Meet “Flipper”
Flipper was rescued from Delano, California when he was just 2.5 weeks old. His mother is a repeat offender that is too smart or too tiny to set off our cat traps (although this time our new drop trap was too smart for her).
Flipper is at least a half brother to our former rescue, Wee Angry Angus who was born on April 15th, 2020. Flipper was born on July 8th, 2020. Average cat gestation is 60-70 days (about 9 weeks), which means females in Southern California can have kittens as much as 4-5 times a year! Flipper & Angus’s bad mama was pregnant again when Angus was just 2-3 weeks old. Even though she was still sort of caring for her kitten (sort of is a term used loosely – she tends to lose her kittens when she goes back into heat). Barely more than a baby herself, she most likely came into heat at around 4-5 months old. This is a perfect example of why you can’t put off spaying your cats. If you screw up the first time and the kitty gets preggers, just because she is caring for a litter of kittens doesn’t mean she can’t get pregnant again almost immediately. Although it is best to wait until a kitten is about 12 weeks of age to be spayed, most vets can and will spay a cat as long as they are at least 2lbs.
Flipper is starting to zoom around like a real kitten instead of just sleep and eat like a little slug. His eyes are still blue and his ears are still a little folded (eyes change color to their real shade around 6-7 weeks). He will be ready to go to his forever home with his three doggie sisters when he is about eight weeks old!