my "male" cat is pregnant...? Thanks Pet"smart"...

[lion queen]

Thank you! 

I was trying to wait until nap time so I could get them all balled up on the bed together.  Looks like kitty has her own plans for this afternoon

 

[ravencorbie]

What a story!  I have a similar one:  when I was volunteering at a local shelter/rescue group, one of the cats was labeled "fractious," so she was in a cage (most of the cats just wandered around).  The day I started, another volunteer told me she would take care of that cat while I did some of the other cages (cleaning, etc.)  As she started, she said, "Oh my!  You're in heat!  I thought we spayed you!"  This made me nervous when I adopted my cat, so one of the first things I asked at my first vet visit was to check to see if she was spayed.  Thankfully, she was.  This shelter is EXTREMELY pro-spay/neuter and they also run a TNR program, so I guess my point is that anyone can make a mistake.  That said, having TWO at the same time from the same shelter -- seems less like an honest mistake and more like negligence.

 

[lion queen]

RavenCorbie

The lady I spoke with at the ASPCA said she doesn't try to sex kittens.  She also says she gets them from the Local Vets.  She is looking into it as far as that goes.  She did have all the same paperwork I did.  It seems she runs a very smooth operation over there. In a matter of minutes she had kittys chip info and adoption folder.  so of course she asked me "are you sure he is pregnant?"  lmao!  Really?!  Do we have to start that again?

We are human we make mistakes!   ~on the lighter side    -True story a little girl at a gas station once asked if my big fat little brother was pregnant. 

 

[ritz]

I commend you LionQueen for your grreeeeaaaattt attitude; I wouldn't be as gracious, calm, sanguire.

A woman I know adopted a kitten from a rescue organization at PetCo/PetSmart.  The volunteer there let her walk out with the kitten.  The woman put on her application that she was undecided or would declaw the cat, that she had two cats already declawed.  Later that night, the head of the rescue organization called her at home and reamed her out for even thinking about de-clawing. 

(I talked the woman out of declawing her kitten with a little more honey, less vinegar; I sent her some links from The Cat Site.)

BTW:  Ritz and her brothers/sisters were rescued when they were around 5 months old:  two are short haired, two long haired; two took about one month to be adoptable; two took six months.  I suspect multiple fathers.  This was before I started TNRing.

 

[lion queen]

Good Afternoon Ritz

Honey and patients!

I don't have the heart to get a cat declawed.  I have persuaded a few out of it and basically it is done visually.  Websites are helpful and so is proof.  3 cats 4 leather chairs no holes.  It is pretty easy to deter ur feline companions from using your furniture as a scratching post.  Besides, scratching posts are far less expensive and more entertaining than putting ur little one(s) through surgery and a life time of ailments it will cause.

 

[lion queen]

Here is a little update for anyone who is following this;

I get a call at work today and my troop is telling me "this sounds important"  So... a million and one things are going through my head but none like this.

It's the lady calling me back again.  She says...  Are you sure this is "socks" (his/her original name)?  I just gave the lady Kitty's microchip number again  and told her to look it up and call me back.  I'm sorta glad he was adopted with a microchip now.

Her reasoning; cats are easily "swapped".   If "socks" was swapped it happened before I adopted him.  I told her Kitty has been an indoor cat and anyone with balls big enough to try and take her outdoors probably doesn't have balls anymore. 

  Nobody has swapped my cat.  (meet the fockers came to mind)

Seems she wants to get to the bottom of this one way or another.  I wouldn't deter anyone from rescuing or fostering cats from her.  It's obvious a mistake was made somewhere and she is trying to find out who what when where why...

Meanwhile back at the ranch... Kitty is getting big, her breathing is rapid and she has been eating less these past 2 days.  Kitty's activity level is also low.  Her idea of wrestling with her brothers is one big "I don't wanna play" swipe with her paw.  Playing fetch has gone down to.. I throw a straw.  She goes after the straw and lays on it.   My Husbands paternal instincts seem to have kicked in somewhere.  I heard him tell Quagmire to leave kitty alone last night.  He said "That's no way to treat a pregnant woman"  lol!  smh..

 

[Willowy]

Ooh, that would be something, wouldn't it? If someone swapped the original "Socks" with a random kitty they found in the parking lot or something? The plot thickens. . .have you ever had her scanned for her microchip or are you just going by the number on the adoption papers?

Are the boys neutered yet? Remember that she can get pregnant right after the babies are born, and tomcats will sometimes kill kittens. It would be best for all if they got done before the babies came. Give them some time to get the hormones out of their systems.

She's gonna have a lot of little calicos . Well, the girls will all be calico/tortoiseshell. The boys will be red like their mama. Red females can only have reds and torties (torties only if the daddy cat is dark-colored. If he's red also she'll have all reds).

 

[jcat]

So somebody else may have thought they were adopting an intact female and actually got a neutered male? Somehow I can see shelter workers microchipping kittens and getting the paperwork mixed up.

We had some neighbors who had a spayed female who kept returning "home" after they moved. Since she was traveling along busy roads, their former landlord agreed to take ZsaZsa in. He became ill (and died), and we kept her (till her first owners took her back when they moved to another country). Much to my surprise, I discovered she had a very small penis one day when I was rubbing her belly. I took her to the vet, who did an ultrasound and discovered that "she" was a crypto-orchid hermaphrodite, so I had to have her neutered, too.

When I told her first owners, the husband told me that the vet had tried to explain something to his foreign wife when ZsaZsa was spayed, but she didn't understand and he didn't pursue it. :lol3:

 

[mservant]

So somebody else may have thought they were adopting an intact female and actually got a neutered male? Somehow I can see shelter workers microchipping kittens and getting the paperwork mixed up.

 

Mmm, there's a thought. We should all keep an eye out for any new threads about surprise male cat adoption.....  

Scanning the micro chip was pretty much the first thing my vet did when I introduced Mouse to them, now see god reason why they do this! 

 

[Willowy]

I doubt the shelter lets any intact cats get adopted. So I wasn't thinking it happened at the shelter. I was more thinking it could have happened at Petsmart. . .maybe an employee or a very sneaky customer swapped a stray kitten for the fully vetted kitten or something like that. So just wondering if Kitty had ever been scanned for the microchip.

 

[jcat]

The female kitten could theoretically have been too small to spay at the time of adoption, or the rescue/shelter may put unneutered animals up for adoption when they're pressed for space.

Pediatric neutering isn't at all common in Germany, so you sign an agreement to have it done at 6 months and the rescue/shelter follows up. I know people in the U.S. who've had the same type of adoption agreement, especially with rescues.