resonant | Cat question

To the best of my knowledge, if you neuter a male kitten before he reaches sexual maturity, there should be no problems with spraying. In rare cases, it may be prompted by emotional stress, but that can be fixed by addressing the root cause. Out of the eight cats I've had, only one (a female) has ever had issues with stress/spite-peeing, and that was after moving her into a new house with two strange cats and a puppy.

We have two male cats (one adopted as an older kitten when the other was 2 or 3) and we've never had trouble.

Also, both neutered, and the younger one fixed before he reached maturity.

I have had trouble with this when my neutered 14 year old cat suddenly started spraying, but then we let him outside to play with the neighbors cat that hat not been neutered so I think it was a marking war. As soon as the other male cat was out of the picture it stopped.

I think you should be fine with a kitten as long as you get it neutered before it starts spraying itself.

I've had several male cats, all of them neutered. Of all the cats, only one ever sprayed and that was only 2-3 times. All those times the cat was under extreme stress and was, apparently, trying to make himself feel more secure in his environment. (Like, once a crazy neighbor lady grabbed him off the street, threw him in her car, drove to our house, and threw the cat at my dad while threatening to take him to the pound to be put to sleep if the cat ever wandered into her yard again. Leo basically jumped away from my dad, ran to my bedroom and sprayed under my bed. Once was the very first time I'd ever moved w/ the cats, and I moved into a household with a cat and a dog. Leo sprayed a very tiny bit on a blanket behind a couch. I think there was one more time.) The point is, it wasn't a habit for him. The other cats never sprayed once they were neutered.

You have very strange neighbors. But then again, my parents used to have a neighbor who swore that cat pee killed her maple tree, and that she had taken a soil sample to the state university, where they'd done a test and proved that it was our cat in particular that did it.

Thank God for that feline DNA technology. How would we terrorize our neighbors without it?

We never had a problem - as long as the cat is neutered before it matures, it should never start spraying. Nowadays they can usually neuter earlier, as well - our cats were SPCA, and both had been fixed before we adopted them, as early as 6wks old.

The boyfriend's cats are all neutered, but they all spray. We're pretty sure it started with only one of them, but then the others apparently learned it from him or something. My own cat never did it.

Both my male cats are neutered, one at 4 months, one at 6 weeks. Neither has ever sprayed.

I guess I should say how old they are! The one neutered at 4 months is almost 9 years old, the other one is 3.

I've had several male cats. In fact, when I was growing up, we had several at once. The spraying problems only started when we adopted an older male cat, and had him neutered. He was still very territorial. The males we'd had from kitten-hood, who'd been neutered early, appeared to pick up bad manners from this new arrival.

But the male cat I have now, who's been neuetered since he was about 5 months old, hasn't ever sprayed at all. So I think if you're just getting one or two kittens, as long as you have them snipped early, you should be fine. Plus, all of the female cats I've ever had have this tendancey to become, um, kind of tempermental the older they get. Males seem to be more consistantly even-tempered.

As others have mentioned, I think the key is getting them neutered before they reach maturity and ever develop the habit. I've never had a problem with mine.

Also: yay! Kitten!

We have a neutered male, and he has occasionally peed on things to mark territory (most notably right after RM moved in, when he climbed onto RM's beloved leather recliner, waited until I was paying attention, and then made eye contact with me and started to pee).

So, in my experience, neutering doesn't completely eliminate the problem. But it does lessen the frequency, and it also means that when they spray, it's just regular cat pee. (Not that cat pee smells like roses, but my understanding is it's much less pungent that the stuff an unneutered male would spray.)

We recently had two male cats - obtained a few years apart, and the new cat was a kitten when brought into the household. He was neutered as normal and after a while started spraying. However, it was nothing excessive.

Unfortunately, when we moved country he was given to a friend with many cats, both male and female, and he instantly started spraying a lot. In the years since his prolific spraying has earned him an unfortunate nickname and more than a few electric shocks - he seems to have a taste for making the electricity in the house blow.

However, he is half pure-bred Oriental, a breed known for their neuroses, so I've always put it down to that. Any other male cats we've had have been fine!

Oh, dear -- our grown cat is Siamese. She's not so very neurotic, and at least she's female. Maybe she'll be OK. [crosses fingers]

hm, never heard of that happening before. Our cat was neutered, too. We had him for 14 years and he never did spray.

We have had a neutered boy cat for seven years - no spraying whatsoever. I have never heard of that problem from friends with neutered boy cats either.

Good luck! Yay kitten! *g*

I've never had a male cat that had been neutered before puberty spray. (I've never had a male cat that was neutered after puberty.) I did have a female cat that was neutered after puberty spray, as a result of dominance/territorial disputes with my neutered boy cat; but again, that was after puberty. I really don't think you need to worry about a male cat neutered early; I mean, stress can cause reactions, as

bayleaf describes, but that's different from marking as a behavior; any cat, male or female and no matter how well behaved, might briefly freak out under such circumstances.

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One thing -- if spraying does start, even although he's neutered, check for a kidney or bladder infection. I had a female that would get up on the kitchen counter and spray the windows; there had been no stress changes. Took her to the vet, and that's what it was. When the infection cleared up, the spraying stopped.
.

Target was a year old and had been a stray when he was a neutered -- he sprayed a couple of times when we introduced him to Jim's apartment with Turbo, but never did again after Jim threw out that pair of sheepskin lined boots. :) He's 19. Bob was also neutered near a year old, but he never sprayed. Turbo was neutered at maybe 6 months and he never did. Bob II is a little over a year and he hasn't.

Of course, it will help both the cats if you do careful introductions. We held the four kittens in a room of their own for two weeks, where Target couldn't get at them -- and they couldn't get at him. We'd have done it for longer but we had vacation scheduled, so we just crossed our fingers that things would be okay.

http://www.googobits.com/articles/2386-how-to-introduce-a-new-cat-to-your-home.html

That looks useful but rather alarming! I don't know if I want to commit to being home 24/7 for "several days" to referee. But I guess I will if I have to.

Yipes! Even we didn't do that, and I was very concerned that our then-18-yo cat (ill with kidney disease) might attack the kittens if provoked. I know that old, sick cats are sometimes short-tempered.

We did leave them essentially locked in a room for two weeks. Jim made a "screen door" insert out of 2x2s and screen so we could see them. We left it there for nearly six months, though; after the first two weeks we cut a hole in the bottom so the kittens could get in and out while Target could not access their food.

Surely that wouldn't be necessary for introducing one kitten! I would think a few days of being in his 'safe room' would be helpful, though.

In the end, they all got along fine. Target loves his "Targie's Angels" and sleeps with the girls all the time.

Out of the four neutered tomcats I've had, not a single one had a problem with spraying.

A friend with an early-neutered boy cat had many problems with spraying - but then that friend, IMHO, had many problems too. I was never convinced that the friend had done things to solve the problem, only to stop the inconvenience of the mess. Unfortunately, the local coyotes solved the problem permanently. *sigh*

My three boy cats, including my first who was 2 yrs old when neutered, never had any problems. My girl cat that we thought was fixed and wasn't made several messes before we figured things out and took her to have her "zipper" installed.

Good luck - neuter early - have a wonderful life with your new fuzzball!

As most folks have already said, if a cat is neutered fairly young, they typically don't spray unless there's some kind of stress or territorial issue going on.

That said, I did have some serious problems with my 4-year-old neutered male spraying, but there were several interlocking factors involved:

1) He hadn't been neutered until he was 8-12 months old.
2) We moved.
3) We starting feeding/taking care of an outdoor cat with whom he apparently had serious territory issues--90% of his spraying was directly at the doors that led to places she hung out. On one memorable occasion he backed up to the sliding glass door that she was standing next to and sprayed right at her face.
4) He had some urinary tract problems (very common in male cats).
5) The person in our house responsible for the litter box was, for a time, not as diligent as he might have been.
6) Our other indoor cat was getting older and more ill, and he stopped being as affectionate with the younger cat as he had been in the past.

So, he had quite a few factors that led to the spraying, and for a while it was a real problem. I used several different behavior modification techniques, including keeping the darned litter box clean, spraying Feliway (http://www.feliway.uk.com/) in his favorite spraying spots, putting food down in same, and cleaning up any sprays promptly with either vinegar or Nature's Miracle (http://www.amazon.com/Natures-Miracle-Remover-gallon-128-oz/dp/B00008437W). I kept it up a couple of weeks and he stopped spraying, then he started again and I did it for another few weeks. That was a couple of years ago, and I haven't had any real problems since then.

So, in short, if you get him neutered at a relatively early age you're less likely to have problems, and even if he does start spraying there a lots of ways to get him to stop. And seriously, Nature's Miracle is awesome for getting pee smell out. Trust me on this. :)

I think it depends on the cat. I've had cats all my life, and some of them are absolute darlings and always well behaved, and some are neurotic and will pee on anything they dislike and also eat sweaters, for some reason. Gender and/or being fixed doesn't seem to be a factor, it's a personality thing.

And getting one as a kitten doesn't guarantee a sweet disposition; we had a brother and sister we got at 8 weeks, and we always treated them well and they were, for the most part, friendly and confident, except for the part where they couldn't stand the portacrib mattress and peed on it every chance they got. We also have an old fat stripey orange boy we picked up at the pound as a fully grown (very recently fixed) adult, and he's a total sweetheart and never sprays, although he will kick the ass of any neighborhood cat who ventures into our yard. So, luck of the draw, basically.

Our neutered female cat sprayed *nods* no matter how many times it was told it was notamale.

Female cats will spray for the same reasons as male cats, as other shave told you.

I only had troulbe with my cat (male, neutered early) twice: once when he got a urinary tract infection and wet his cat bed (I threw it out to prevent recurrences, because it is hard to get rid of the odor even with htose enzymatic urine cleaners), and once when a neighbor's male cate wanereded right up to the open window and caused a turf battle (my cat sprayed the window scren--again, I threw it out, and cleaned up thoroughly. I also didn't open that window until that other cat got tired of coming around.

I would recommend you take your time with the introduction of the new cat by keeping it in a separate room. Also, take a damp towel, rub it on your current cat's scent glands, and then rub the scented towel on the new one before they are phsyicall introcuded to one aother. This helped when I fostered kittens from different litters together.

and dang, I canNOT type today, sorry.

We brought Barnabas home wrapped in Powder's favorite blanket and thoroughly rubbed his face with it, in the hopes that it would do that scent thing you're talking about. I don't know whether it did or not, but they're adapting to each other pretty peacefully so far.

I hope that keeps working out. I'd love to get another kitten sometime, but I think my current (large) male cat is too territorial and would start spraying and maybe hurt another cat.

The only time I've ever had a neutered male spray was when one had a urinary tract infection. He stopped that as soon as we got the infection cleared up. I've had four of them throughout their lives. They were all fixed at somewhere between 6 and 9 months of age.

and one of the rules of thumb was to do them at six months *before* the sexual characteristics started to raise their ugly heads. And, by the way, shorthaoir cats tend to mature sexually more quickly than longhairs. Don't know why really. Do it early and you'll have no problems. Even when my spraying males were retired and then neutered 90% of the time they never spayed again. I had one male that spayed his pen every day (and what a joy that was to clean) and he was okay after the neutering. Don't wait, that's the problem with 90% of these cases. Someone gets a male and/or female kitten, waits too long and then the female gets knocked up or the male starts to spray.

Jeez, one too many hotdogs and beer. I mean't "sprayed" of course. Heh.

Two of my cats, Eddie and Alex, were neutered at about 6 months of age. Both spray, but Alex only does so outside (I didn't even know he could until I caught him one day -- made me love him all the more, really). Figaro, another male cat we had, was also neutered late and was a terrible indoor sprayer.

On the other hand, my baby, Wilson, was neutered before we got him (probably at about seven/eight weeks), and he's now about 10 1/2 months old and has never sprayed. He's also the biggest lap cat of the three, and has absolutely no interest in getting into fights with the other cats in the neighborhood or killing things, so there's also those benefits.

For breed reference, Alex is an American shothair, Eddie is a Norwegian Forest Cat, Figaro was an domestic longhaired, and Wilson is a Pixie-Bob.

We have a one-year-old tom who's not neutered and he hasn't sprayed. So far.

I think the most important thing is how you introduce the kitten to the household and how you introduce their scents to each other. Scent marking (from the face) is so important to feline relations. When my (2) boys are fighting, the fastest way for me to calm them each down is to pet them separately, and to go back and forth between them, transferring each other's scent between them. Sort of a shorthand for, "I love you both & you both love each other, so freaking chill already."

I've heard that male adult cats have an easier time accepting female kittens into the household. I haven't seen it firsthand, so I don't know how true that is, but it might be something to consider.

There's a whole lot of merit in keeping the kitten confined for a fair bit of time until you can arrange a supervised meeting between them. Hopefully by that point your adult cat will understand that it's still top cat, despite the fluffy adorableness of the baby. *g*

Good luck!

Our adult cat is female. She seems very peacable to me, but I admit I'm a little nervous about how she'll accept a new kitten.

Target adores his three girls, but won't have anything to do with the young male.

My cat is older, male, neutered, and I've not had any problems, nor have we had any troubles with family pets in the pest, save one, and that was a female peeing to mark territory.

It really depends on the cat, and the situation. Choose a fairly mellow breed, probably should be okay.

B

These are mutt cats, so it's hard to predict the personality. But then again, in my entire life I've only ever had one cat whose breed I knew, and she was more neurotic than all the rest put together. (Persian. She was sort of a Paris Hilton cat. Used to climb up on the roof in the middle of the night and yowl because she couldn't figure out how to get back down.)

We have two cats, now 14 / 15; they are brothers, both neutered before puberty, and we've had a lot of trouble with them spraying recently. It's happened occasionally over the years, but in the last twelve months or so they've begun to do it regularly. We're not sure why; there's no obvious health / stress trigger, they get on fine, and while another cat has recently appeared in the area, they were spraying before that. So, yeah, it can happen. I believe it's rare, though.

The only time I had a cat that sprayed, it was because he was entire (for breeding kittens) so we put tiny little nappies and pilchers on him. (Diapers, and those plastic diaper covers). ADORABLE!

Otherwise, snip before he starts and it will never start.

Actually the worst sprayer I ever had was a neutered female. It's a cat-by-cat thing. There are some great cat behavior books I can recommend, if you'd like to read up beforehand. The good science kind, not the frou-frou kind.

Have had 2 male cats, one of which was neutered after sexual maturity and the other one (I assume) before. In both cases, I'd adopted adult cats -- one off the street, the other from a shelter. Never had a problem with either one.

Other thing to note about neutered males (at least in my experience): they tend to be much more people-friendly. Most (not all) of the female cats I've known have been ghosts and/or only attached to one person in the family.

But, my experience could also be related to having taken in abandoned (male) cats -- ie, that they know where the Whiskas comes from.

We have a 3-year old male, neutered before puberty. We adopted a female kitten... and she went into heat before we got her fixed (she had multiple parasite/infection problems, and is tiny, even full-grown) .. at any rate, Boycat started asserting himself; I think it's a rival tom who roams free, and our cats have access to a screen porch. He's settled down since I told him in no uncertain terms that he's not supposed to do that.

But I once had a female cat who developed a pissing war with a neutered male -- combining two single-cat households with older, set in their ways cats is the absolute worst. I don't think it's the gender so much as the individual cats. If you keep him indoors and away from potential rivals, the kitten should be okay.

Cat question

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I used to breed Maine Coon Cats

Re: I used to breed Maine Coon Cats

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