not to offer to pay the man who took my cat to be neutered without discussing it with me

[powpow]

basically my cat came home last night neutered.
We had no idea what had happened or who had taken him.
I called 11 vets in the area until I found the one where it was done.
A neighbor has been feeding our cat and took him to be done. My cat broke through this guys catflap to come home to us where he feels safe. He wasn't missing. We saw him Monday night and he came home tuesday night.

Most of the cats running around the neighborhood have no collar but I would never take them to the vet unless they were hurt!
he said my cat has been coming around for a few months. He never once tried to find out who he belonged to.
We had taken off his collar because it kept getting tighter and tighter on his neck and getting caught on the fences.
But he was very obviously well taken care of, groomed and happy.
We were waiting a few more months to neuter him and would have taken him to the clinic that does it for free.
This guy paid £280.
I don't think I should have to pay for this.
AIBU?

OH - that will teach me to read the thread Sorry!!

LEM leaves the thread quietly and hope nobody notices

PinkTulips, Yes, I stand by that, If you have an entire cat which can't be neutered or chipped for some reason, then look after them properly by keeping him/her inside and/or restrict them to your garden. That would be looking after them properly.

There is a difference between looking after and caring for an animal. It is more than possible to NOT look after an cat properly but still care and love him/her and every other combination of those factors.

My neutered male is fecking enormous. I dread to think what he'd be like intact.

I think it could even be less, i think its a recessive trait but it doesn't follow the genetic "code" as i think the gene lies on part of the X chromosome that something happens to in female cats and it often doesnt get expressed. Yes, it has to be on the X chromosome, but when the two x's get together in cats, i think they can shut down one of them and function on one copy for one gene - but then saying that, i could be talking absolute bollocks - but then i would never do that would i soupy!!!

Yes, ginger female are rare and very beautiful You are a lucky owner Soupy.

One of my ex-feral's is a smoked blue tabby, very rare and all cats with blue in them have a perdigree past as blue is not a nature colour (apparantly)...our Annie...still very people shy but chilling out with us after several years of love.

like scarface claw no doubt!!

Here is my Annie girl
She is so pretty
www.piftails.com/images/annie_favourite.jpg

and drinks in such a weird way
www.piftails.com/images/AnnieWaterBowl.jpg

One of our 6 rescue cats

I did look into it at the time. Apparently, cat colour is attached to the X chromosome. hence, females can inherit a different colour on each X chromosome and this can manifest differently all over the body - resulting in tortoise shell. Most won't be ginger all over as I guess they'd need ginger from both chromosomes - they'd most likely end up tortoiseshell. I also learnt that this is the reason virtually all tortoise shell cats are female and those that aren't are infertile as they have an extra X chromosome.

It's also worth remembering that those toms are almost certainly picking fights with "ordinary" cats too (not just other toms they come across). Two of our cats, and at least one of our neighbours cats were attacked by a visiting tom, and they were diagnosed soon after with FIV, complications of which killed them all within a year. I think it highly likely that the scratches and bites were the vector for the infection (they were all mature cats, not given to fighting). I don't know if the tom in question was a stray or a much loved pet - he certainly looked well fed, but that could have been from scavenging (we got the water pistol on him a few times for nicking our cats' food).

Aw... Does she drink like that to protect her water from other cats do you think?

LEM is sulking now - my DP is allergic to cats so i can't actually have one!

Babies, that is strange (and sweet) one of ours is inclined to pick up dry food in her paw (very delicately) before eating.

The colour stuff is really interesting. We have a sibling pair, and they are cream mackerel tabbies - very pretty and hard to understand how they ended up at a shelter. It's not a colour I've come across in the UK, but quite common here (we live in Canada) - I wonder if it's an adaptation to the sandy coloured landscape - they are going to be very well camouflaged in the summer.

We had a lovely fluffy ginger and white thing (the one that adopted us). Very beautiful, when he was mat free - unfortunately not often as he was very much an outside cat. I imagine that he was adorable as a kitten.

Soupy, I don't know why, she is a sweet, mixed up girl.

She was from an established feral colony and trapped as a kitten by a friend of ours. But she never tamed down, hence unadoptable and the charity supporting my friend was debating about releasing her back to the wild. She would of had no survial skills and no feral lives long. i.e. a good age for a feral cat is 3 years, so we adopted her and got her shipped over.

Mind you she has took a lot of love and attention and even now 4 years later she is very timid unless you have chicken in your hand

I wonder if mine is the result of a pedigree mother having a bit of rough.

nooka, Aww, I would like to see your cat picking up biscuits

We have a fluffy long haired black cat. She was another ex-feral, the first one we tamed down. We had trapped and took her mum and kittens to a shelter and returned to look for 'dad' to neuter nhim and found another kitten. The idiots people who had asked us to clear their garden couldn't count pass two it seems. They said mum and two kittens when it was mum and three. We ende up keeping her and keeping her mat free is a job and a half...have you tried a shredding blade brush...they are fab.

I'd just like to say that the risk of surgery vs the risk of a pregnancy in a female cat with comprimised health- well, for me it would lie with the risk of sx tbh.

Carrying a load of kittens and then giving birth is prob more stressful to the system than a short anaesthetic tbh.

But i proably should debate that with your vet
not here on an internet forum.

FWIW- also LEM,rapinovet is metablised thru the liver in cats, but not iso.
so it's not entirley accurate to say that.
we jsut don't know what anaesthetics were used, so prob best not to be so specific how it all works.
Ketamine goes thru the kidneys
so maybe they vet used dom/ket inductiona nd iso. who knows? not trying to have a go- but trying to be sure that info is accurate..

And for me one of the best reasons to spay a cat or dog is PRE the first season, thus reducing the likely hood of mammary cancer in later life down to pretty much zero.
In cats the mamm cancers they get are usually mailgnant and very agressive.
So neutering pre the first season could well be life saving.
And a def second is to prevent uterine infections, which, as you say, can well be fatal.

I think that the role of the charity secotr is to provide support to people who are stuggling to pay for their pets.
I homestly believe that it's ok to take on a pet and then present it to one of the chriaies for help.
I beleive it is totally beneficial to have pets with children...
so a cat or a dog in a fmaily on benefits isn't so crazy.
But i do expect that the owners will pay something towards the treatment of their pet and be responsible- ie get vacc, neuter etc and accpet that it is a charity they are using- not an NHS for pets.

I've worked in the charity sector for 20yrs and this is my [ersonal view. but it is shared by many of those i work with.

To go out and get 5 cats is frankly bonkers, as is to own some crazy pedigree dog that cost £500 and then plead poverty.
Nut to get a nice cat or nice dog froma shelter and then treat it well, and look after it- no problem just don't bring in lizards or dog be bordeux and expect me to be welcoming

anyway, back at the point,
the cat had been out for some months proior to the surgery- so is prob a fully grown cat.
And was prob terrorising the neighbourhood too as unneutered male cats do..
but the guy should have tried to find out whose cat it was before he did the surgery.
and the OP should have been more responisble to her pet and get some advice re neutering earlier.
You can bet your bottom dollar the "free" place would have said to netuer sooner rather than later.

Thanks Babies, sadly our fluffy ginger cat is long gone. We took him in to the vet for a de-mat, and he died under the (very light) aneasthetic. It turned out he had some really nasty lung infection (possibly because of FIV - it was just after he died that the other cats were diagnosed) and his mats were probably a result of him feeling too ill to groom (not that he ever did much as his hair got everywhere, and he's be spitting more than grooming ). It was just after dd was born, and things were very stressful, so I guess we hadn't noticed he really wasn't himself. We were all (the poor groomer included) very upset.

We do have a special brush for our short haired cats though.

nooka, I am so sorry to hear about your ginger fluffy cat

Ah Babies, it is the nature of being a cat owner to accept that they will die at some point. It's been seven years and we've had three more cats come and go in that time (two we adopted at 11, so not a surprise that we didn't have them long, in case you were thinking I was bumping them off ). He was a particularly lovely cat though, and probably only about seven or so when he went (the vet thought he was fivish when he adopted us).

nooka, It doesn't make it any easier mind. We have lost two cats last year, hopeing this year is more cat-friendly.

we have an unneutered cat who comes in our house all the time and sprays. i have even found it in my babies room under the cot. i have a magnetic cat flap for our 2 cats and it still gets in somehow. i have shouted, banged saucepans, sprayed water and it still comes back. imo you are lucky it was only given the chop. if i was a nastier person i would have done something nasty to this cat. the day i heard my bay cry and found it in its room if it hadn't run faster....

We have an unneutered male cat who breaks into our house and harrasses our girlies. They are beautiful silver tabbies (not pedigree though).

I am going to get him a collar and attach a note to it which reads as follows... "Dear irresponsible pet owner, you might have noticed the large growth at the tail end of your cat. If you do not find a vet to remove this growth in the next 28 days I am taking him on a drive to an RSPCA shelter at least 50 miles away and let them do it. You have been warned."

AIBU?

This cat has impregnated two of my girls. We had Tabitha from a kitten and we decided to have her neutered when she was ready to go outside. He got there first. She never went outside, I got home from work and was greeted by a broken cat flap.

We kept one of her litter and had her neutered as soon as we could, because he was hanging around again.

Our new baby, who is one of Tabitha's grandchildren, has led to the return of this Tom.

Do not underestimate the effect your unneutered Tom is having on some unsuspecting family. We cannot open a window fully, the shutter has been brought down on the cat flap. He sits outside howling, he terrorises our other cats. When he gets in he eats the food, sprays wherever he can.. it's driving me mad.

I think you should pay your neighbour back. He is YOUR cat, as you have pointed out. YOU should have had him neutered. You say you were going to go to a charity, but you didn't. There's no reason not to. If you couldn't for some reason, you should have kept him in. Just wish your neighbour lived near me.

I have had a similar experience. I have three Burmese, one of whom wanders a lot. They are microchipped and neutered. A few months back I got a call from a local vet, saying that someone had bought in my cat as he was hurt - been in a fight.

Prior to scanning, the vet said that they had to register him before they could treat him, or he would be declared a stray and kept by them!

They registered him, THEN, the vet scanned him, and called us.They wouldn't tell me what was wrong with him, but wanted me to authorise payment on my card to treat him. I said is it life threatening?

I refused treatment on the basis that this particular vets charge like the light brigade, as I previously had them all neutered there, lots of extra unnecessary charges for blood tests etc. My vet visits me because I had 5 Burmese and it was easier than catching them all for jabs, and we do it on the dining room table!

The vet was not happy that I didn't want him treated by them, and said we have treated him before you know. I said yes, and I no longer bring him to you!

The people bought him back to us, I thanked them, and said how lucky you have a cat carrier, do you have a cat? They said no, they had been and bought it to take him to the vet. They live 5 doors away, but we are on a country lane so that is a distance, but we do have a large enamel painted plaque on the gate post with three Burmese cats on it! How they got him in it beggars belief!

Did I pay them for the cat carrier, which was not my choice, of which I already have 5? Yes I did, and bought a bunch of flowers and delivered them. I would have been a bit pissed off if they had paid huge sums of money, as is likely at this vet, and would probably felt obliged to pay them back, as they were well intentioned.

I treated the cat's cut head myself, I am used to doing it, but they run a mile when they sniff the TCP!

He still visits them, but at least they know he is ours now. I do not use collars as they have got hooked up in trees, come back with a leg hooked through etc, and these are quick release collars too.

I had two ginger females as a child.

We got them from a friend of a friend and were told they were males. It wasn't until they were about 4 months old and one of them got into a fight that we discovered she was a female when the vet examined her. So we brought the other one in as well and turned out she was a female too.

Lucky that we discovered that little gem before they were old enough to have kittens.

qumps & LoulouCapone, If you can catch these cats (as they are making your life intolerable) take them to the nearest RSCPA. They will give the owners a week to find them and will either neuter them in the mean time or will strongly encourage the owners to do the right thing and get them done themselves but please use the LOCAL centre so the owners will be able to relocate them.

alibubbles, Good on you. What a nice response to an upset sitution. Through I was LOL at the cats skulling around at the hint of TCP.