Phantom Pregnancy Of A Maine Coon Cat Ended With Inflammation

Last week was very difficult both for me and my Maine Coon cat Mefiti whom I have already talked about before. Not only did she have an abscess under her throat. She was pretending to mate with Filippo a month ago. Filippo is castrated and these games end badly for her:

Mefiti wanted to have kittens so much that she developed a hysterical pregnancy. 

Well, things did not exactly this way. The cat had a hormonal swing. It's not that she "invented" a pregnancy voluntarily like humans could do (by the way, they say, Phantom Pregnancy is possible in human beings, too). 

Maine Coon cats have heat practically every month all year round and can mate even immediately after giving birth. This is a serious problem in homes where owners do not want to sterilize their cats. In my case, I have a small registered domestic cattery and therefore my cats are not sterilized. 

So, what happened?

Mefiti was in heat and tried to mate with the neutered cat. This caused a hormonal surge. Which led to the false pregnancy.

Normally, this does not lead to serious consequences and the problem resolves itself in a few days. But in this case, the inflammation of the uterus has begun. Nobody knows the reason. Maybe precisely because there was that abscess and her body was unable to fight the infection... We don't know. But it happened.

Cats, at least mine cats, don't complain. Maybe they don't want to be treated or are afraid of the vet. Or maybe Maine Coons are just like that. Timur never complained either.

Mefiti ate a little and lay down next to me with her legs stretched out (photo). I honestly didn't think anything bad at first. Yes, she was sad and behaved a little strangely. But it can happen. 

One day she didn't come when I called them to eat their "treats". I went to look for her and found out that she was in the box and had some kind of birth. Other cats also came and it seemed like they were looking for the newborn kittens. Obviously, there weren't. They were not the birth waters, but pus coming out of the uterus.

In the bad luck she had she was lucky that some of the pus had come out. Otherwise, the uterus could burst. Any wrong movement could lead to this. And the cat would have died in terrible suffering. 

Ultrasound confirmed that urgent intervention was needed before it ended badly. 

Even during the operation, the vet could accidentally pierce the thin covering of the uterus and it would be very difficult to then clean the pus from the entrails. The hours while I waited for me to take her back I couldn't find peace. It was too dangerous... 

The vet was very good I must say. In the photo, you can see for yourself how big the extracted uterus was. The cut on her belly is very small, only a few centimeters. 

Here you see Mefiti just some hours after the operation. The problem with this cat is that she doesn't want to take the medicine. She spits it out. But she must take antibiotics. And we fight about it with her every night now. She understood when I took the medicine out of the fridge, she immediately ran away, hid, and didn't come out for a long time. So I have to invent tricks to distract her from looking at me. 

The first few days after the operation she had a fever, but she is now fine. The cut clearly still hurts and I see that sometimes she lies down next to me with those legs stretched out. But the worst is passed. 

I have to say that while I've certainly heard that Phantom Pregnancies happen, this is the first time I've ever seen it. The situation is certainly very dangerous and you need to rush to the vet as soon as possible.