Sunday, December 13, 2009

Cat "fixing" project finally completed

As I mentioned many months ago, our outdoor cat, Beatrix, had a litter of 6 kittens at about the end of March. In fact, if you look at some of my older posts, you can see pictures of them and read more about them.

With 6 additional mouths to feed out there, we knew that we had better get at least the females "fixed" (spayed) before we had dozens and dozens of cats out there! Beatrix was first, and we got her just in time: the vet said that she was in heat! Not long after, we got Pascal, the black-and-white male that we adopted and brought into the house, neutered. We knew that we did NOT want to have an unfixed male in the house.

In the last few weeks, we had begun to notice pre-mating behavior among the outdoor cats. In particular, Ts'hovi, the presumed father of most if not all of the litter, was beginning to mount the female kittens (and even the male one that was still out there!). So we knew that we had better not wait any longer to get them fixed. Our neighbors, who also feed and enjoy the kittens, graciously agreed to pay half the cost.

So, within the last week or 2, we have had the 3 female outdoor kittens (Priscilla, Goldie, and Gray-san) spayed, the 1 male outdoor kitten (Mr. B) neutered, and the female that we adopted and brought into the house (Peachy) spayed. Peachy just had her operation today, and she will be isolated in one room for the next day or 2 to recover so that her wound won't get accidentally re-opened by rough-housing with her brother, Pascal.

Of course, NONE of the kittens were enthusiastic about getting stuck in the cat box and getting carted off to the vet, but, in the long run, this will improve the lives of all of them.

1 comment:

Esther said...

Good grief man you are turning into my parents! Does the vet give you a 'bulk' reduction yet?