Getting An Outdoor Cat Spayed

[Brian K]

All,
There is a very sweet outside cat that lost her kittens she was nesting in a storm after heavy rains this past week in Florida. I was able to save one that I found hanging onto a drain pipe. She is 5 weeks and is doing great.

My question concerns the mom cat. She is VERY sweet. No way I would describe her as feral, despite being outside. She was clearly someone's pet and was dumped or lost or something for reasons I'll never know. Anyway, I want to resolve this once and for all and have her spayed.

My questions are as follows. What if there are by some chance another kitten or two out there? When is the right time to know she can be gone for a few days? Are the low cost clinics any good? I want her to have good care. Any ideas about that? Also, what's the recovery time after the fact? Will I have to keep her inside my house?

I want to get some answers from people who have done this rather than what the websites tell me. Any advice would be great. I want to get this done before she gets pregnant again.

 

[talkingpeanut]

Do you have mom and kitten inside now? Does the kitten eat solids at all?

 

[abyeb]

You can get her spayed once the kittens are weaned. I think the low-cost clinics are good, the one near me (I don't know if this is true for all) gets veterinarians from other clinics who volunteer at the low-cost clinics in their free time. You should keep mom in now (and ideally permanently, indoors is the safest place for cats), cats can get pregnant already a week after giving birth. A spay (ovariohysterectomy) is an invasive surgery, so recovery is about a week.

 

[Brian K]

This is a reply to the previous two:

I'm caught between a rock and hard place right now. The mother cat has been coming around for the past few months. I knew she had given birth because her nipples were puffy and it was obvious. I fed her, that's it. The other day while coming into my neighborhood it was raining for the first time in weeks. I saw the mom cat distressed zig zagging around a storm drain. I looked down and there was a tiny kitten trapped on a pipe with water gushing all around her. (the one in my photo) I had someone help me move the grate and I got her out. After taking her home and warming her shivering little body I put her in a towel and went back to see if there were more. Mom cat was still trying to get down into the sewer so I scooped her up. In that moment I thought if I could show her that I had her baby she would at least stop trying to go down the sewer that was not safe. After a few hours of rest the mom cat began trying to pull the baby out of the bed and towards the front door. I assume she had other kittens to tend to. My only option was to let the mom go. The next day I took baby to the vet. She is 5 weeks old and doing fine. The vet told me to follow mom, and she'd probably lead me to the den. I did that. Turns out her baby didn't fall in the sewer, she was NESTING down there. I saw another kitten down there and the mom hopped right down. I can tell it's easy for her to get in/out but there is no way she could carry a baby out. The next day, it rained. It had not rained in weeks so the mom cat mistakenly thought the dry sewer was a safe place to give birth. I tried my best to get the other kittens but the rains came. I went outside at 1am to see if I could do something to help. The water was pouring into the sewer I had seen the kitten in, like a waterfall. The next morning I saw mom cat, defeated, wet and roaming the area scanning the horizon for her kittens. I assume all of them were killed.

If I let the mom in, she is VERY vocal and just tries to take the baby away. If I let her have it, she would take it to the drain I'm sure and it's a guaranteed death sentence. But she knows I have that baby here and she is out front/back of my house 24 x 7, meowing so much that she is hoarse. It's heartbreaking. I don't know what to do. As I see it (correct me if I'm wrong) my only options are to keep the kitten, take care of her until she is able to be adopted, continue feeding mom outside and take her somewhere to get her spayed.

 

[Brian K]

correction, I meant *him. the kitten is a boy.