How big will that kitty in the window be?

December 14, 2007 1:41 PM

How can I figure out how long/tall/big my kitten will grow to be?

Just got back from the vet's office, and I felt brushed off when I asked this question. Obviously I'll find a new vet, but since my question isn't pressing and Coal is doing just fine, I'm not going to pay for another appointment to find out how big he'll be.

He is about 14" long fully stretched out. He's 18 weeks old, and weighs 4 lbs 15 oz. Is there any way to figure out how large he'll be when he's fully-grown?

posted by MeetMegan to pets & animals (15 comments total)

It can be pretty difficult to say, but since he looks like a pretty standard domestic housecat (as opposed to, say, a Maine Coon cat, those things get huge for a cat,) I'd say he'll probably max out around 14 lbs., on the heavy side if he eats a lot.

Weight aside, physical size can differ fairly dramatically. My girlfriend and I have three cats; Timmy's fat but is shorter and not as long as Tobey who is the slimmest of the three but is arguably taller and longer. The third, our Mischief, is slightly smaller than both but weighs more than Tobey. Tobey weighs 14 lbs, the others one or two lbs. more.
posted by InsanePenguin at 1:49 PM on December 14, 2007

Check out the size of his back legs. They're often a very good indicator on how big your cat will be.

I have a black cat, too, and at his first vet visit the vet took one look at him and said, "He's going to be a big." His back legs were very tall. Here he is at about ten weeks--you can tell he was a lanky guy.

He's 2.5 years old now, about 13 pounds, though not chunky at all. He's all limbs, really.

Good luck with him! He's a cutie.
posted by atayah at 1:49 PM on December 14, 2007

Do you know anything about the cat's parents, or if it's any particular breed?

Our cats were little wisps of fuzz as kittens, but one has some Maine Coon in him and the other has some Norwegian Forest cat in her, and now they are both the size of Mini Coopers.
posted by padraigin at 1:51 PM on December 14, 2007 [2 favorites]

I have a cat that weighs 7 pounds and a cat that weighs 18 pounds and they are the same age and they eat the same thing. The bigger cat has some siamese in him (he looks like a white siamese with butterscotch siamese points) and the only clue I had that he might be bigger is that his legs were very long when he was a teenage kitten. It depends on the genetics of your cat as well as the obvious of what it eats and how much exercise it gets. I think most adult cats weigh about 6-12 pounds.
posted by 45moore45 at 1:52 PM on December 14, 2007

[I removed all the links to cat photos, put them in your profile if they're nevessary for this question]
posted by jessamyn at 1:57 PM on December 14, 2007

From what little I understand about these things, it's not as easy to predict a kitten's adult size as it is to predict a puppy's adult size. One of my four was really little as a kitten and grew to be a monster. My MIL found a kitten who could fit in the pocket of her robe and he grew to be about 18 lbs, all muscle.
posted by cooker girl at 2:03 PM on December 14, 2007

I got Apollo at 16 weeks from the shelter, and he was massive for his age (6 lbs). So massive, in fact, that when I took him to the vet the following week for kennel cough, she didn't believe his age until she looked at his teeth. While he did grow to be fairly large (14 lbs. or so), he's not really so big (just kinda fat). Reese's Pieces was a peanut of a kitten and now, almost fully-grown, is a pretty small cat with scary laser beam eyes (Hitchcock shadow of Apollo included for comparison).

Your cat looks normal-sized. He will probably grow to be Apollo-sized. But less fat. Probably. Like cooker girl says, it's hard to predict cats.
posted by uncleozzy at 2:07 PM on December 14, 2007

Not terribly scientific, but cats seem to end up with their adult length tail by the time they are 4 months old. Then the rest of them grows until the tail is proportional to their body.
posted by jamaro at 2:13 PM on December 14, 2007

It depends in part on how big your cat's parents are, and also what kind of nutrition he got as a teeny kitten (e.g., if he was born feral and was feral for some crucial amount of developmentally important time). They grow pretty fast, so you won't have to wait long to find out.
posted by rtha at 2:16 PM on December 14, 2007

Awww, he's a cutie!

Most neutered male domestic cats I've been around were in the 10-12 pound range; females more around 8 pounds. There are larger breeds out there, mostly the hardy longhaired breeds such as Maine Coons, but they're rarely over 20 pounds as far as I know. I have a gigantic Turkish Van, and even when he was a kitten he had monstrous paws and claws, so if he's a mini-bigfoot that might be an indicator that he'll get big.

I can't find anything to back me up on this, but I've noticed that kittens seem to be pretty close to their adult size around seven or eight months - they're still growing, but they won't get much huger. Again, this varies from cat to cat, and the Maine Coon-types can keep growing until about the age of three.
posted by Metroid Baby at 2:20 PM on December 14, 2007

My experiences are with Maine Coons and Turkish Vans, which can generally keep growing for a few years and end up well over ten pounds. I generally tend to consider the length of the back legs and the size of the ears to the overall frame of the body to make my guess as to how much they have left in them, I find most the kittens I have seen "grow into" these areas. Not exactly scientific, probably not very accurate across breeds.
posted by prostyle at 2:50 PM on December 14, 2007

i have no useful answer, here, but i'm glad to hear that coal survived his hospitalization well.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:49 PM on December 14, 2007

The eventual size/weight will depend on its body type. There are four basic cat body types:

Foreign : Long slender bodies, fine bones, wedge-shaped angular heads (e.g., Siamese)

Semi-Foreign : In between Foreign and Domestic, but closer to the foreign description

Domestic : In between, but closer to the cobby description

Cobby : Heavy boned, short bodied, round head and usually a thick tail. (e.g., Persian)

My two are domestic, leaning heavily towards cobby and each weigh 11lbs and measure about 19" from tip of nose to base of tail. I couldn't measure the height as they refused to co-operate and kept deliberately falling over at this point.

So work out what body type. The Foreign/semi-foreign will be taller and more slender than Domestic/Cobby cats.
posted by essexjan at 3:57 PM on December 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Just got back from the vet's office, and I felt brushed off when I asked this question. Obviously I'll find a new vet ...

If the vet is otherwise good at what she does, do you really need a new one? As the answers here suggest, there's no magic answer. Maybe the vet was brushing you off because you asked an unanswerable question.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 4:48 PM on December 14, 2007

It's definitely about the feet. Adrian is polydactyl and he grew to be 17 pounds. (We successfully got him down to 16, but he's a bit grumpy about that.) His littermate Jeffrey is half his size, but has the usual number of toes and spry little feet.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:26 PM on December 14, 2007