How Many Kittens Can A Cat Have In A Lifetime

Healthy females can have litters so large they cannot feed them all.

How many kittens can a cat have in a lifetime. A few years later it can be up to five but it can be as many as eight. With an average of 5 kittens per litter and four sets of litter a year your cat can give birth up to 300 kittens in its 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. The average is 4 6 kittens per litter.

John snyder of hsus called the. It s usually more like 3 or 4. While average litter size is three to five kittens double digit litters aren t unheard of. Cats can go into heat when they are nursing a litter.

Cats can have up to 5 litters a year. 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. 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. Each litter can be from 1 kitten to 10 or more.

In fact cats like rabbits are efficient reproducers and heat cycles can occur every 14 to 21 days. Cats can have kittens for their entire lives they do not stop as they get older however as they age each litter takes more out of them and may not be healthy or alive. Once your cat reaches puberty she can go into heat at any time. 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 mature cat can have 3 litters with a total of 12 kittens per year. Somewhere between a low of 98 and a high of 5 000 cats in seven years. 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. Today neither hsus nor the aspca use the higher number on their websites.

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. Depending on your location cats can have as many as 4 litters a year.