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Chicago's regularly-scheduled cat wave is about to be too big to handle due to coronavirus -- too many strays are out there with their nuts intact, which means too many damn kittens!

A grassroots, animal-friendly community in Chi-Town called Chicago Community Cats tells TMZ ... the rescues and shelters they normally take stray and feral cats to around this time of year to get spayed and neutered are closed because of COVID-19. That spells trouble.

Of course, it means there's nowhere to take the fierce and the furry, who aren't going to stop sexing each other up anytime soon because of some pesky virus humans fear.

BTW, there's about 200k strays running around in Chicago, and if even a fraction are unneutered/un-spayed ... well, you can do the math. In fact, CCC says they usually help fix at least 3,000 cats right about now, so there's AT LEAST that many on the prowl.

We're told the fear now among the cat lovers in the Windy City is that there'll be a rampant kitten spree in the months to come and by the time the places they need open now eventually wake back up ... it'll be too late. They say they're already getting calls about litters springing up in different neighborhoods, so it's already happening in bunches.

CCC says if this reality comes to full fruition, they'll have to work even harder than normal to try to find foster homes and new owners willing to adopt. And, yes, it could also lead to a pretty grim reality for a lot of those cats that are left hanging in the balance afterward.