How do you tell if a cat is pregnant?

[ShinyGreenApple]

Some of you might remember, I acquired a new kitty cat several weeks ago. She was covered with ticks and fairly emaciated, but we got weight on her pretty quickly. For the amount of food we're giving her though, she's putting on a lot of weight and seems to be getting a bit of a gut on her. Is she just porky or should I be worried?

[Rapscallion]

Take her to a vet?

Rapscallion

[Fire_on_High]

Getting big? Wait another week then listen for tiny little mews and one big purr.

[Parrothead]

Wikihow to the rescue!

[Seshat]

For the amount of food we're giving her though, she's putting on a lot of weight and seems to be getting a bit of a gut on her. Is she just porky or should I be worried?

Unpleasantly, there are other things that could give her an apparent gut. (tumors spring to mind, and if my memory is correct, some sorts of worms)

Honestly, my thought is that it's vet time. And while you're there, ask the vet for recommendations for kitty health insurance companies.

[dendawg]

What everybody else said...definitely take her to the vet, and if she is pregnant look into health insurance. Post-natal care for a litter of kittens ain't cheap.

[Mikkel]

Yep, vet time. The only certain way I know of is that in the last week or so of pregnancy you can feel the kittens move through the skin and the mommy cat will try making nests in a lot of inappropriate places.

[MoonCat]

Cats are only pregnant for about nine weeks. If you've had her that long and she hasn't had kittens yet, it's probably not that.

They also can put weight on fairly quickly sometimes when recovering from illness. I also vote for a vet visit so you can be sure. Look at it this way: Check it out now, while whatever's going on is more likely to be cheaper to take care of.

[blas]

Some experience here to share, one a pregnant cat story and one a non pregnant cat story.

Beloved FatCat was always an obese behemoth of a cat, but when her health started going downhill, she at first lost a bit of weight, and then put on more than she originally ever had to carry around. In fact, her bottom half was awkwardly large right before she died. We will never know if it was cancer or a tumor or digestive problems, but she developed quite an apple bottom right before she died.

I would suggest anytime a cat starts gaining a lot of weight with no seemingly valid reason, get her to the vet.

Baby the cat was once pregnant. We don't know whatever happened to her kittens. At the time, both cats lived outside and we were about to move.

A few weeks before we moved, we noticed Baby got fat. Really fat. And while she and FatCat may have been indulging on mice and other hunting treats of living outdoors, there's no reason she'd be that fat when FatCat was actually losing a little weight from being outdoors and having more rumble room. If you put your hand on her belly, Baby got really upset and it felt like something was squirming around in there.

She went missing for a few days right before we left. My parents said that if the day came we had to move and she didn't come back, we'd have to leave her. Thankfully, she was back that morning, much thinner than before. So we did end up being a little late for leaving because we went on a hunt throughout the neighborhood and in some brush to see where she'd left her kittens. We never found them, and we had to leave.