About early castration
Today, many are concerned about the topic of early castration practiced by some breeders. Future owners of kittens ask themselves the question - is it good or evil (as usual, the third is not given) and based on "general considerations" often a priori draw a conclusion in favor of "evil". Therefore, they put the question accordingly: "What the hell are you, gentlemen breeders, doing?!"
The need for castration itself, not only early, is still a controversial issue for many cat lovers. Therefore, first I will say a few words about the castration of cats in general.
Having domesticated a cat, a man rather rudely interfered with its nature. The cat has changed a lot, and compared to its wild counterparts, it has become noticeably stupid – even its brain volume has decreased. She partially lost the instinct of self-preservation, her level of aggressiveness, which helped her survive in the wild, decreased, and she began to need constant support from humans.
People, of course, did not stop there. As the requirements for the standard of living increased, so did the requirements for the behavior of a domestic cat. If yesterday, for a comfortable coexistence of cats and humans, it was enough to "turn off" the instinctive fear of humans in a cat and reduce the level of aggressiveness, today people demand much more from a cat. In order for a cat to become "worthy" of living in a city apartment, it needs to "turn off" or at least mute the sexual instinct, since it is associated with such unpleasant phenomena as tags and a tendency to "shit in the wrong places."
Human ideas about good and evil begin to write out unthinkable somersaults in cases where the interests of the owner of the cat are affected. On the one hand, he can bitterly mourn his beloved, who is subjected to a "cruel procedure" – a simple operation under general anesthesia, and on the other – punish her (including physically) for "shitting" in sneakers. He may admire the fact that the cat is a "real macho", capable of tying up the most difficult partner, but to inflict the cruelest reprisals on him if the same "macho" splashes important documents left on the table with sharply smelling tags, so attractive to cats, but so vile and smelly for people.
In the views of modern cat owners (not professionals, not breeders), two extremes can be distinguished regarding what a cat's life should be next to a person.
The first is the perception of a cat as a relatively independent being, for whom a person is not so much a master who has taken responsibility for her, as an assistant who intervenes in the cat's life only occasionally: feeds her, treats her, lets her into the house, but nothing more. It is believed that it is primarily responsible for the welfare of the animal itself, so if the cat went out on the balcony of the 10th floor and fell down– it is not the fault of the owner who left the door to the balcony open, but of a "stupid" cat who "should have thought before".
The second extreme is, on the contrary, the perception of a cat as an infant who somehow owns the simplest self-service skills and at least understands the speech of the "parent", but otherwise cannot and does not know how to do anything. Adherents of this extreme believe that the owner must foresee and foresee everything that may threaten the well-being of the "child", and at all costs "protect" him from any trouble. The slightest oversight is interpreted by them as criminal negligence.
Sometimes these two extremes are paradoxically mixed. For example, the owner does not want to castrate his cat, fearing to make him "inferior", but is not at all surprised that this supposedly "full-fledged" cat, in principle, is not able to lead a "full-fledged" life within the local population of stray cats. Or a loving housewife does not want to deprive her kitty of the "joy of motherhood", and when it comes to childbirth, she becomes hysterical (after all, it hurts the "baby"!!!), does not give rest to herself or the cat and provides such "help" to the woman in labor that the expected "joy of motherhood" ends with an emergency caesarean section, sterilization and the death of the entire litter.
Such a mixture of extremes sometimes leads to actions that even seasoned professionals shock with their cruelty. A "full-fledged" cat has been climbing the wall for years, going crazy from the inability to realize the sexual instinct, and a "loving" owner or hostess "educates" him with swearing and beatings from day to day. A kitty in the name of "the joy of motherhood" gives birth to ugly kittens, who, contrary to the owner's hopes, do not look like her at all and are thrown out into the street as unnecessary, where they are "given a chance" to find their owners. Most of them die without using the "chance", and the kitty is already "asking for the cat" again.
By the way, the solution to the issue of ending the torment of an unsatisfied cat that is not allowed outside ("baby!") and at the same time does not want to be castrated ("fullness!") rests on very funny moral dead ends. For example, veterinarians are well aware of such a method as artificially satisfying a cat with a smooth stick (owners usually try to use a "thermometer"). In this way, the cat can really be calmed down for a while, as a cat would do, and after several such procedures, the cat no longer writhes for hours on the floor, uttering guttural screams and forcing the owners to write in despair on the forum: "SOS! How can I alleviate her suffering?!" However, the paradox is that it is psychologically easier for most owners to watch a cat suffer for hours than to temporarily take over the functions of a cat. The owners are so much "shy" that they are even ready to neglect their fears on the topic "will the operation go well?", fears like "what if my girl does not forgive me?" and pity for the cat, which most likely "will be hurt."
And now the day has come when for such owners – entangled in two contradictory approaches, not knowing what to do with the sexual instinct of a cat, which turns coexistence with her in a city apartment into a real nightmare – a simple, convenient and extremely profitable way out was found for the owners. Breeders began to offer kittens for sale, from which beautiful adult animals grow up, having a magnificent pedigree appearance and at the same time completely devoid of sexual instincts. Cats don't mark; cats don't flow; they do not need to do any terrible operations, there is no reason to put them on drugs that are harmful to their health, such as "Contrasex". The cat may look like a real "macho", but he will never need "brides"; the cat will not show interest in cats and will focus all his attention on the owner. In addition, all responsibility for the "production" of these virtually trouble-free animals will fall entirely on the breeder; the owner may not even think about how this result is achieved. Nevertheless, this time the owner is thinking, and so deeply that he even begins to ask questions.
In fact, these questions are another example of the paradoxical thinking of cat lovers. Easily agreeing to give a hormonal pill to a cat, the owners of "full-fledged", but not knitting animals do not wonder whether this will harm the health of pets. Deciding on castration and then painting their experiences while waiting for the end of the operation, they are happy when everything goes well, and do not anxiously follow every step of the animal, for many months and years stubbornly waiting for postoperative complications. But when they think about buying a kitten that has undergone early castration, for some reason they begin to worry terribly: is he healthy? isn't he disabled? will he become disabled in the future?
I would like to answer the last question: why, in fact, should he be (become) disabled? It seems that even the most ardent opponents of castration have already learned that there are no statistics that would prove that castrates are more likely to get sick or live less than their non-castrated counterparts (it's easier to find statistics that prove just the opposite). There is only one possible reason: it seems to people that early castration should be more traumatic than ordinary, and, accordingly, have more serious consequences for the body.
Many expected consequences of this kind were considered, ranging from stunting and ending with the development of ICD - a disease whose mechanism of occurrence has not yet been properly clarified. The honorable right to be considered the main cause of "urolithiasis" is still periodically disputed by each other, then improper nutrition, then bad genetics, then castration, then its absence, but no one succeeds in winning the palm.
Early castration, as a factor claiming to be the cause of terrible problems, did not get this palm tree either, and in none of the nominations. They tried to declare early castration as the reason for stopping the growth of the animal– but the kittens subjected to it stubbornly grew no worse than their uncastered peers. They tried to link it with the increase in the incidence of ICD – but nothing happened here either. It was only possible to note the slowing down (not stopping) of ossification of some cartilages, inevitable with any castration, both very early (at 2-4 months) and later (for example, at 7 months), and the relative underdevelopment of the prepuce in cats, which can complicate (but not make impossible) the veterinary catheterization procedure.
Further, it turned out that the only thing that could possibly be fraught with slowing the ossification of cartilage is the likely increase in one rare type of fractures (so–called Soalter-Harris fractures). But since there are many much more significant factors than early castration to increase the likelihood of any (and not only rare) fractures (for example, alimentary hyperparathyroidism on the background of a purely meat diet), it is hardly worth seriously worrying about this assumption, especially for those who have already recognized the expediency of conventional castration: after all, it can be fraught with exactly the same thing.
A source: https://www.oldbluzcoon.com