Spay a cat, yes or no?

General facts

Castration is considered not such a simple operation as many assume. This is not just the removal of the testes: during the operation, the glands of the genital organs are cut and the reproductive functions of the body are completely stopped. The procedure can be carried out using several methods:

1. Standard excision. This technique is the most common and simple.
2. Fertility with the help of medications. For this, an implant is sewn under the skin with the required amount of medication that suppresses the cat’s sexual desire. This is an expensive but safe procedure.
3. Chemical sterilization, during which a mixture of drugs is injected directly into the testes. This compound destroys the glands. Their tissue is then replaced by muscle tissue. This procedure, which has not taken root in our country, is considered easy to use and cheap.
4. Castration under the influence of radiation. The organ is placed under gamma rays and treated. Such manipulation requires quite expensive equipment. From a safety point of view, this is a simple intervention that does not require anesthesia.

It is clear that surgical penetration into the animal's body is not always necessary. However, it is excision with a scalpel that is popular in domestic veterinary practice. Most likely, this is due to the low cost of the method.

Advantages and disadvantages of castration

Carrying out surgical intervention is not an empty desire of the owner to turn a pet mustache into a soft toy. Such interference in the body has positive and negative sides. Among the advantages of removing the gonads are:

1. Reducing manifestations of aggression on the part of the pet. During the period of searching for a female, he becomes conflicted, nervous, and may attack or hiss at a person. After excision of the testes, there will be no need for sexual hunting, and aggression will be reduced to a minimum.
2. Reducing unpleasant physical behavior, such as obsessive loud meowing to attract a partner. The cat will not have the need to mark its territory.
3. There will be no attempts to escape from home and go on a long journey. The pet will now stay at home or in a well-known yard with great pleasure. He won't want to go out looking for a bride.
4. Prevention of urological diseases. Thus, males, thanks to the removal of the gonads, are completely free from testicular cancer or prostate adenoma.

Owners of male cats need to understand that castration of a cat at any time is not a panacea for all health or behavioral problems. Each surgical intervention involves a number of difficulties:

• metabolic disorders and the development of obesity;
• impossibility of using a male for mating;
• probable complications in the form of the development of urolithiasis.

In fact, there are few hassles after the process, and some of them are easy to deal with. To avoid problems with digestion and salt deposition, it is enough to reduce and adjust the animal’s diet.

Should you believe castration myths?

Perhaps the most common and strangest misconception is to think that a cat’s behavior is completely similar to a person’s. The owners believe that they will deprive their pet of the “joy of love” or “manhood,” but this is a huge misconception. Mammals (with the exception of humans and dolphins) do not experience pleasure from intercourse; sex hormones dictate certain actions to them.

Perhaps, only if the cat protects the territory of a private house from other cats, raccoons, hedgehogs and others, does he need to stay with the testes. But then be prepared for his constant fights, injuries and absences for adventures. Unneutered village cats live significantly less than their domestic counterparts, and their lives are far from easy.

Therefore, if you have an exclusively pet kitten, you need to take it for a minor operation. And in order not to worry, get acquainted with common myths that are not justified in any way:

1. Cats become lazy and get fat

   . A cat that has been castrated at a fairly mature age (after about 7-8 years) can become lazy. In all other cases, the animal remains active and cheerful. As for obesity, any four-legged animal with improper nutrition will gain excess weight, so the question is not the operation, but what you feed your cat. Choose good food or create a natural menu under the guidance of a veterinarian - and everything will be fine.

2. The animal will become aggressive

   . This myth has been debunked by many counterexamples. It is uncastrated males, unsatisfied in their desire, who become very angry (not all, but many, especially by the age of 5-8). Their nature is to fight for females, and if they do not fight with their relatives, they will get it from their owners. There are more than one or even a thousand stories about how cats seriously injured their owners, and it was all due to raging instinct. Unfortunately, late castration will not save such individuals - we can only talk about euthanasia, since the animal becomes dangerous to others.

3. The cat will have problems with the genitourinary system

   . Again, it all depends on feeding and not on minor surgery. If you choose the right diet and give your animal only clean bottled water, urolithiasis will bypass it.

4. Surgery is a big burden on the body

   . With a small error we can agree with this statement, but! Nowadays, most veterinarians use light anesthesia, from which the cat recovers very quickly. The operation itself is not abdominal, so the risks of complications are minimal. The very next day the pet returns to its normal life and does not experience any discomfort.

In conclusion, we can say that some cats, even after castration, continue to perform “acts” with a cat, a chair leg, a blanket, a soft toy, etc. This means that the cat remains a “man,” which is important for many owners.

Cut once: day of surgery

So, the time comes when you can castrate your cat. Agreements with the doctor have been reached and an appointment has been scheduled. The castrated patient awaits his fate. He needs to be prepared for a simple, but still surgical operation.

The ideal algorithm looks like this:

1. The pet must be vaccinated no earlier than 1 year and no later than 40 days before surgery. Rabies vaccination is required! It is permissible to reduce this period to 2 weeks.
2. No later than 2 weeks before, it is necessary to repeat the prevention against fleas and worms.
3. Check that the wool is clean and free of tangles and tangled debris.
4. 12 hours before the operation it is necessary to keep the person being castrated on a starvation diet.
5. On the day of surgery, it is advisable to conduct an ultrasound examination of the genitourinary system and diagnosis of the heart condition. Standard clinical tests won't hurt either.
6. During the entire preparation time, remain calm and do not aggravate the emotional background around the animal.

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If you carefully monitor the health status and vaccination schedule of your pet, then it will be easy to fulfill all these conditions. Good care makes any veterinary procedure much easier.

ADVICE! Discuss the possibility of inpatient observation with the clinic in advance. This will cost from 300 rubles per day, but the pet will be constantly under the supervision of specialists.

What will the doctor do?

First, the doctor will carefully examine the cat. If everything is in order, then for the next half hour you will have to stand in the clinic corridor waiting for the end of the operation. The doctor will quickly and almost bloodlessly remove the contents of the scrotum and apply several internal stitches.

The skin incision is not sutured, but covered with a sterile bandage. The incision will serve as drainage for some time.

ADVICE! Before the operation, you should not watch a video about how a cat is castrated. If you're really interested, do it later.

Optimal age for castration of a cat

Time for the operation is considered the main factor in its success. Within world veterinary medicine, there are two opposing opinions. Some speak out in favor of early sterilization. Other experts say it is necessary to wait a certain number of months. The only thing they agree on is that the intervention requires complete physiological maturation of the animal.

Early excision of the testes

In Western European countries and America, kittens are sterilized at 2 months. Foreign doctors believe that at this time the body is capable of good regeneration, and the tissues are quite thin and weak, so the procedure is easy. The process itself does not require the use of clamps or ligatures, because complications such as internal bleeding are practically absent.

Thus, after surgical excision, the baby will quickly return to normal, and pain or other postoperative problems are unlikely to be possible. Often after a few hours the kitten plays and runs around as if nothing had happened. But this can lead to the seams coming apart, so it is worth stopping all attempts by the young individual to show increased activity.

The procedure of removing the gonads from animals at such an early age is also undertaken with the aim of selling them to people who are not interested in participating in exhibitions or shows. Such individuals are not capable of breeding and cannot always find future owners.

There is an opinion that the early period is the period up to 1 year when the male reaches full sexual maturity. In this case, doctors recommend depriving representatives who did not have time to mate with the female. Otherwise, removal of the testes will affect reproductive function, but the attraction to the opposite sex will remain, and he will continue to look for a female.

When speaking about the early period of sterilization of a cat, domestic doctors mean the age from 6 months to 1 year. In fact, it is completely wrong to register your pet with a veterinarian as soon as he is six months old. It is well known that each breed has a characteristic rate of puberty. Large breeds, such as Maine Coons or Savannahs, develop more slowly. This means that there is no need to rush to go to the hospital either. Persian or British cats are advised to be neutered at least 8 months old.

Tips from veterinarians

The owner can independently determine the time for early castration of his mature pet. To do this, just carefully palpate the cat’s testicles: if they have completely sunk into the scrotum, become dense and visible to the eye, it’s time to take your furry friend to the veterinary clinic.

The best option would be surgery performed between 8-10 months. This time is called the golden mean, because then the development of the body ends, and the immune system is strong enough to withstand anesthesia.

Late castration

Sometimes, due to current circumstances, pets have to undergo a surgical procedure in adulthood. Not all veterinarians allow the possibility of such operations. If it is unavoidable, then the owner is informed in advance of frequent complications

:

1. Difficult recovery from anesthesia

   . Over the years, the body reacts worse and worse to anesthesia and copes poorly with the consequences of the use of drugs that induce medicinal sleep. Anesthesia affects the cardiovascular system and causes irreversible consequences, and in the most severe cases, death.

2. Post-operative side effects

   , which are caused by the slow growth of healthy tissue on organs. Due to poor regeneration, wounds take much longer to heal and abscesses appear. This is something to keep in mind when caring for your mustachioed friend.

3. Inappropriateness

   . Timely removal of the glands is the main factor for success. If the pet has already used the genitals more than once to reproduce, then even by removing the testes, it is impossible to stop the raging of hormones in the male’s body. He will not be able to continue the family line, but he will still put marks and look for a bride.

Even knowing the consequences of late castration, some owners do not give up the idea of ​​it. Then the veterinarian can only send the patient for a full examination.

As a result, you should have a clear idea of ​​the pet’s health status. This will help make the right decision in order to avoid subsequent unfortunate developments. Which specialists should a cat visit:

• a cardiologist who will conduct an ECG;
• anesthesiologist to check readiness for anesthesia;
• a radiologist who examines internal organs;
• ultrasound doctor assessing the condition of the body.

Subspecialty specialists will carefully examine the patient, collect the necessary tests, and conduct laboratory and hardware tests. This will help ensure that the operation is prescribed correctly. For cats over 6 years of age, indications for a surgical procedure may include:

• inflammatory processes in the appendages of the testes;
• balanoposthitis;
• chronic orchitis.

Surgery leads to a severe decrease in metabolic rate. Habitual eating will cause the development of obesity with the subsequent development of diseases caused by excess weight. It is recommended to reduce your pet's diet by a quarter, exclude fish and cheap dry food. Such food disrupts the water-salt balance in the castrate’s body and significantly increases the risk of developing urolithiasis.

Castration of a cat in middle age

Carrying out the operation at a time when the pet is full of strength and is in middle age has its own peculiarities. It has long been established that some animals continue to grow up to 2-3 years, so local anesthesia is not effective.

General anesthesia should not have a detrimental effect on the health of the male, however, recovery from a sleepy state is usually accompanied by vomiting, a cloudy state, and disturbances in the nervous system. Side effects are temporary and require care and attention from the individual. Otherwise, the patient may unknowingly harm himself or be dangerously injured during jumping.

Before using medications, the anesthesiologist must test for sensitivity or allergic reaction of the body. If hypersensitivity to the drug is detected, it is replaced with an appropriate analogue, taking precautions. A tolerance test is carried out again.

Is it possible to perform surgery during sexual heat?

Males are not cats that absolutely cannot be spayed during heat. Even during the hunting season, they can be taken for surgery.

Some veterinarians are of the opinion that it is worth waiting for the end of the hormonal surge. This is necessary so that the animal does not develop mating behavior for the rest of its life. In other words, a neutered cat can continue to purr, run away from home, and even mark if it is operated on at the very peak of sexual desire.

Castration methods

The following castration methods are distinguished:

1. Medicinal (chemical).
2. Ray.
3. Operational.

Medication method

A chip with a drug is inserted under the animal's skin, which is slowly absorbed by the body. The medicine lasts from six months to three years. At the same time, you can remove the chip at any time and put the animal into breeding.

This method is most often used by breeders so as not to completely deprive the cat of the ability to reproduce. In addition, this is the optimal method for animals for which surgical castration is contraindicated due to intolerance to anesthesia or high risks.

At the same time, the medical method of castration does not reduce the risk of various sexual diseases. In addition, the medicine does not work immediately. The first three to four weeks after the introduction of the chip, the animal’s behavior, on the contrary, may worsen: the cat will yell, mark everything around and snap. This is due to the fact that at first there is an increased production of sex hormones in the body.

Only after three weeks will a decrease in hormone production begin, and sexual behavior gradually stops. Therefore, if quick castration of an animal is necessary, it is better to choose a surgical method.

Beam method

The animal's testes are exposed to radiation. Hormone production stops, and sperm become nonviable. In this case, the testes remain in place.

Clinics that practice this method of castration highlight the following advantages:

• rapidity;
• efficiency;
• there is no need for surgical intervention;
• there is no risk of negative consequences from anesthesia.

And yet, despite the large number of advantages, many veterinarians are against this method. The main reason is that an animal exposed to radiation will have an increased risk of developing various inflammations, and in the worst case, oncology.

You might be interested in: Intestinal obstruction in cats: what causes it, possible consequences.

Operative method

During the operation, the vas deferens are tied (vasectomy), or the testes are completely removed from the scrotum. The second method is the most popular.

During a vasectomy, the doctor makes an incision in the abdomen and ties the vas deferens, which means the animal will no longer be able to impregnate females. At the same time, sexual behavior is preserved. A cat can mate with cats without the risk of producing unwanted offspring.

This operation is considered more complex than standard removal of the testes. The animal will have to undergo rehabilitation for at least two weeks. In this case, stitches will be required, and the postoperative wound will need to be taken care of.

In general, this method is not particularly effective. It does not solve the problem of sexual behavior, and does not reduce the risk of diseases of the reproductive system. It is only effective in avoiding unwanted offspring. At the same time, the cat continues to live a full sex life.

Removing the testes from the scrotum is the most common method of neutering cats.

During surgery, the animal may be under local anesthesia or general anesthesia. The surgical intervention itself lasts no more than 10-15 minutes. Much more time is spent administering anesthesia and preparing the animal for surgery.

The operation is considered very simple, and its risks are minimized. Often the operation can be performed even at home. To do this, you just need to call a veterinarian. After the operation there is no need for rehabilitation of the animal.

There are several ways to perform the operation:

1. Open . An incision is made on the scrotum. This includes dissecting the vaginal tunic of the testis. The testicle is squeezed out of it, cut off from the vessels and vas deferens, which are tied together in a knot. The spermatic cords are removed into the vaginal membrane.
2. Closed. With this method, the testicle is not removed from the tunica vaginalis, but along with it is cut off from the spermatic cord.

If the operation is performed correctly, there is no need for stitches. The wound is simply treated with an antiseptic. It heals quickly.

Postoperative period

In order for the cat to recover quickly and successfully, it is worth taking good care of it. The first and most important thing is home care after returning from the clinic.

Home care

The owner’s actions depend on how and at what age the operation was performed. Only the veterinarian who performed the procedure can tell you in detail what needs to be done. Deciding on your own how to treat a wound is strictly prohibited.

Typically care consists of the following:

• in the first few hours, ensure that the cat recovering from anesthesia is not injured;
• do not give him food in the first 8-12 hours after the operation so that he does not vomit;
• make sure that the cat does not pee - in the first day he cannot always control himself;
• protect the animal from disturbance, noise and drafts;
• on the second day, start complementary feeding with new food for castrati;
• Do not let outside for 48 hours.

By following these rules, you will help your cat recover quickly and without complications.

Measure seven times: for or against?

The veterinary community worldwide recommends sterilization for all non-breeding domestic animals (male and female).

If the cat is not a super champion of a rare breed, castration will help the owner emerge victorious from the battle with the vagaries of nature: the pet will become much calmer and friendlier, will stay at home more often, cats in heat will no longer be interesting to him, and property will not suffer from marks and scratches.

And this is not the only case when it is better to castrate a cat. There are clear indications and absolute contraindications for sterilization.

The effect of the operation will also depend on the age chosen by the surgeon for castration of the cat. If the cat is an adult, then some sexual behavior will not disappear on its own.

Sex hormones are produced mainly in the testes, and, according to as yet unverified data, in small quantities in other glands. Therefore, removal of the testicles (testicles) makes it possible to almost completely block sexual behavior.

NOTE! If the cat has already begun to mark, after castration his urine will become less saturated with pheromones, but the marks themselves may remain.

Not for the sake of whim - for health

Since the operation affects the holy of holies of the male individual, doubts may arise whether to castrate the cat or not.

There are cases when surgery is inevitable, no matter how much the male half of the family and the pet itself resist it, no matter how significant the opinion of religion.

To preserve the life and health of your beloved cat, you will have to negotiate with your doctor about castration and sacrifice the cat’s right to reproduce.

Something else interesting: When is the best time to castrate a cat?

The reason for such a sacrifice may be:

• Congenital pathologies and disorders associated with the number of chromosomes (normally, a cat has 19). Most often we are talking about different forms of hermaphroditism (a combination of characteristics of both sexes in one organism);
• Cryptorchidism is the underdevelopment or absence of one or both testes. Avoiding surgery can lead to the degeneration of underdeveloped tissue into a tumor or the development of an inflammatory process;
• Serious injuries and consequences of acquired diseases that are incompatible with the normal sexual function of the male. Failure to occur or pain will cause more suffering to the cat than surgery;
• Endocrine and behavioral disorders that require correction of testosterone levels or lead to sexual dysfunction in cats. In both cases, surgery is indicated.

Contraindications for surgery

If the cat does not mark, behaves quietly, and does not get into fights over cats, then he does not need any surgical intervention.

The operation is contraindicated if:

• The cat is old, has serious problems with the heart, nervous system or kidneys;
• The pet is over 3 years old, healthy, but does not exhibit problem behavior due to the lack of any contact with relatives and the outside world;
• The cat's body is weakened by infection, exhaustion or other reasons. This is a case when it is impossible to castrate a cat temporarily.

Optimal time

To avoid male marking and territorial behavior, the kitten can be neutered as soon as both testes have descended into the scrotum and are accessible to the surgeon.

This happens no earlier than 4 months, but no later than 1 year and often close to the autumn-spring rut.

Your doctor will help you determine at what age your pet will be ready for surgery.

BY THE WAY! Clinics quite often organize discount promotions for castration, especially at the end of winter. Before the period of March songs under the windows.

Since the tolerance to anesthesia and muscle relaxants is different for all cats, it is better to entrust both the choice of method and the selection of drugs according to age to a professional.