The female cat’s reproductive cycle or heat cycle is basically a repetitive cycler of hormonally driven and seasonally fluctuations in the fertility as well as sexual receptivity of the female cat. Under the fluctuating hormonal influences of the estrus cycler, the whole female cat cycles back and forth between receptive and n heat to mating to non-receptive and not-in-heat to mating.
The different periods of sexual receptivity and non-receptivity are actually defined by distinct behavioral characteristics, reproductive tract structural changes, and sex hormone fluctuations. All of these are important in making the female cat accepting of pregnancy and mating as her hormonal situation and physical situation demands.
Even if the stage where female cats are in heat is considered as a hormonally-mediated state, driven primarily, and influenced by increases in blood vessels of particular sex hormones, it is basically defined and recognized on the basis of the behavioral signs of the animal not based on the hormonal measurements. The cat is also defined as being in heat if it shows some behavioral characteristics, which are usual of female cats in heat and if it stands for a male cat and enables mating to happen.
What You Should Know about Feline Estrus?
Estrus is the stage where a female reproductive cycle wherein the female cat is receptive to the male cat sexually and would stand for him to mate. It’s defined on the basis of the sexual behavior of the female cat, particularly her willingness to mate.
Particular hormone levels as well as reproductive tract structural changes all provide the cat owner and vet some important clues as to how close the female cat is reaching the state of estrus, yet whatever the changes are, a female cat can’t be termed to be in heat until she shows various behavioral signs associated to feline estrus and until she stands to enable a male cat to mate with her.
Female cats first come into heat under the influence of increased photoperiod, provided that she reached the appropriate age for the onset of puberty stage and provided that she already attained at least eighty percent of her bodyweight as an adult. Once the length of every day is increased, beginning late winter through the months of Autumn, Summer, and Spring, the change in day length is registered by a part of the brain of the female cat known as pineal gland. This secretes a hormone known as melatonin and this has an essential role to play in the seasonal initiation of female cat’s reproductive cycle.
Generally, it’s extremely easy to recognize if a female cat is in heat by the way she behaves. Besides, feline estrus is diagnosed and characterized on the basis of female cat behavior as the time when female cats will permit a male cat to mate with her.
Even if it’s not as precise at determining when the female cat is in heat and receptive in mating as the estrus behaviors of the female cat, there are some ways in which you can detect an onset of follicular phase of the estrus cycle of the cat.
