Thread: Neutering

Originally Posted by Howlinbob

I don't like the idea of having them done as very young kittens, even before they leave the breeder. But I suppose there are issues of trust there.

While trust may be an issue, there is also the stress that a fairly new owner goes through having to have surgery on their kitten. If something goes wrong in surgery while the kitten is still with the breeder then there won't be great sorrow for a new owner as well as questions of who pays medical bills and so forth.

We had one male done at 7mos. and he sprayed the wall the day before the surgery (which had already been scheduled). Our older male now was done by breeder and the younger was done at 4mos since he needed to have surgery for something else anyway. My impression is that current consensus among vets is that early neutering doesn't affect growth, but there is still some uncertainty. The older male has a very nice large MC head now, so do not see any obvious effect from early neutering. Of course the opposite concern is that once they become mature they will begin spraying in your house and destroy furniture, etc. Unfortunately you really cannot have any idea whether a cat will tend to spray or not. We were just astonished when our 7mos old out of the blue sprayed a wall. Luckily he didn't have hardly any male urine odor yet because I think we then would have had to have a piece of wall torn out and replaced. As it is, even four years and many cleanings later, a cat will occasionally sniff the wall there! A mature male could potentially do thousands of dollars of damage in no time if he sprayed couches, beds, walls. I would be unwilling to take that risk.