Feline Neuter

Introduction

One of the most common surgical procedures we perform is a cat neuter, know medically as an orchectomy. It is performed for several reasons:

• It minimizes roaming
• It minimizes aggressive behavior
• It prevents male cats from impregnating females.
• It minimized urinating in the home (urine spraying)

Male cats are territorial and prone to fighting, which leads to serious diseases, especially viral diseases like FeLV, FIP, and FIV. Neutering minimizes this fighting, helping also to cut down on these serious contagious diseases.

Anesthesia

Pre-anesthetic preparation is important in every surgery we perform, no matter how routine. Surgery is not an area to cut corners. All of our neuters receive a physical exam several days prior to surgery. At the same time we will draw a small amount of blood for an in-hospital pre-anesthetic test.

Take away all food and water before going to bed the night prior to surgery. Do not feed or water the morning of surgery and drop your pet off between &:30 AM and 8:30 AM. Surgery is completed by early afternoon. Our surgeon will call you so please leave us a phone number we can reach you at any time during the day. 

On surgery day when everything is in order we will give a sedative. This will calm your pet dog and make the administration of the actual anesthetic, along with post operative recovery, much smoother. Once your pet is anesthetized, prepared for surgery, and had its monitoring equipment hooked up and reading accurately, the surgery can begin.

Most neuters go home the same day as surgery. You can pick up your pet in the late afternoon or evening if that is more convenient for you. We are open until midnight 6 days per week. When you pick up your pet you will be given detailed and printed home instructions.

Surgery

In general, neutering males cats is a straightforward procedure. Most cats have both testes in the scrotum, making them readily accessible by a scrotal incision. We do not suture the scrotum after the procedure since it heals very rapidly by itself.

In this picture a small incision has already been made in the scrotum with the laser, and the testicle is visible. Notice the lack of bleeding, a hallmark of the laser, and why we make it mandatory for all of our neuters.

Our surgeon has the testicle in his hand which allows visualization of all the internal structures. You can visualize the white and glistening vas deferens at the top of the picture going from the body on the right to the testicle on the left. The vas deferens will be used to tie off the blood supply to the testicle.

Due to the small size of the blood vessels we can use the natural anatomy of the testicle to prevent bleeding when we remove the testicle. The black arrow points to the knot in the vas deferens made by the surgeon. After several more of these knots are applied the testicle at the far left will be cut off.

Another technique to tie this knot involves the use of a hemostat. This picture shows the beginning of the knot.

After the vas deferens and blood supply are wrapped around the hemostat they are then passed through the center.

Here is the final appearance after the knot has been completed.

On occasion both testicles are not in the scrotum. This means that one of them is in the abdomen or in the inguinal canal, which is the passageway through the body wall into the scrotum. Either way, we have to find this testicle and remove it because it will continue to secrete hormones.

The skin has already been incised and our surgeon is preparing to enter the body cavity. The white glistening structure visible is the section in the center of the abdomen where the abdominal muscles and their tendons meet. It is called the linea alba.

The testicle is not the only thing that resides in the abdomen. This is a picture of the urinary bladder (we hope you didn't think it was the testicle!) that bulged out of the incision in the abdomen. Obviously, it can interfere with the surgery when it is this full with urine, so we remove the urine before proceeding further.

Testicles that reside in the abdomen are very small because they have atrophied (shrunken in size) due to lack of use. They can be quite difficult to find, and necessitate careful exploration of the abdomen. The black arrow points to the atrophied testicle.

In this case we use suture material to prevent bleeding. The black arrow is still pointing to the testicle to help keep you oriented.

This picture is from another surgery. We have already removed a normal testicle from the scrotum and an abnormal testicle from the abdomen. You can see the difference in size and shape

When the surgery is complete we sew up the incision in the muscles and skin, and give a medication for pain. Once the hair grows back it is impossible to tell if surgery was performed.

Laser Surgery

Using the laser has many advantages over using a scalpel blade. These include negligible bleeding during the procedure and significantly reduced post-operative pain. Healing time is reduced due to substantially less post-operative swelling.  We can use the laser to make an incision in the scrotum, which makes the healing process much more comfortable. Our Laser Page has detailed information on the use of the laser for various surgeries.

In addition to using the surgical laser, all of our neuters get the added benefit of the Companion Laser to stimulate the cells for faster healing. This link to the Companion Laser describes it in much more detail.