Heats and Mating

- things to consider

It varies a lot at which age the female cat will be in heat for the first time. It is also difficult to survey this because the first heat often is so weak that the owner will not notice it (but the tomcats of the neighborhood will :-)).
Anyhow it is wise to put off the first litter until the cat is about a year old. Otherwise she may be too immature to care for a litter without too much "fussing about".

If you want your female cat to be mated, you should consider this:

- if the cat has been on oral contraceptives, at least 10 days must have passed since she had the last pill, before you can have the

cat mated. If this is not possible, you should rather wait till her next heat. It takes a while before the hormone has left the body, and it may either cause the mating to fail or damage the fetuses.

- it is wise to have both cats tested for feline leukemia and FIV (Feline AIDS). These two incurable and fatal diseases, which can be checked in the same test, the so called Eliza test, are known to infect by mating or fighting.

- theoretically one mating is enough, in practice it is best to let the cats stay together until one or both are getting tired of it (it is often the male who is first "run down").

The Course of a Mating

If the cats don't know each other beforehand, it is possible that the first thing to happen is that the female goes out of heat.
This is quite normal.
Many people think that animals mate completely at random with any suitable partner they might run into. This is not the case.
Female cats can be very "choosy" and as a rule it takes a certain seductive skill in the male for him to be accepted.
Now and then they will reject a male completely, and then there is nothing else to do for the owner than to fetch the lady and present her to another male, who may then have better luck.
If sympathy arises, the female will go into heat again, which, however, does not mean that the male now can "just jump on". An experienced male will keep at a safe distance for a while still while circling around the female singing seductively.

At last the right moment has come (which the experienced male can both smell and hear from the female), and he seizes her by the neck skin. This he does simply because the female will move about so much in her passion, that he has to have a hold of her in order not to "fall off" all the time.
During the mating, which does not last many minutes, the female will kick vigorously backwards with her hind legs. While the mating is going on, some females will make growling and/or cooing sounds; in cats who already under normal circumstances are loud, this "music" may sound a bit aggressive (which it isn't, however). The mating is ended by the female's orgasm sound, which can be best described as a "cooing roar", often rising both in volume and pitch. Soon after this, the male pulls out, and if he has mated before, he'll hurry away, for else the female will slap him in the face.
The feline penis has small barbs, and that's why it hurts the female somewhat, when the male pulls out. It is believed that, oddly enough, it is this pain which triggers the ovulation. Cats do not have automatic, regular ovulations like humans do.
After the mating the female will roll vigorously from side to side on the floor/ground. This behavior (along with the above mentioned roar) is one of the most sure signs of a completed mating.