Cat Mating

Posted by Jeanne on February 19, 2009

Whether they prowl by day or night, all cats are constantly prepared for an encounter with the opposite sex. For much of the time this will involve little more than long, whining conversations, occasionally exploding into a squawking, spitting, short-lived fight.

In season, however, conditions change. The female is swept by huge, imperative waves of sexual desire and goes seeking a tom to assuage her. This may happen a few times a year or many, depending on the cat. It is a seizure of emotion fierce, primitive, and unembarrassed. The docile cat of the week before becomes restless and filled with anguished longing. She pads about, tense, nervous, tail switching. She rolls, writhes, and undulates. She is yielding, receptive, and female in every sense.

Her voice changes. She cries, piercingly, demandingly, and incessantly, for a tom to come and relieve her. And come he does. Yowling, potent and all male, he comes in great numbers and from miles around.

What follows is so natural, unabashed and public that squeamish human beings may become quite distressed. The toms form a wide, interested ring around the female – or queen, as she is called. Fights break out sporadically among the males – screaming, spluttering tangles that add mightly to the general tension of the affair. Before the session has ended, one of the several who have mated with her is likely to have impregnated her.

His prime function accomplished, the male goes out of the female’s life. And she, her passions cooled, becomes her old mannerly self again.