Should I spay or neuter my cat?

What is spay and what is neuter? Quite a technical terms but put simply, spay is for female, neuter is for male.

Before I put my first cat for spay, I had this dilemma whether I should or not. And I struggling to find a proper answer for weeks. Many internet articles will support spaying and neutering and one of the reasons is control population. I think this is bullshit. Who are we to control their population? We are not playing gods. In fact, it's quite a sin to alter their organs, at least that's my believe.

Here's the pro and cons of spay/neutering your cat. It's up to your judgement. But I have spayed/neutered all my cats, never regretted because I can see they are suffering if they are not spayed/neutered. Imagine the feeling when they need to go out and mate, but can't go out since they are indoor cats. I guess there's a price to pay for being indoor cat, unfortunately.

Pros of spaying/neutering

1. Hormones won't raging in their body and they won't have the urgency to go out to mate. It's suffering if they are full time indoor cat
2. They won't mark territory by urinating all over your house. It's a matter of time they start marking territory all over your house because they can't go out to mate.
3. If your house has male and female cats, they won't mate with each other. You will have trouble if your cats population start to grow within your house.
4. The grow fatter, looks nice?

                                                  Look at his fat ass months after neutering

Cons of spaying/neutering

1. Personally feel it's a crime to alter their organs. Imagine someone alter your sex organ without your consent.
2. Any operation has risk, even though it's minor. There's every chance the cat will die due to anesthetic or virus infection after surgery
3. You need to dedicate 14 days of your time to specially take care of them. Make sure their stiches not opened. Otherwise, it's a nightmare and prone to virus infection such as FPV.

Should I vaccinate my cat / dog?

100% yes and must. Don't wait or delay. This will protect them from virus. Yeah virus and it's scary like hell, just like COVID-19 causing death. You hear me, it will cause death.

Previously, I had no experience in handling cats as pet. I didn't know that vaccination is so important and I always procrastinate and never take this as priority. 

There's this tragic story where I had 2 kittens living together in a room. One had vaccinated once, another didn't.  Then one day, the one who didn't vaccinate yet, I call her Lulu, suddenly vomit. Vomit is normal for cat, and not a big concern actually. Then the frequency increase the next day to 3 times a day. Then 5 times the following day. Worse, Lulu is not eating anymore. 

So I brought her to veterinarian for checkup. I got the shock of my life, when the veterinarian told me she actually dying 😭 We had a blood test on her and she contracted FPV - Feline Parvovirus. There's no cure for this virus. The veterinarian suggest me to bring to a veterinary that has hospitalization facility, to have any chance of alive. I immediately bring her for hospitalization, put on drip. Doctor say she has 50/50 chance to be alive. Unfortunately, she died the following day. Still feeling sad while typing this.

According to the veterinarian, if the cat has vaccinated, the chance of contracting this virus is far lesser and even if contracted, they are strong enough to fight it off. A painful lesson for me.

** Curse this FPV - Feline Parvovirus. It will eat up the cat internal organs and Lulu stomach actually got destroyed by it. There's a day, when Lulu actually shit out a long rubbery stuff, which I suspect is her intestines 😭😭😭😭😭😭

                                                             Rest in peace...... Lulu

How to raise kitten from Day 1 Age

Day 1 - Day  60

No panic. It's actually very easy to raise kitten if you also have their mummy with them. Basically, you do nothing at all. Let nature takes its course. Magically, the mummy will breastmilk their kittens and kittens will also find milk on their mummy. Just prepare a bowl of water and little box. For unknown reason, I barely notice any shit from those kittens until after Day 60.

It's best to keep mummy and their kittens together in a room if you can afford or in a cage (if you can't afford space). 

I had a painful experience by letting nature takes its course. I put them in a big box outside my yard, and after 1 week, the mummy transferred her kittens to another place. However on the 3rd week, the mummy brought back 2 kittens to my yard, and both had eye infections. Luckily for 1 kitten, her eyes are saved after a visit to vet. But for the other, her eyes are blinded. Another 2 more kittens are missing/dead.

So, if you want to keep them safe and healthy and avoid vet cost, just keep them in a safe place such as room or cage.

                                                                            Day 0

Day 14-30

Most articles in the internet refer that kittens will have their eye opened on the by the 10th day. If they don't, it's a cause of concern and need to bring them to vet on the 14th day.

For my personal experience, day 20-30 is the maximum limit before brining them to vet, if their eye still doesn't open. Make sure to bring along the mummy, so that the kitten and mummy won't have emotional stress.

                                                                            Day 14

Day 19

Day 60 onwards

From around this days, the kittens will start to eat your money :) You will need to feed them kitten kibbles. And by just feeding them kibbles, they can grow into beautiful kittens.

                                                                            Day 60

Day 180

If your kitten is eating well and shitting well, then it's time to bring to veterinarian for de-worm and vaccination. Is it important for vaccination? It surely does. This will be explained in the next article.

Do I need to bath my cats?

The answer is yes or not. If you cat loves to bath, why not? But most cat don't like water. And bear in mind, they easily get heart attack. So, if every time your cat feel very scared when going to bath, don't force her. In the long run, the cat might caught heart attack. However this can be trained when the cat is still a kitten. When young, if they are well trained with bath, then they won't be that scared every time we bath them.

It's best if you try to bath your cat yourself instead of sending to grooming center. This is because, you never know how scared your cat is when grooming center bath them. 

Doesn't the cat gets dirty if no bath? 

Actually no, if the cat always indoor. Cats will always groom themselves by licking themselves. This action is a bath for them. For my cats, they didn't bath for months and yet there's no smell when I ask my house visitor whether they are smelly or not.

Do you think they need a bath?

                                                        

Can I feed fish to my cat?

Cat likes fish but don't feed a whole fish to them. The bone must be separated. Only feed them fish meat. One common believe is when we throw fish to cat, they will like it. They like is because of the smell and not the bone.

But cats are dumb enough to eat the bone as well since it's hard to separate and this will resulted the bone piercing their throat and causing injury.

So, conclusion, never ever feed a bony fish to your cat.

Can I feed cheap kibbles to cat?

No. If you don't want heartbreak, please don't feed cheap cat food to your cat. I have heard stories where the kitten suddenly die within 1 year old. According to vet, this is due to organ failure from long term food intake.

It cost more but there's a responsibility you need to take as cat owner. All my cats are reaching 2 years old soon and I have feed them with Equilibrio, Taste of the Wild, IAMS, Royal Canin, Ciao. Unfortunately, these brand didn't sponsor me to type this article. Just sharing my experience.

So, if the cat food is within these brand price range or higher, those food should be up to standard 😀