#%^% spellcheck. Tried to say ‘massive displays of horniness’. Anyway, we ended up paying for two spay procedures.
I took a stray cat were were adopting to get fixed and she was already fixed. Here they notch the ears of feral cats that have been fixed so it was win win.
I worked at a vet clinic where we started a spay on a approximately 6 month old kitten (we had taken the clients word for it that it was female) the doctor said I can’t find a uterus, are they sure it wasn’t spayed before they found it? I looked under the drape and said “no, it’s not spayed, it’s a boy”. After that we realized we couldn’t take the client’s word and always double checked.
I also had an a couple instances where people insisted that their neutered male cats that have undergone PU surgery were female. In one case it was a found cat that the untrained eye would look at and see a female, however it had all the male secondary sex characteristics (huge cat) and the position of the urethral opening was more in line with a male. Not to mention, it did not look natural. They argued with me about it but then the doctor came in and confirmed.
In the other case they knew it was a male but it had had the PU surgery while they owned it and they insisted it had a sex change and was now a female. We tried to explain that even though many vets will explain the surgery as making them into a girl that is really not the case as they were still a male and it was still possible to become obstructed. It is not an actual sex change surgery but a penis change surgery. These people were really argumentative with us, they seemed to think we were insulting their transgendered cat by not referring to it by it’s preferred pronoun. :smack:
I had a boy cat with one undescended testis. So, when he was neutered, he had to have abdominal surgery, and the poor li’l guy had an incision like he’d been spayed. The vet also found a small hernia, and fixed it for free. She said if she hadn’t gone gonad hunting, she wouldn’t have found it, and it could’ve gotten a lot worse.
He was a stray who was about four months when we found him, and maybe five when he got fixed. Vets waited until cats were older back then anyway, but it’s probably a good thing, because if he’d been tiny, she might not have been able to keep him under GA as long.
I had a yellow tuxedo cat who was female. I knew she was female, but with that coloring, eyes, so on, cats are usually male. I took her in to get spayed, and the vet insisted she was neutered male, until I made them verify.
It happened every time we moved and had to change vets, poor thing. Fortunately, she was very sweet and took all the rude inspections in stride. 
My grandma adopted “Olivia” from the shelter. She had had Olivia for a few weeks when she took her in to get fixed and the vet told Grandma Olivia was a boy cat. So Olivia became Hector.
11 pounds is not “enormous.” Not compared to my 27-pounder.
Yes, it happened to me. Not my finest moment. Thankfully, the cat had a gender neutral name so we didn’t have to rename him. It was a kitten that was born to a stray. We were told it was a female and took that information at face value. I never had the notion to look, and it was such an ill-tempered cat that I probably would have lost my hand if I tried.
I never had a cat before and was completely new to feline nature and behaviors.
We marched into the vet when the cat was old enough, expecting to have her spayed. I was wondering why she had taken to “peeing” in unusual locations. Maybe she had a UTI. The vet examined the cat, pulled his testicles out from where they were hiding and said “Here. Here’s your problem”.
I was pretty embarrassed. Anyway, he was neutered that day. I think we had one more spraying incident after that. A few months later he turned into a very fastidious cat and remained that way until the day he died about 14 years later.
While he became a bit more tolerant, he was still a pretty ill-tempered creature so the neutering didn’t really make a big difference there. Not a cuddly animal at all but THE best mouser, toader, birder, rabbiter ever. We respected each other and we got along fine.
I am a semi-professional cat-wrangler. I’d have to go consult my journals to find out just how many cats I’ve had fixed because I lost count years ago. I’m horrible at sexing cats, especially young ones. Last year, I took a male to be neutered and learned that she was in heat. Very embarrassing, but the vet thought it was funny and thankfully had time in his schedule to spay her.
Now I’m going to tell my secret, how I impress the fuck out of people at adoptions. I can tell the difference between males and females just by picking them up. No looking, no groping, nothing but feeling their fur with my fingers. I can do this with 6 week old kittens, which is hard even for trained professionals. Most of the cats and kittens at adoptions have been recently fixed. Females have shaved bellies and sometimes stitches. Once I learned to feel for stubble, I was golden.
Yeah, I know a lot of housecats are way heavier than 11 pounds, but a lot of those are overweight cats. The Cat Formerly Known as Klara isn’t really overweight, just really long-bodied. Big boned, if you will. And he’s more than twice the weight of my previous cat, so he feels really heavy to me, just by comparison.
I am thinking now of naming the cat Clark (probably no final ‘e’). Still haven’t quite decided.
His nickname can be “Supercat.”
We had a boy named Noah who was a litter runt with chronic diarrhea, because his mother wasn’t feeding him, and his mother’s owners were giving him adult catfood soaked in egg yolk :dubious:. Anyway, he became Noah, because he survived the flood.
I gave him a bowl of formula, a bowl of Iams canned kitten food mixed with water, and plain water, in a crate with a heating pad on low, and some blankets over it. He was very content, and grew fast. He got to be 12lbs, and it was all tawny muscle. Unfortunately, we lost him a couple of years ago to a liver mass that was probably cancer. But our little runt who was shivering when I brought him home, he was so thin, thrived for 13 years.
Eleven pounds is nothing. Buffy is seventeen pounds easily.
PU surgery? 
Sorry, I thought I had typed out the explanation but I think I edited it out before I posted. PU is a pernineal urethrostomy. They basically split the penis open to make a new bigger urethral opening to make them less likely to have a urinary obstruction. It’s usually done when a cat has blocked two or three times.
Okay, thanks.
So they really thought they had a transgendered cat? Did they change his/her name?
I would have named him Dil.
Regards,
Shodan
I could see possible confusion because industry people sometimes joke about the boy now having a vajayjay. If the ignorant owners overheard one of these jokes, even inadvertently, now trying to explain out of it might not work.
I’ve described it as making the penis an innie instead of an outie. Best I’ve been able to figure out how to explain without in-depth explaining. I have a PU boy myself, and I guess I can see how just looking at it, could maybe be mistaken for a vagina to the untrained. While it’s in the spot where a penis should be, at least a finger’s width lower than a vagina, it is a slit shape now rather than a circle.
Also, there’s some skilled plastic surgery going on there, and feeling the site with your fingers, there’s a sort of ramp or the surgeon called it a ladder, that feels stiff at the bottom portion of the opening, made to help urine spout a bit so he doesn’t dribble down his backside when he pees. He doesn’t have the same musculature a female would so needs some anatomical help, and of course feeling a female that little hard bit isn’t there.
He still tries to hump the other cats in the house, and sometimes me, so he’s definitely still all boy!
I am also curious as to whether the people Wile E encountered had re-named their cats. I haven’t come across owners who thought it was an actual sex change.
Yeah.
The cat I’ve nicknamed 'Little guy" is 18 pounds and my other cat nicknamed “Big guy” is 25 pounds.
11 pounds is just a wee little kitty in my house.
As for spaying/neutering, my local shelter does it all in house.At $25 a pop, it’s a steal.
It’s been a while since I dealt with those cases but I don’t think either of them changed the cat’s names.