Kittens Having Kittens.

[ReallySleepy]

Misleading? There are distinct breeds, and none of my cats have belonged to any.

Misleading. Mixed-breed dogs are mixes of distinct dog breeds. What people call "mixed-breed cats" are not mixes of distinct cat breeds.

I'd like to see further discussion on this topic, preferably with some input from knowledgeable people, but that discussion belongs in a thread of its own.

 

[Merlin77]

Just wanted to mention one more thing about what I bolded.

You seem to have a fantasy of your two kittens settling down like some sort of happy human family and raising their offspring cooperatively, but cats don't do that. They just don't. Their social order doesn't work that way.

If all goes well, the female will care for the kittens. (If it doesn't, you may end up having to bottle feed the kittens, or they will die or one of the parents will kill them.) The male will not be a caretaker. Cats do not form bonded parenting pairs, and fathers do not take care of the offspring.

Based on your description of what you think is going to happen, your picture of how this is going to work is very rosy. Feline reproduction is a lot messier and at times more brutal than what you seem to be picturing. I really hope you don't have to find this out the hard way, because you seem to be setting yourself up for a harsh reality check, unfortunately.

That's all true for the most part, but I know that some toms actually do care for the kittens. Obviously they can't feed them, but they snuggle with them and keep them in order when the mother is away.

There was a book I read, a non-fiction book, where the owner of some cats had two litters of kittens and their tom would cuddle with the kittens like a human father.

One tom I know shared caretaking of his kittens with the mom, he would push them under parked cars to hide them from humans.

Just saying....

 

[ReallySleepy]

That's all true for the most part, but I know that some toms actually do care for the kittens.

They say that this is true of the (North) African wild cat. For some reason it seems hard to find proper scientific discussion of the reasons for this behavior, but there is agreement that this cat breed is very special, meaning less wild in many respects than other wild cats, and they are fairly tame in their natural state. It is no coincidence that Felis silvestris libyca is the main source of our domestic cats.

 

[Blakeney Green]

That's all true for the most part, but I know that some toms actually do care for the kittens. Obviously they can't feed them, but they snuggle with them and keep them in order when the mother is away.

There was a book I read, a non-fiction book, where the owner of some cats had two litters of kittens and their tom would cuddle with the kittens like a human father.

One tom I know shared caretaking of his kittens with the mom, he would push them under parked cars to hide them from humans.

Just saying....

Stories like that are sweet, but the reason they're noteworthy is that they're so rare.

The original poster is assuming that her male cat will be involved in caretaking. That simply isn't realistic.