How Many Kittens Can A Cat Have In A Lifetime
Once your cat reaches puberty she can go into heat at any time.
How many kittens can a cat have in a lifetime. That domestic feline dozing on your windowsill without a care in the world has the potential to be a kitten factory if left unspayed. A few years later it can be up to five but it can be as many as eight. In fact cats like rabbits are efficient reproducers and heat cycles can occur every 14 to 21 days. While average litter size is three to five kittens double digit litters aren t unheard of.
John snyder of hsus called the. 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. 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. The average is 4 6 kittens per litter.
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. The number of kittens a female cat can have in her lifetime depends upon climate and daylight hours which is how her heat cycle is determined. Whether she is an indoor cat a cat used for. Cats can have their first heat at 5 months.
Somewhere between a low of 98 and a high of 5 000 cats in seven years. Because the queen can have as many as three pregnancies a year and she can produce as many as six to twenty four babies it s best to have her spayed. 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. Cats can live into their 20s.
Healthy females can have litters so large they cannot feed them all. Outdoor cats have a much shorter lifespan than an indoor cat but if she lived to 10 yrs she could possibly have 200 kittens in that life. The average mature cat can have 3 litters with a total of 12 kittens per year. Cats can have up to 5 litters a year.
It s usually more like 3 or 4. Today neither hsus nor the aspca use the higher number on their websites. So in one year she could have approximately 20 kittens. Cats have kittens as long as they live.
Each litter can be from 1 kitten to 10 or more.