LindaH wrote:
schneesmom wrote:
Vets can do spays and neuters as young as 8 weeks, provided the kitten is more than 2 pounds.
While it can be done that early, I personally feel it's too young. I read somewhere that allowing a cat to remain intact until 6-8 months is better as it allows the cat's body to develop more normally in terms of hormonal balances. It makes sense to me and it would be interesting to see if some of the adult behavior problems are related to early spaying/neutering. Or maybe the behaviour is related to late spaying/neutering?
Anyway, what I did was wait for the males to start doing the shaky tail thing. It's like they are spraying, but nothing comes out. Once I saw that, I called the vet and they had The Big Snip. The ages for this were 6-8 months.
CFA and the Winn Foundation support early spay/neuter and the Winn Foundation has done several studies on the subject. Since CFA's site seems to be having some problems, I'm providing this link which sites the study's findings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pediatric_spaying
I have been breeding for over 20 yrs and most of my own pets were neutered at 12 wks of age. I have never witnessed any behavior or health problems from it. In fact, the behavior problems in males comes from neutering too late and there are health benifits in early spaying for females (decreased incidence of mammary cancer).
I feel stongly about not contributing to the pet overpopulation and would never want any of the pets I place to be used by a pet owner for breeding (something that is very common). I have even refused to sell to people who want to keep their pets intact, and have found that there is usually an ulterior motive...