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ESDAW

Cat - breeding

Female cats are seasonally polyestrous, which means they may have many periods of heat over the course of a year, the season beginning in spring and ending in late autumn. Heat periods occur about every two weeks and last about 4 to 7 days. Multiple males will be attracted to a female in heat and can mate with her.


Because ovulation is not always triggered by a single mating, females may not be impregnated by the first male with which they mate.

Furthermore, cats are superfecund; that is, a female may mate with more than one male when she is in heat, with the result that different kittens in a litter may have different fathers.


The gestation period for cats is between 64–67 days, with an average length of 66 days. The size of a litter averages three to five kittens, with the first litter usually smaller than subsequent litters.

Kittens are weaned at between six and seven weeks, and cats normally reach sexual maturity at 5–10 months (females) and to 5–7 months (males), although this can vary depending on breed. Females can have two to three litters per year, so may produce up to 150 kittens in their breeding span of around ten years.


Cats are ready to go to new homes at about 12 weeks old, or when they are ready to leave their mother. Cats can be surgically sterilized (spayed or castrated) as early as 7 weeks to limit unwanted reproduction.



This surgery also prevents undesirable sex-related behavior, such as aggression, territory marking (spraying urine) in males and yowling (calling) in females.

Traditionally, this surgery was performed at around six to nine months of age, but it is increasingly being performed prior to puberty, at about three to six months. To neuter female cats can also help the cat later in life to avoid getting breast cancer, which is quite common in older cats or cats that are given birth control pills.

In an average year, a fertile cat can produce three litters of kittens, with up to 4 to 6 kittens in each litter. Based on these numbers, one female cat and her offspring could produce up to 420,000 cats over a seven year period if not spayed or neutered.
A show cat (also known as a purebred cat or pedigreed cat) is one that has been judged to be close to the physical ideal for its breed standard at a cat show. Not all pedigreed cats are show cats, many are just pets but the ones with the best conformation and personality are often shown in associations such as the CFA and TICA in the US, the GCCF in the UK or the FiFe in the rest of Europe.

Uncommonly, a prize-winning pedigreed show cat can be worth thousands of Euro but most are loved pets. In order to compare examples of breeds and improve stock, cat shows are held where judges evaluate the cats according to a breed standard. Pedigreed cats are often identified with microchip implants.



 
A common misconception is that all pedigreed cats are less healthy than random-bred cats due to inbreeding. Not all pedigreed cats are excessively inbred, however; in the past, this was the case with some breeds, before the modern understanding of genetics was widely circulated.

Currently, breeders take great care to select for the healthiest animals, which has greatly reduced the incidence of health issues. Many of the worst, like PKD in Persians and HCM in Maine Coons, have been nearly eliminated due to preventive screening, long term tracking and study by geneticists.


Breeds have different origins, some are manmade or the result of mutation, while others are found in nature. Some breeds of cat have been created by taking a single tom cat or queen with an unusual physical characteristic that breeds true. The entire Cornish Rex breed can be traced back to a single parent animal with an unusual genetic mutation producing a curly coat. Both the Burmese and Tonkinese breeds can be traced back to a single cat, Wong Mau, which was brought from Burma in the 1930s.



Breeders continually strive to eliminate negative characteristics that various cat breeds exhibit as the breeds are developed. There is not really any such thing as a 'purebred' cat since all registered breeds began as random-bred cats. In this case, 'pedigreed' is a more accurate term.

Cat breeders are continually competing to find the 'ideal' of the breed - the cats that come closest to fitting the breed standard. Because of this, the physical characteristics of a prize-winning show cat have gradually changed in some breeds.

This genetic shifting is most obvious in the two oldest, most popular and most distinctive breeds of show cat - the Persian and the Siamese. However, some show cats are naturally occurring breeds that are perpetuated to keep the original look of a cat from a particular region. Examples are the Maine Coon and Turkish Van. Source
A Kitty farm or Kitty mill is a commercial cat breeding facility that is operated with an emphasis upon profits above animal welfare and is often in substandard conditions regarding the well-being of the animals in their care. Similar types of operations exist for other animals commonly kept as pets or used as feed for other animals.

The term can be applied to operations involving other animals commercially bred for profit. For-profit breeding on a smaller scale is sometimes referred to as "backyard breeding".

The term ‘backyard breeders’ is commonly used in Canada and the U.S. to describe a breeder with a lack of knowledge and experience; while the term ‘puppy farms’ or ‘kitty farms’ refers to businesses that mass produce animals of different breeds.



Animal rights activists claim that breeding animals in order to sell them is unethical, attacking breeders whom they believe are more concerned with profit than the animals' welfare.

Critics cite breed registries for encouraging the inbreeding of dogs and cats thereby contributing to a proliferation of genetic disorders.

Intensive puppy and kitty breeding is the hidden cruelty behind the pet store window, in the newspaper, or the internet.

The general public are unaware that puppy and kitty farms can house thousands of animals, imprisoned for life as they churn our litter after litter of puppies and kittens.

Regain the status as companion

Neutering - refers to the sterilization of animals, usually by removal of the male's testicles or the female's ovaries and uterus, in order to eliminate the ability to procreate and reduce sex drive.

Because of the overpopulation of cats in all European countries, many animal control agencies, advise that cats not intended for further breeding should be neutered or spayed, so that they do not have undesired kittens that may have to later be euthanized. 

Domesticated animals have not the same condition to survive in the wild and suffer from illnesses, accidents, starvation, poisoning, bad people, poor storage enclosures and exposed to different weather seasons.

ESDAW directs sharp criticism to the EU for its indulgence, not to organize the member countries to coordinated neutering and spaying actions for these abandoned companion animals and deliberately excluded this group of animals from the common EU laws on animal welfare.



All European countries must establish central ownership register and pass laws, forcing dog and cat owners to neuter or spay the animals.

And also introduce neuter and spay program for abandoned companion animals based on the WHO, the major animal welfare organizations and veterinarians approach of catch, neuter and return programs (CNR) or trap, neuter and release (TNR).

CNR  or TNR is a neutering or spay program and based on catch (stray) animals, neuter or spay (and usually vaccinated), and then return the animal to freedom.

There are no reliable data from all EU (European) countries on the number of abandoned companion animals. But the number is probably horribly large (about 100 - 150 million cats and dogs) and animal welfare organizations and veterinarians in Europe are fully convinced that the problem is bigger than all fear.
 However, we believe that the number is about more than one million companion animals to be euthanized or in other ways dies in Europe, annually. 
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