Nowadays, it’s politically incorrect to own whole cats; that is, cats which have not been spayed or neutered. One result of this a smaller number of feral or unwanted cats. Another is that millions of children are deprived of real experience of oestrus, mating, birth, and nurturing of kittens. Another result is the ownership of uneducated, orphan cats, ripped from their mothers by breeders or greedy pet shops long before they are ready. It takes at least twelve weeks for a mother cat to train her litter of kittens how to be cats. Compared to humans, that’s not a very long time. Would you take babies from their mothers as soon as they could walk and eat? What kind of incomplete humans would they grow up to be!
I have brought up from birth more than a hundred kittens, and found homes for most of them. I know that oestrus in cats is clearly indicated, and that their gestation time is always 51 or 52 days from mating. Just as in humans, at least as shown by entries in my past diaries, it is always 268 or 269 days. Textbooks won’t tell you this, because most people have no idea when fertilisation happened – they even ask a doctor when their baby will be born! To me, that only shows that they are ignorant about their own bodies, and what’s more, they are not in control of them. I suppose that’s the choice of most people, but while ignorance may be an excuse, stupidity is not. I think that adult humans should be able to understand at least the basic facts of nutrition and reproduction!
