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11:14:00 AM EDT
Hearing Two Minutes to Midnight -- Iron Maiden
Bye-Bye Ovaries
This is last picture of Ghlaghghee that you'll see with her as a completely whole cat. Tomorrow at 8am I truck her over to the vet, who will snip some portion of her feline anatomy and render her impervious to the biological drive to create more little cats. In one sense I find this a bit sad, as she is quite clearly a very cute cat, and she'd undoubtedly make impossibly cute kittens. But it's not as if there aren't already more kittens out there than the world knows what to do with, and they're all pretty cute to start. We'll get along fine without hers.
Also, in our more immediate environs, we already have three cats and not much inclination to get any more. Indeed, we had to think long and hard about taking in Ghlaghghee, who is the daughter of a neighbor's cat. What convinced us was that she was freakin' adorable and also that if we didn't, there was a reasonably good chance that she wouldn't have lived long; out here in the country, little kittens are just the right size for a predatory bird meal. Yes, it really does happen. Try not to think about it. In retrospect, we made the right choice, because we love her to bits. But three cats is the upper limit for just about anyone. Any more cats than that and suddenly you're The Crazy Cat People What Live Up The Road. And that's no good.
Anyway, I don't expect Ghlaghghee will miss her ovaries. She doesn't know she has them, after all. At the very least, she's never said anything to us about them.
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or 164 kittens PER DAY. That's one hell of an unspayed cat you have there!! The correct average figure is 3 pregnancies per year, 6 kittens per litter, for a total of 126 kittens in 7 years. A female cat able to physically withstand that would have to be incredibly healthy, a stray will not manage that many, litters will either be smaller, less frequent, or less viable, or she may simply die at some point long before 7 years are past.
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Ok, hold it right there, I'm not gonna get into the spay or not debate, but there's a serious piece of BS in the comments here I'm not willing to let slide:
hostpetsbalto writes: "An unspayed cat can result in 420,000 kittens in 7 years."
What are you SMOKING???!! Sorry but I can't put it in gentler terms than that. 420,000 cats in 7 years is 60,000 a year, -
Ghlaghghee is beautiful. I had a siamese once upon a time that lived a hard life. We named it Bruiser due to the fact that it got out when it was a kitten and one of the neighbors beat it so bad you could see bruises through his fur. Then it drank anti-freeze and that killed it. But, I love Siamese cats and wanted to tell you that yours is very pretty.
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Nope, she probably won't miss the ovaries much at all. The fur on her belly, though... THAT might annoy her a bit. ;-) Good thing for her that it grows back...
4/27/04 10:39 AM