Ear tipping

[tx_kat]

Just out of curiosity, which ear do you ferals/strays normally have tipped? 

I know it shouldn't matter as long is one ear is tipped, but I thought tipping the left ear was standard.  One of the feral cats at our church seems to have its right ear tipped, and my husband said he saw another cat with its right ear tipped.  I almost want to trap them and take them where we normally get our ferals done ... just to make sure they are spayed/neutered, etc. 

 

[Willowy]

When I took my ferals in to the low-cost clinic, they tipped either ear, didn't seem to have any pattern. Except there were 2 tortie girls who looked alike, and they tipped opposite ears so I could tell them apart, LOL. I don't think there's a standard. Just tip an ear, any ear. I've heard some people do left on girls, right on boys, or vice versa, or some other "code" they prefer, but nothing set in stone .

 

[ldg]

With an ear-tip, they're sterilized. :nod: We don't have a clinic near us, so we have the TNR kitties sterilized at our vet. Whether the right ear gets tipped or the left depends on which vet is doing the surgery. :lol3: Once the first cats came back with the right-ear tipped (left IS usual), we didn't bother requesting it be one or the other - it was already done, and we figured it didn't really matter. Still a quick visual that THAT cat is sterilized.

 

[feralvr]

In my neck of the woods, TNR vet's tip the left ear. Some do a V tip - meaning a notch out of the left ear. I don't care for that type of tipping and always request the straight across tip. Much easier to see from a distance whether or not the feral cat is sterilized. The V tip can be very hard to see unless you have binoculars :lol3: