Expert: Marcia Owen - 1/2/2011

Question
Hi,

My female persian is having strong heat cycles as of today .. She is a little over 2 yrs old and does have experience in motherhood..
My male is around 18 months old and have never mated before.. I have this male for around 2 months and my female absolutely hates him .. He has been trying to mate with her during the past few weeks although she was not in heat then,, obviously she aggressively rejects him ..
Of course, I had them separated to avoid any more trauma..
But now since my female is in heat, I want them both to mate, but the male is not interested in her at all!! I cannot leave them together alone because I know my female won't let him mount her because she hates him and they might get into a fight.. I tried holding her down as she raises her bottom area and moving her hind legs up and down, but he has no interest in her at all ..
Is there anything I can do to fix this?

**She just entered Estrous today.

Thanks

Answer
Hi Blaze

I think your boy is wary of your girl as they have not been getting on.  I have to say that I think the best thing at the moment would be to totally separate them so they cannot see or smell each other, miss this heat cycle, and then when she cycles next time, to bring them together in a controlled fashion to see if he will mate her.

A lot of novice breeders let their boys and girls run together all the time and it is a case of familiarity breeds contempt and also if they haven't been getting on for some reason, then the boy is actually frightened of the girl and doesn't want to risk a fight by getting near enough to mate.

The other thing you may want to bear in mind is that not every pair of cats will mate.  I had a Singapura who I took to a lovely male of my choice and she hated him.  We decided to leave her there and when she was not in heat, she got on with him, but as soon as she came into heat again, she didn't want him near her.  On the next heat, I took her to a different boy and it was if they had fallen in love and they had beautiful kittens.  

Nature if a funny thing sometimes.

Regards

Marcia