My husband comes up with odd thoughts now and again. The latest is: are cats from the same litter twins, triplets, etc… like children? We call multiple human births like that, even though sometimes it is more of a litter.
So...what do you think? We have 2 cats from the same litter, are they twins?

That’s an interesting question.  I guess I would think the word “twins” doesn’t really apply, since cats always have more than one baby, unlike people.  Twins is the abnormal for us. 
Has anyone had a litter where two kittens looked exactly alike as if they were identical twins?  That would be really interesting.

It is very rare for cats to have twins. We had a set of twin tabby females we had from the Humane Society in 1990.  We knew they were sisters but we figured there would be some difference in their markings. The vet confirmed that they were identical twins and that it was quite rare.  Chloe was bigger than Maude when we got them and became MUCH bigger despite our best attempts to have her lose weight. We had diet cat food;we took her for walks but we couldn’t get her below about 19 lbs. The less we fed her, the less she moved. Maude was 10-11 lbs.  Chloe died at 8 from what we think was a heart attack. Maude made 16. We often wondered if the other female and male from that litter were twins or was the other female a triplet.

Each kitten is normally born with its own placenta, umbilical cord and afterbirth, just like human babies. The feline uterus is capable of carrying many of these self-contained units (fetuses). Sometimes, however, two fetuses grow in the same sac, sharing the same nutritional supply. This happens very rarely. I don’t know how your vet would know that they are identical twins unless he/she saw them being born.

Ev

EV,

I think he was going on their markings. They were truly identical. We couldn’t find one marking, stripe, etc difference between them. Since one kitten was larger by nearly a lb when they were 12 weeks old, sharing an umbilical cord may have been the cause of that as well.  I’m not a vet but I figured that the vet I’ve known nearly 20 years would know if they were twins.

Sharyn