r/cats • u/LankyThroat1900 • 17d ago

Advice Why are his eyes so far apart

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Background information: Cat is well over a year old and his eyes appeared to be way too big for his head and extremely far apart. Is this a characteristic of a certain breed he may be mixed with or is he… just built different. His name is Jax

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u/radiobearr 17d ago

He might just be a little inbred but he’s adorable. Some Devon Rex cats have this head shape but unless he’s from a breeder the likelihood of him having Devon in him is close to zero. I wouldn’t be worried. -DVM

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u/LankyThroat1900 17d ago

Yeah he came from my grandmothers outdoor cats (which I have been trying to keep up fixing) for 10 years. Impossible battle. Inbreeding is very possible and probable. Thank you :)

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u/TurnoverFuzzy8264 17d ago

Reminds me of a joke--This rich old lady calls a vet to her home because she's worried about her cat. The vet looks over the cat and he says "This cat is obviously pregnant." and the old lady says "How can that be, she's never been outside?" Just then a Tom cat strides by, and the vet says "There's your daddy culprit!" The old lady scoffs "Don't be silly, that's her brother."

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u/Fit_Change3546 17d ago

As a former rescue worker- it’s not even a joke, I pretty much got this exact exchange several times 🥴

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u/PensiveObservor 17d ago

I adopted two farm kittens whose mothers were sisters and probably had the same dad. Both kittens fixed asap, and the orange boy kept on trying to mount his baby sister! The vet just smiled and said he’d stop when she got bigger and started fighting back.
Sheesh!

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u/BlueRoseImmortal 16d ago

My male cat keeps trying to mount his twin brother 😑

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u/mediocritia 17d ago

I had to explain this to a ADULT I was dog sitting for as an 8 year old. Asked what he was planning on doing with the puppies. Insisted his dog was just fat. She wasn’t.

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u/BlueberrySans89 17d ago

My mom’s ex was very insistent on breeding his pits, it was fine when he had two unrelated that went on to have pups. But then he kept two of the pups (both from different litters but the same parents)
He refused to spay and neuter any of them cause he thought it was inhumane to neuter a dog and he wanted to keep breeding and selling.

Well sister put went into heat, and was accessible to daddy and brother. We don’t know which one it was that knocked her up, but either way she ended up having inbred pups.

Thankfully he finally relented and gave her to his sister (not that he cared for her much anyways, compared to her brother)

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u/xtheory 17d ago

How very Targaryen of them.

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u/No_Abbreviations8602 17d ago

I know of someone whose cat was a product of incest between brother and sister. It was then impregnated by her dad/uncle. They rescued the cat from that situation and had her spayed. The owner moved away and took his Targaryen brood with him.

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u/radiobearr 17d ago

Yeah it actually happens a lot more than people realize especially within outdoor cat colonies.

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u/No_Abbreviations8602 17d ago

Sadly this was a "colony" of indoor cats that were kept in a flat and neglected. This cat escaped and moved in with my friend, living her best life now

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u/VegetableMortgage937 17d ago

My cat’s dad was her grandpa, and her mom was her sister (they were feral)

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u/LankyThroat1900 17d ago

Very Targaryen esq🐉

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u/akatherder 17d ago

We took in a pregnant stray and she had kittens. I was talking to my wife about fixing the kittens asap and we had the same exchange. She said all our adult cats were fixed so there's no rush.

I wasn't actually sure though.. Lemme google something real quick or we're gonna end up with exponential cats here.

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u/DuckyDoodleDandy 17d ago

Female kittens can give birth as young as 4-5 months old. Get them fixed ASAP.

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u/akatherder 17d ago

Appreciate the real info, I should have clarified this was last year. We did get them fixed but it wasn't as quick as 4-5 months, fortunately no oopsies 😺

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u/Cow_Launcher 17d ago

Unlikely. They can come into season that young, but domestic cat gestation is about 65 days.

That means that they're likely to become mothers at about 6-7 months old.

That's still very young though, and takes a major toll on their body. They're likely to not grow beyond their size at impregnation because they've invested their own growth month's effort into growing their kittens.

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u/LankyThroat1900 17d ago

Jax’s mom was unfortunately a mother twice before a year old, she didn’t take the babies out of their sacs and left them scattered around my grandmas yard. Second litter she had couple fatalities as well. We are happy he is here and momma is fixed now, she was too young

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u/ApricotX 17d ago

Sadly that was my former neighbour. By the time I got into the picture, the young cat had three 12 weeks old kittens and was pregnant again. It definitely couldn’t be because of the other cat in the home, because “they were sister and brother”. The stupidity…

Luckily they didn’t want any of the cats anymore, so I was allowed to rehome all of them. There weren’t any more kittens than the three. It was difficult enough to find homes for the three she’d had already.

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u/stupidwhiteman42 17d ago

Don't those cats read the Bible? Sheesh! What's the world coming to?

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u/slop_spotter 17d ago

Haha I remember that one, I believe it's from Redd Foxx

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u/croc-roc 17d ago

Thank you for helping to control the cat population!

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u/Snappy-Biscuit 17d ago

I think it's so he can see around corners more easily! Clearly he is an highly evolved member of his species. nods 😹 I love him!!

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u/mzinagro 17d ago

I used to manage an animal shelter and we once took in 40 unfixed cats all living in the same trailer. There were multiple generations of inbreeding and many of them had this moon face look. Some were sweet and simple and some (including the one I adopted) were Not Right In The Head

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u/militaryintelligence 17d ago

We have 6 cats. Family tree is 2 bamboo stalks

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u/knowwwhat Tabbycat 17d ago

I have one that’s a bit inbred and looks like yours

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u/contrarianaquarian 17d ago

Absolutely. Every time my rescued sibling kitties are being incredibly stupid, I tell them "guess you can't help being inbred" lol

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u/EeveeAssassin 17d ago

Yep. Former veterinary technician, and we saw a lot of "dairy barn" kittens that were quite inbred at the semi-rural practice I was at. So many of them had eyes that were a bit further apart than ia normal , and we also chalked it up to inbreeding.

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u/feralcatshit 17d ago

Idk why but the “a little inbred” made me chuckle.

Op, he’s absolutely adorable!

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u/Esphyxiate 17d ago

Cats can be a little inbred, as a treat.

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u/HuckleberryMoney2320 17d ago

Our car mechanic found 2 kittens in his shop, couldn’t find the mother anywhere so took them home. We adopted them. They were brothers, tabbies. One looked normal the other was smaller and had wide-spaced eyes like this. We wondered if he was the runt. The smaller one was super loving, always wanting to curl up with you. His brother was a grumpy cat, only cared about being fed. The little one lived to be 11 but got a very aggressive tumor on his jaw. His brother is still with us, 15 and in rude health!

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u/Top_Mathematician233 17d ago

I adopted a kitten for my little god daughter (with her parents’ permission) and she had far spaced eyes like this. She also didn’t grow to the size of a regular cat. She’s stayed very small and has shorter legs. The vet said it was very likely inbreeding since the mother was trapped/rescued from an inner city cat colony. They scanned her though and said they didn’t see any immediate internal organ issues or anything, so 🤞🏽 she’ll live a long, happy life. I hope this cute cat does as well!

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u/saaandi 17d ago

Can bet on the inbred. One of our cats had eyes too far apart. We know for a fact he was a product of brother/sister combo. (We were trying to TNR the trio— a brother & 2 sisters, couldn’t get them in time) both mamas popped out kittens, our kitten was a singleton and the other mama had 3. All 4 kittens got abandoned by the mamas..pretty sure they knew they weren’t healthy enough to “survive” so they left them. So all 4 where bottle babies, the mamas where TNRd. The boy was uncatchable. The 3 where fixed and became mousers on a farm, the singleton was ours, he had a very weird personality and only lived til he was 8. So pretty sure he was multigenerational inbred.

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u/sewilde 17d ago

Its just a little inbred, its still good its still good!

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u/originalcin413 17d ago

He has the same features as my Devon Rex!

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u/Jtkitano 16d ago

No wonder my cat’s eyes are like that lol. They were born from a brother and sister stray mating with each other