Early Speying and Neutering

At Glitterpaws we neuter and spey before kittens go to their forever homes. This is safe to do with a few provisos. Here's some tips below of things I now do to make things run more smoothly:

1.       3 hours is plenty long enough to be nil by mouth for a young kitten. There is good evidence in vet and human neonatal/paeds anaesthesiology that this is fine. When I worked in ED (as a doctor) we never starved kids more than 3 hours and allowed breast feeding until the procedure. Offer food straight away after (I send with food ready to serve-up post op).

2.       Each kitten should be weighed and have anaesthetic medications calculated individually. Kittens can vary by 200-500g or even more across the litter which can be 20-30% difference. This is A LOT in anaesthetic doses. Size also probably applies to intubation equipment and ventilation pressures.

3.       Inflate the lungs as you extubate at the end of the procedure – positive pressures ensure the lungs remain inflated and the negative pressures on extubation could be enough to collapse the chest wall or cause lung atelectasis (this is common practice in human neonatal medicine, one vet didn’t know about this -maybe others do???).

4.       Keep warm after the procedure, I now keep mine in my kitten rooms post op or turn the heat up in the tiny house (my other kitten area).

5.       It’s quite concerning that some vet practices don’t regularly calibrate their equipment -I once found that a vet had calculated a kitten at almost 2kg when she was only 1.2kg, luckily I spotted it and we weighed the kittens on different scales. Its worth weighing the kittens and filling out their vaccine books before they go for their procedure.

6. Anaesthetic medications: currently my vets use ketamine and buprenomorphine or methadone. This combination has been fine. Some breeders are very vocal about the use of ketamine but in humans this is a very safe anaesthetic. I dont have strong opinions about anaesthetic drugs, its more about the expertise of the vet.