The Right Time To Spay Your Kitten?

Hi everyone

I know this might seem like a silly question but when is the right time to spay your kitten?

I have a 6 month old female and am just wondering what the studies have shown on spaying too early? Health issues? Growth issues? Behaviour issues?

I do not intend for her to fall prego and plan on spaying her but I am hesitant to do this so early! I made this mistake with my fearful border collie (I know, different species) and it was detrimental in that without that little bit of extra testosterone it made his fearful behaviour worse.

Please can I have your KIND opinions or facts on early spaying?

Thanks
Cookie & Meg

I've hard at least 2 lbs and 2 months old. As soon as you can basically before a female starts her first heat cycle. Here's a TCS article:

When To Spay Or Neuter A Cat?

LTS3 said:

I've hard at least 2 lbs and 2 months old. As soon as you can basically before a female starts her first heat cycle. Here's a TCS article:

When To Spay Or Neuter A Cat?

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Thank you! I missed this article I just feel that this one answer is drilled into everyone 4-6 months latest as only to protect the overpopulation which I understand and agree with, was just looking for differing facts or opinions or if there are no studies showing any detriment by spaying early.

No studies have shown any drawbacks to early spay/neuter in cats (I think one might have shown mild issues in males neutered before 7 weeks, but vets don't usually do that anyway). Cats are very different from dogs.

Cats and dogs are different. For example here is a 2015 review article discussing both:

Current perspectives on the optimal age to spay/castrate dogs and cats
"With cats, the overwhelming evidence would suggest that gonadectomy is safe in cats at any age over 6 weeks."

I am not aware of any adverse effects that have been shown for early spay in cats; in fact, there are benefits to early spay in cats, before the first heat cycle if possible, to reduce risk of mammary cancer.

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Hi Meg&Cookie !

There was an exclusive "Expert Forum" here last summer devoted to this very subject - you'll find many aspects of 'early' neutering discussed in there........

Here's the Intro post from TCS owner, Anne, with information about the guest experts and their reference links: Time To Think About Your Spay And Neuter Questions!

You'll find the entire forum here: Experts from "Feline Fix By Five" talk Spay/Neuter

That should help !
.

For cats, earlier is better, however, in certain breeds it is recommended to wait until around 6 months. Maine Coons have slower growth rates for instance - something about bone plate growth (I'm no expert on the terminology). Yet, I recently was reading up on this because we're getting a female MC kitten end of this summer that we'll be responsible for spaying and I'm finding conflicting info on when we should take care of this. Much of the current research is debunking waiting, saying all that might happen is that the cat may wind up having a more "lanky" appearance if spayed/neutered earlier - but certainly there's no danger to it's health.

Early neuter has a slight effect of delaying growth plate closure for male cats, but apparently this is not true for females. Early spay didn't make a difference in growth plate closure for the females in this 2014 study:
Effect of neutering and breed on femoral and tibial physeal closure times in male and female domestic cats. - PubMed - NCBI

There are plenty of old school vets who still prefer to wait until 6 months (my vet is the same way), but despite lots of searching, I have failed to find actual evidence of adverse effects for early spay or neuter in cats of any breed.

lutece said:

Early neuter has a slight effect of delaying growth plate closure for male cats, but apparently this is not true for females. Early spay didn't make a difference in growth plate closure for the females in this 2014 study:
Effect of neutering and breed on femoral and tibial physeal closure times in male and female domestic cats. - PubMed - NCBI

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Oh wow, thank you for finding that article.
I feel a lot better knowing this. We really would prefer to spay our newcomer earlier than later, and when the breeder mentioned waiting until 6 months I was thinking to myself "umm, doubtful" but if it really was necessary would have. Now that I know it's not an issue for females, I'm not going to even worry about it and we'll go ahead and have her spayed once she's settled into our home.

Thank you everybody! Really appreciate the responses and insight.

I will go ahead with spay then asap. She just turned 6 months old

I always prefer to ask these questions than go with the norm as there is so much conflicting opinions between cat people, vets etc. I prefer to have some sort of facts to make a decision, which I now have, so thank you.

Just want to make the best decision for my little cookie cat

My vet says that spaying/neutering any kitten too early (before 6 months of age) can affect their growth.
All vets that I know (and they're dozens) agree.

But it seems it's a different continent culture.

Hi

Antonio65 said:

My vet says that spaying/neutering any kitten too early (before 6 months of age) can affect their growth.
All vets that I know (and they're dozens) agree.

But it seems it's a different continent culture.

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I hear you! I live in South Africa and its the same here - 6 months unless obviously from a shelter, they will spay very young.

Most cats go into heat before 6 months so that can lead to a lot of unwanted kittens .

Meg&Cookie said:

I hear you! I live in South Africa and its the same here - 6 months unless obviously from a shelter, they will spay very young.

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There doesn't seem to be any evidence that spaying young causes problems. It doesn't stunt growth, it doesn't lead to rapid weight gain, and it prevents a host of other problems. I think a lot of vets are just basing their guidelines on conventional wisdom and not actually looking at the science.

The vet that I go to now spays at 4 months when the kitten is in it's forever home. She does some work for rescues and she does the 2 months and 2 pounds for them, those little fluffballs are highly adoptable and that frees up room for more rescues. There are always more. She waits a bit when a kitten is already in it's home.

Yeah, I think ideal age is 14-16 weeks. I know 8-week-olds CAN have the surgery but they're so little at that age, I hate to put them through it. Of course shelters/rescues have to, but not kittens in homes.

I agree that 14-16 weeks is a good age for most kittens and that is when most of my breeder friends do it. It also allows some recovery time before placing a kitten in its home at 4 months. But the vet needs to feel comfortable performing surgery on a small kitten. My regular vet is more comfortable working on 6 month old kittens, as that used to be common practice, and would rather not work on little kittens. So when I have young kittens neutered or spayed, I take them to a different vet hospital, where they have vets that routinely work on young kittens.

Just adding to this. While we wanted to spay Luna much earlier, we finally opted to wait until 6 months due to our vet recommendation (we happen to really like and trust her a lot and she'll be performing the surgery), and we learned long hair cats (ours is a Maine Coon) tend to go into heat later than short hair cats (on average). Last, I also read up on times of year cats tend to go into heat and we are heading into the period when it's least likely due to cats being seasonal breeders, regulated by the length of daylight hours.

Being it's nearly November felt that odds were on our side that she wouldn't go into heat yet with all these things factored in. Still we have been keeping our fingers very tightly crossed and luckily, so far so good and her spay is tomorrow. So we are quite relieved!

I had asked the vet if it were possible to spay her a little earlier due to some work related issues I have end of year, and she was willing to do it at 5 months but as it turned out she only performs surgery once a week and was mostly booked already and the one other week was on vacation. I could have used another vet in the practice, but I want her to do the procedure so now Luna is just a few days shy of 6 months.

But, at least the vet was ok with doing it a little earlier; so if someone has a vet who is saying 6 months it's worth a shot asking if they will accommodate a slightly shorter schedule. Perhaps they have some wiggle room in that too.

The vet that cared for the cat I had as a teen told me that as soon as they loose their baby canines they can be spayed. That was 25 years ago though.