Pregnant Feral Cat

Full Circle MO Feral Supports spay/abort of pregnant feral cats.

Spaying a pregnant cat terminates the pregnancy, making this a controversial issue. Some people cannot bear the thought of aborting feral kittens. Others believe that allowing the pregnant cat to have kittens contributes to the pet overpopulation problem.

Spaying a pregnant cat includes abortion, a word that evokes a variety of emotions. Proponents do not like having to take lives of unborn kittens, but their position is based on pragmatic reasoning. Opponents simply do not like the taking of lives under any circumstances, whether born or unborn.

Many animal shelters automatically spay a pregnant cat that comes into the shelter. Some no-kill shelters allow the mother cat to give birth, especially if the pregnancy is late-term. There are some rescue groups that opt to never spay a rescued pregnant cat.

The enormous cat overpopulation problem is partially caused by cat owner’s failure to spay or neuter their cats. Unspayed cats that spend time outside are highly likely to become pregnant. Whether owned, stray, or feral, these cats and their surviving kittens continue to mate, and the offspring from those matings continue to mate. Unspayed females can become pregnant by one or more of their non-neutered male kittens. A pregnant female cat and her descendants can account for the births of several hundred kittens in just a few years.

Animal rescue groups, humane societies, and TNR (trap-neuter-return) groups are overwhelmed in trying to control cat overpopulation, and “kitten season”, which extends for a long part of each year in many geographical areas, is met with dread by these groups. They know this year‘s kitten crop will be responsible for the death of last year‘s kittens or older cats at shelters. There simply isn’t enough space to house all of them, and something must give. It’s a matter of supply and demand and young kittens are in the highest demand.

Spaying a rescued pregnant cat can help contain the overpopulation problem. There are simply too few homes for the huge number of homeless cats. Preventing an unplanned litter may also help prevent the deaths of the living cats and kittens. Even when a pregnant female cat is adopted by the finder, and there are good homes waiting for her kittens, some people view each of those kittens as being indirectly responsible for the death of a shelter cat or kitten that might have been adopted into one of those homes.

If the pregnant cat is very young, very old, or in poor health, pregnancy can cause even more health problems. The kindest and most compassionate action anyone could take with one of these cats is to spray her and abort her litter.

Pyometra in Cats

Pyometra is a serious type of infection that can affect any animal with the uterus including cats. If left untreated, pyometra can be fatal.

Pyometra it’s a bacterial infection of the uterus so it only affects cats that have not been spayed. Cats that have been spayed have had their uterus and/or ovaries removed so it is not possible for a cat to have pyometra unless the surgical procedure was incomplete. There are two types of a pyometra infection commonly seen in cats: open and closed.

Closed pyometras do not have an open, draining cervix so the infection and pus grows in the uterus causing a bloated abdomen and a very ill feeling cat. Lethargy, a decrease in appetite, and even vomiting may occur in a cat with a pyrometra.
When a female cat is in heat the opening to the uterus opens to allow sperm to enter during meeting. But sometimes bacteria that are in the vaginal track of a cat enter the uterus during a heat cycle. The bacteria can cause an infection and pus develops. Not every cat with a uterus will get a pyrometra infection, but older cats with a thickened uterine lining due to going through several heat cycles and cats with abnormal uterine lining such as cysts are at risk.

A female feral cat will look pregnant when actually they just have pyometra. If the pyometra is left untreated, the infection can be fatal in a cat. The best and the only way to prevent a pyometra from occurring is to have it spayed.