can have 3 litters with a total of 12 kittens per year.
This fact of nature can contribute to feral colonies of cats making the responsibility of spaying and neutering that much more important for pet owners.