Vasectomy or castration?

mary13

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I've noticed a couple of times in these messages that people talk about vasectomising male cats rather than castrating them. Is this just a confusion of terminology? A vasectomy means a sort of tying off of the vas deferens (the tube carrying sperm from the testicles) and certainly a vasectomised cat will not be able to get a female in kitten, but if the testicles remain (castration means removal of the testicles) then the cat will continue to exhibit all the normal and usually unwanted tom cat behaviour because it is testosterone produced by the testicles that makes them behave this way. Could someone enlighten me? Thanks.
 

sandie

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I am not sure if I can enlighten you. I have always had vets who perform castration. I talked to my vet about it not too long ago. He said it's pretty routine because it is the best way to reduce cancer later in life. He did say that even though the testicles are removed, low levels of testosterone still remain. I left it at that since at the time I was watching him perform a neuter and I couldnt stand there any more. I will have to bring it up to him again.
 

Anne

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I once read that some breeders keep a male that had a vasectomy rather than castration. That way, the male does not lose his sex drive and eill mate with females in heat.

This is used when they have a female in heat that they want to go out of heat without getting pregnant. Apparently the infertile vasectomized males do the job.
 

hattkatts

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Originally posted by Anne
I once read that some breeders keep a male that had a vasectomy rather than castration. That way, the male does not lose his sex drive and will mate with females in heat.

This is used when they have a female in heat that they want to go out of heat without getting pregnant. Apparently the infertile vasectomized males do the job.
This is correct. As you know, females will cycle quite quickly and holding her off too many times without breeding opens the possibility of pyometra. Using a teaser tom will bring her out of heat quicker and lengthen the time to the next heat cycle. You can also accomplish the same thing by penetrating her manually with a q-tip and swirling it briefly but this is best left to the braver breeders as I would be too afraid of hurting my queens, while the tom is like the real thing but without the kittens.
Pete
 
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mary13

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Yes, I think it's a confusion in terminology. Some people are saying "vasectomy" when they really mean "castration", they are quite different procedures with quite different end results and it's not hard to tell exactly what procedure has been done, testicles are pretty visible, after all. There is logic in having a vasectomised male in a breeding setup, but certainly not a pet cat because he will still behave as an entire tom. I noticed in the paper today (Brisbane Courier Mail) that a reversible vasectomy procedure is or will be available for cats or dogs, but again, it would only be of interest to breeders I imagine, at least in the case of cats.
Re the continued production of testosterone in castrated males, this is probably not so much that some testosterone-producing cells are left behind at the time of castration, but that they develop some time after castration in another part of the body (some authorities believe they arise near the pancreas) - they are sometimes called castration cells.
 

tricia2skeptica

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Perhaps the Catsite.com team could add a glossary of cat and cat related terms to the site.
 
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