Sterile tom, false pregnancy

One curiosity about neutered tomcats is that some of them still seek out a female in heat and go through the motions of mating, even though ...

Ritualized mating

queen (who is in heat, naturally) is delivered in a carrier to a special queen pen in the stud house. This separates her, via wire or bars,...

No fang, no mate

During mating, the tomcat always sinks his canine teeth—the fangs—into the neck skin of the female. This isn’t optional, and if for some rea...

Love bites

Cats, like most animals, have sex strictly for reproduction, and so it only takes place when the female is fully fertile. Part of the brief ...

Heat, phase II

maintain for up to three minutes without stopping. Bothersome as it is to us, it serves the obvious purpose of letting the tomcats know s...

Tomcat “on hold”

Tomcats have a reputation for being promiscuous, but in fact an adult tom, unneutered, never has sex on his mind (unlike male humans). His e...

“Whole” cats

A male cat who has never been neutered is called “whole.” While we might debate the subject of whether an adult male human can be happy and ...

“Fixing,” “spaying,” “neutering”

A female pet is spayed, which means her ovaries and uterus are removed. (Interestingly, it comes from the old French word espeer, meaning “t...