Are cats usually pregnant this time of year?

Willowy

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Just wondering. The usual farm cat wisdom says that cats are never pregnant between September-January. That all females get pregnant in Jan or Feb, and some get pg again in July or Aug.

Anyway...I was just wondering if there's any truth to that, in your experience (this is a temperate zone, with very cold winters, so I'm sure it's different in tropical areas). I'm taking a bunch of cats to a low-cost spay/neuter clinic this Wed, and some of the females look a bit...chubby. Now some of the males look chubby, too, because of putting on winter weight, so that could be the cause. Of course it doesn't really matter if they are pregnant; they'll be spayed anyway, it can't be helped, but I'd be much happier if we don't end up with any spay/aborts.

So, think they're pregnant? Some opinions please.
 

ipw533

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There are two schools of thought on this--one is that estrus, the fertility cycle of the female cat, slows down as temperatures drop, the other holds that it is connected to the number of daylight hours at any given time. My observation is that pregnancy and live births depend on both--during a severe winter "kitten season" starts in the early spring, but during a mild winter it can start as early as late January. Late November and December are when we see the slow-down, which adds credibility to the "daylight" argument as temperatures really don't turn harsh until January....
 

momofmany

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For those that work in shelters, they will tell you that "kitten season" starts in late spring, and it does taper down during the winter. For all the years that I dealt with feral cats, I actually only had 1 litter show up late in the year (November). There mom was so feral that I couldn't get her inside to care for the gang, so enticed to bring her kittens in the garage where I had a heater for them. I pulled those kittens from her the second they ate real food. That was a scary litter for me (and Eightball is still with me 13 years later).
 

icklemiss21

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A few years ago I would have agreed with the farm cat wisdom but the last two years we have had kittens all year round, not as many as in Summer but certainly enough to think 'we have a lot of kittens for winter'.

So they certainly could be pregnant, if they are chubby they are probably a month along anyway and would have been mating when it was warmer
 
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