Pregnant cat, first litter for me and her

Hi! I'm new to this site. I joined because I was reading through some other threads about pregnant cats, and the answers seemed to really help others.

I have a cat named Naira, who's belly had been hanging low and was rounder than normal recently. Naira is an outside cat, and is not spayed. I was planning on getting her spayed, and even got a summer job very recently so I could afford it (i'm a full-time college student, so I didn't have a job before so I could focus solely on my studies). But, when I saw her belly I feared that she had beat me to it. I would have gotten her spayed sooner, but, honestly, until I saw her belly I didn't think a cat under 1 year could get pregnant. Naira is 11 months now (I'm pretty sure she was born in August of last year, cause her and her mother showed up at the end of August/beginning of September and she was really small then). 

So I took her to the vet on Tuesday (June 30th, 2015), and turns out that I was right and she is pregnant. The vet said that she should be due in a week. But, today I was looking at her belly, and I noticed that her nipples weren't very large and red. After finding out she was pregnant I started doing some research and learned that during the end stages of pregnancy, a cats nipples get swollen, red, and a lot of fur falls out around them. But Naira's aren't like that. I tried to get some pictures:




You can barely see her nipples in the pictures. I don't know if this is normal for really young cats, or cats with their first litter. Will they start swelling rapidly a few days before she gives birth? I've never had a pregnant cat before. I can feel the nipples when I very, very, very, gently caress her belly (like, zero-pressure applied, i just run my fingers along the fur). I'm worried that if she is so close to giving birth, that she won't have enough milk for the kittens if her nipples don't swell up more soon.

Is it the food I'm giving her? I'm feeding her mostly this:



with some of this mixed in it (I have a few different flavors):



Is this food good enough for her? I can't really afford anything super expensive. If I should be feeding her something else, what would you guys recommend that isn't real expensive? I wan't to make sure her and the kittens are healthy, and that she'll have enough milk for them. 

So, all in all, I was wondering if she isn't as far along as the vet thinks she is. Her belly is very firm (I can tell that even by lightly touching it). What do you guys think? Is she fine? Is it the food? Is the vet right in estimating how far along she is?

Here's some more pictures:




I have her in a large dog crate (made for dogs 70-90lbs) in the middle of my room. I keep her in the crate 24/7 because, since until Tuesday she was an outside-only cat, she isn't litter box trained. Plus, I was afraid she'd have the kittens in some dark corner I couldn't get too. I don't have a spare room in my house to put her in where she's all by herself. I keep the cage covered in a flat sheet. I did have blankets in there, but today she decided she didn't like them anymore. I thought it was because they had some litter on them so I took them out and washed and dried them and put them back in, but she still didn't lay on them so I took them back out. She has constant access to two bowls of food and two bowls of water so that I don't have to worry about her running out when I'm sleeping or at work. But she seems to only really eat when I'm at home with her, sitting in front of her cage.

So, again, what do you guys think? Any advice? Anything I should watch out for? I plan on (trying) to find homes for the kittens 12 weeks after their born, and then Naira is getting spayed (I will be keeping her in the cage until she is spayed and recovered from spaying, then she will go back outside)

The food looks good.  Is she eating a lot?  Pregnant cats need more food.

She doesn't look that pregnant to me.  How did the vet determine how far along she is?

Some links you may want to read:  http://www.thecatsite.com/a/how-to-tell-if-my-cat-is-pregnant

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/pregnant-cat-what-to-prepare-for-the-birth

There are other articles on the birthing process and kitten care at the top of this forum.

When I'm in the room, she eats and drinks pretty good. If I'm not sitting in front of her cage, she'll get up and take a few bites of food and then go lay back down. But if I'm sitting in front of the cage, she'll eat a lot in one sitting. I don't think she eats too much when I'm not home, because her food looks barely touched when I come home from work. But I normally work mornings or afternoons, so she might just be one of those cats that likes to eat at night. Before she got pregnant, I always fed her in the late afternoon/early evening.

The vet just palpated her stomach. He didn't take her temperature or anything. He offered to do an x-ray, to see how many kittens there would be, but I didn't get one because they're expensive, and I figured if she was due in a week i'd be finding out the number of kittens pretty soon lol. Its not that I don't trust the vet (my parents have been taking our animals to him for years), I just want to be double-sure when to expect the kittens lol.

I agree that Naira doesn't look that big compared to other pregnant cats, but that might be because she has what I call a "kitten build."  She isn't a very big cat.

Its funny to watch her sometimes because she's not used to her belly yet lol last night she kept trying to roll over onto her back but she couldn't do it, and she can't reach her back legs anymore to groom them.

Do you let her out of the crate at all?  If she has the kittens in the crate, you'll need put a nesting box in there so the kittens don't fall through the openings.

No, I don't let her out of the crate. She's never been inside before, so I don't know if she would go outside of the litter box. She was laying on blankets before, so to try and make her more comfortable I cut up an old computer box and put the blankets in it and put it in the cage, but she refused to lay in it so I removed it and put the blankets back. she laid on the blankets for a while, but yesterday decided she didn't like them anymore either so I took them out too. So now she's just laying on newspaper. 

Was the box maybe too low, and that's why she didn't like it? The sides were only around 4" high, it was an old laptop box. Should I use a taller box?

You can try a box w/only one side open, like a cave.

I agree with @Handsome Kitty. The box needs to be like a cave. I didn't know anything about cats giving birth, so I didn't have a birthing box so my cat Grin decided to have them under the couch. After a week or so I signed up here and set up a nice comfy padded box.

This is the box I gave her and put outside her nest. She only came out to eat and after a week of seeing the box outside she decided to move them in there. You can't see it in the picture, but it had a cover blanket during the night so it was closed off. I hope this gives you an idea as to what would be a simple birthing box.

I found an old cardboard box in my laundry room that looked large enough. Its 18"L x 14"W x 10 2/8" H. The hole I cut is 3" above the bottom of the box and is 8"L x 6"H. Does this look good? Or should I make the hole bigger? Is the box too small? I don't think it would be too high, because when she was outside she kept laying in this really narrow dark space that was above this old dog house in my yard.





I have newspaper on the bottom of the box, and I put an old blanket on top of them. Plan on covering it with the blue blanket, so that its easy to change the bedding when needed.

Anorissa said:

 
 I don't think it would be too high, 

Click to expand...

I mean, I don't think it would be too narrow/low. The space she had been laying in outside was probably only the height of the opening I made in the box.

I think it's a nice size.  Be aware when she has the kittens she will need to stretch out to feed them  And not roll on the kittens.  i don't know how big she is.

I think she may be sad being in the box all the time.  Can you take her out while you're home and play with her?

I do open the cage sometimes, and let her step out a little bit, but all she does when I do that is just lay against my legs lol. I might try blocking off all the really small spaces (under beds, dressers etc) and letting her out sometime when I'm home. It would be just getting her back in the crate that would be difficult. She doesn't like being held, and I'm afraid to pick her up cause I don't want to hurt the kittens.

Isn't her food in the crate?  She'll go in to eat. or you can lead her in with a toy.

Your cat does not look like she will be birthing any kittens in a week's time. I have never seen a pregnant cat whose nipples are not very pink, enlarged, and protruding from their fur when they are close to giving birth. If your cat is pregnant, I find it unusual that her nipples are not prominant, so she may not be very far along.

You said your vet palpated her belly. What did he say he felt? What caused him to say he thought she was due in a week?

How long have you had her inside, and when did you notice her belly? Has it gotten any bigger since you've had her inside? How long were you feeding her outside before bringing her in?

It's very nice of you to be caring for her.

He didn't really say what he felt. He didn't say how many kittens there were, or her size, just that she was "very pregnant" and that I could expect kittens in a week. I went straight from the vet to PetSmart and got a dog pen, a litter box, litter, and some wet food and brought her inside that day (June 30, 2015). Before that, she was outside-only.  I'm pretty sure I called to make the appointment on June 22, so I noticed her belly maybe a day or two before that. But I don't know how long it had been growing, because I had been working a lot of nights and so it had been my mom who had been feeding her mostly for maybe a week. She didn't say anything about Naira's stomach looking bigger until I mentioned it, so I don't know exactly when it would have started growing. I haven't noticed a big change in size since I brought her in.

I had been feeding her for almost a year now. Her mother and her appeared in my yard in late August of 2014, and I started feeding them. Naira wasn't very big then, when she arrived with her mom she could walk and had her eyes open, but she was tiny. It took me months to get her to stop hiding from me and actually let me pet her. Now she can't get enough of being petted lol. She starts purring as soon as she sees me now.

I got some better pictures of two of her nipples, I'll post them soon. I had created a sort of make-shift pen outside her crate out of boxes and other random items from my room and sat with her while I watched some tv. I tried to play with her, but she was more interesting in cuddling lol. She did actually let me gently pet her belly, and so I used that opportunity to snap some pictures.

Thanks for the additional information. I do want to see your next pictures of her nipples.

Has she been wormed?

The two pictures above are of the same nipple (just different angles), near her front right leg. 

The bottom two pictures are of the nipple near her right back leg (both pictures are of the same nipple)



To me, they look longer than a normal cats nipples and I can feel them when I rub her belly. But, they don't look big enough to produce enough milk to support kittens yet.

She hasn't been wormed. I was actually hoping she would have worms instead of kittens lol, and thats why I had taken her to the vet; to see if she was pregnant or wormy. I, unfortunately, didn't have a stool sample to give them though (kinda hard to get a stool sample from an outside cat lol) so they didn't check for worms. But both the vet and nurse agreed that she's pregnant (they both palpated her stomach at different times, the nurse first, and then the vet did when he came in)

Okay, she will probably engorge with milk then when her kittens come. So she's not using the litter box at all? Where does she go? I would hope she'd start using the litter box soon so she can be outside the crate eventually with her kittens. If she will learn the litter box, she might make a very sweet housecat!

She's using the litter box now that she's in a crate. Before I took her to the vet she was outside, so she didn't need a litterbox. She has taken to it surprisingly well though, and hasn't peed or pooped outside it. I haven't noticed her using it today though, but I did change her litter to a different kind. I was using this non-clumping cheap stuff from PetSmart, and she didn't mind it but it smelled sooooooo bad (it had no odor-blocking stuff in it) and even though its non-clumping, it scatters everywhere and I was worried that when the kittens are born they might accidentally eat some, so now I'm trying this all natural stuff called Feline Pine. I figured she'd like the pine stuff because when she was outside, she would normally go to the bathroom underneath the three pine trees in my yard. It smells a whole lot better than the other stuff lol (whatever litter I end up not using I'm gonna donate to my local no-kill animal shelter)