hello internet,

on Tuesday i came home from college and my mum said there was a cat walking bout the house while i was away and that had gone now. i thought nothing of it at the time, but my mum and sis were kind of exited of the situation.



then yesterday my mum said we got a cat now (i was really confused) i asked do you mean the cat from yesterday. she said yes, she took me to the cat (which found its way into my room) and i saw. it it was a young tabby cat and it was searching around our room.



i noticed instantly that the cat was pregnant and my mum new it too. she had a red collar with no tag, but the collar was broke and seemed to have been mended by an elastic fabric.

a friend said the collar was aggrevating the cat and took it off.



i naturally thought that this cat was simply finding a place were it can have its kittens, and it seems to have picked our house. my mum seems happy and my little sister is over the moon.

the cat is great with humans, and it even jumped onto my bed last night.



anyway, now we have a cat, that is pregnant with no name. my mum and sis want to keep it. and the cat seems to be bonding with me.

I have no problem with the situation, but i got this feeling at the back of my head that somthing is not quite right with the situation.



we have no experince with owning a cat, so can any one shed light on the situation, or give me any advice.



theres other stuff that might be phycological with my mum and sis since our dog passed away a few months ago o i dont no if thats is influening this.



is it all in my head and what should i do

Cats do this. They find other homes and take up residence for a while, only to go back to their first homes eventually. So your mama cat might go back home after she gives birth. Depends on how much better things are at your house. You really can't predict what kitties who are allowed outside will do.



I used to have a strange kitty come into my room to sleep on my bed at night, when I left the window open. At first I thought it was one of ours, but I petted him one night and felt a huge bare ring on his tail where he had no fur. I never shooed him out or tried to keep him. I thought it was funny that he would come into my room at night though, without even knowing me. It didn't bother me at all, so I let him come and go as he pleased.

i think you should get some decent catfood in, and take that kitty to the vet for a checkup.

You should take it to the vet for a general checkup before you do anything.

Do you know for sure this is a stray/outdoor cat? Maybe it's an indoor cat that got lost - I know the pregnancy probably points to an outdoor cat, but still. Someone might be looking for her. Maybe you could put up "Found Cat" posters, and see if anyone claims her. If she has a collar, she probably has a person, and that person might be really sad she's gone...



In the meantime, yes, definitely take her to a vet. She might have fleas or something equally undesirable and then bring that into your house :P. At the very least, the vet will be able to assist you through her pregnancy.

kk,

i havent seen the cat all day, today. it may have gone back home, i dunno.



but yeah if it comes back and decides it wants move in, i'll tell my mum to take it to a vet before she decides anything else.

besides my friend has had a lot of experince at vetinary practise and didnt point anything serious out. it was a flea collar too so i dought is will have any parasites.



thanks for the replies everyone, if it comes back were gonna get a vet to do a check up just in case.

If it has a collar, someone probably owns it. And if someone picked up my outdoor cat and decided to keep it without even bothering to try and contact me as the owner, I'd be pretty upset.



If she comes back, I would definitely try to find who she belongs to.

Flea collars are not an especially good idea for cats, so I'm glad your friend took it off.

Oh jesus christ, you let a pregnant cat back out there? Yeah, look for her, and if you ever find her, don't let her out until you either abort the babies or she has them. You are putting more feral, unwanted, starving cats out into the world, unless someone handles those kittens right away.






Yeah, if you let out your pregant cat, if I find her I'm picking her up, spaying her, and rehoming her, and that's fair game. I care more about animals than I do some irresponsible owner throwing more unwanted animals out there for someone else to deal with.

Yup. Actually, any cat or dog who comes onto my property gets spayed/neutered. No questions asked.

I know there are people here who will state that you should not be altering another person's pet because that's what you believe, but not what they believe. My response is that if you give your pet the freedom to roam and possibly harrass neighbors and damage their property, then you loose your ownership "rights" to make exclusive decisions for said animal. This animal's intact status and roaming is impacting your neighbors, so they should get some rights to make decision for said animal. Allowing intact cat outside to reproduce freely will create more cats that eat things like wildlife (possibly leaving half eaten carcasses laying around as happened at my sister's house) and garbage (and throwing garbage can contents out in the process which requires work to clean up), fight with each other (usually screaming late at night and into the early moring in people's yard under open windows in the summer and disturbing sleep), using gardens as litterboxes (and also depositing toxopalsmosis cysts which can get on garden vegetables and damage the fetus of a pregnant woman or migrate through tissue of a healthy adult causing non-fatat disease-it's implicated in schitzophrenia, also roundworm and hookworm eggs which can cause major organ damage in young children [visceral larval migrans] and get into the lens of school age children causing blindness [occular larval migrans]) and damaging personal propery by territorial scratching. In short, if you allow your pet to roam, you also have to accept the risk that you pet may be altered by another person, get injured or permanantly disappear. The pet could get spayed/neutered, hit by a car, adopted by another person, get a disease and die, get killed by a more skilled predator, etc.



Vegiecookie: if your family really wants to keep this cat, she needs to go to the vet for a checkup and scanned for a microchip, there are many ways a cat could unintentionally get out and maybe the people were really good intentioned and wanted to keep her indoors and spay her, so you need to give them the chance to reclaim her. After an appropriate wait time, you can then take full responsibilty for her. After a vet exam, you may find you are wrong about sex (could be neutered male) and health (starting to get decent calories, FIP, heart/liver failure, worms, pyometra/uterine infection, etc). You can also get appropriate advice for your area about claiming strays as well as how to care for her properly.

Please don't let this cat have kittens without a home! I trapped a mom cat and three of her kittens this winter. They were skinny, full of deer ticks, and of course worms. Kittens wild as can be. The mama was already pregnant again. Somewhere there is a male making more. The mama just had her litter in my sons room - six in all. As adorable as they are, it's so terribly sad. These kittens will probably get adopted right away. The older ferals I've been trying to find homes in barns, and will get them fixed.

Please please please- contact a rescue group about this. hopefully they'll have the resources to get the mom vet checked, and spayed, and put the babies for adoption (and fixed) when they're ready.



Whether cats can be given homes, or left as feral, we need to do as much as possible to prevent further breeding.