1406. Spaying a ferocious young cat

Today Friday Mar 1, 2013, morning, the young couple brought in a cat, born around Jan 2011, for spaying. In the presence of the owners, she was quiet. So I put her in her own carrier to be spayed in the afternoon. 

I thought the carrier door would open sideways as in all carriers. However, it was not working and one has to click open the two sides and front corners to open up the top half of the carrier. The sounds of clicking open the hinges were extremely loud, like a gun firing in a small room on the table top.. The cat was too angry and my assistant tried to hold her. She stretched out her claws. He took one step backwards.   leaped off and in the process some anal sac oil splattered in at least 6 spots on the top of my shirt. The smell was rancid oil. The cat landed on the floor and hid in a corner. What to do?

In short, I got a lasso to restrain her, put her inside a wired crate. Later I had to pack in newspapers and phone books. The cat snarled everytime the papers were put in. "She is cramped at one side," my assistant called me. I inserted the fine needle and the cat leapt up while inside the crate. My 27G needle bent and flew to the floor as I pressed the plunger. In short, the cat did not get the 100% of the sedation IM.

At the next time, more newspapers filled the crate and another helper pushed the cat towards the side, facing me. Ths time I could inject. Lots of time spent in just this case. Cats and dogs do get ferocious once the owner is away.

A: Sedation IM   2.19 pm
B: Isoflurane first given. No need.
C. Isoflurane stopped. No need.
D: First skin incision: 2.33 pm
E: Completion of skin stitching: 3.01 pm

E-A  = 42 min
E-D = 28 min.

The cat was in the middle of heat. So much time was spent to ensure that the big ovarian blood vessels were properly ligated. The ovaries were incised at least 5 mm from the uterus after ligation just in case some remnants of ovarian tissues were left in the body. There have been complaints of cats and dogs still having heat after spay and one reason is that some ovarian tissues were left behind during the spaying.

The best way is to incise the skin near to the umbilicus to expose the whole ovary plus suspensory ligaments. usually made an incision of 1 cm long starting 0.5 cm from the umbilical scar in cats. This incision is insufficiently long to access the bifurcation of the uterine bodies after hooking out the left ovary. Therefore I had to make the incision longer by extending another 1 cm caudally to expose the bifurcation of the uterine body..

For this cat on heat, the skin incision came to 2 cm long. For cats not on heat, I could open 0.8 cm long in the spay. Longer incision takes longer time. 28 minutes to spay this cat when a cat not on heat would take 10 minutes.

Surgical anaesthesia was sufficient at this dosage for 2.1 kg cat as there was no reaction .