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Q.: I have a lovely male mixed-breed neuter, who is eight months old (I do also have a lovely Russian Blue girl (three months), but that's another story).
Dali was neutered when he was six months old, because the vet said the time had come, if we wanted to avoid him starting to ramble.
He has in fact become much more calm and always stays in the garden.
So my question is:
I read recently that you shouldn't neuter males before they reach the age of eight to ten months, because it may otherwise harm their development and not least their health later on.
What is it precisely about their development and health that early neutering can influence??
A.: According to most recent research nothing indicates that early neutering has any kind of deleterious effects, neither in the short nor long view.
There has even been a large study in the USA, where kittens of a few weeks of age were neutered and later checked regularly for health problems. Not even these kittens showed any kind of problems later.
There are even certain advantages to early neutering: a young cat will stand up to general anesthesia much better than a fully grown cat - among other things because you can do with a less heavy anesthesia than the grown one.
What modern vets have been taught at the vet school is that it is more the size of the cat that matters, rather than its age.
My own vet prefers the cat to weigh at least 2 ½ kg. It is due to the fact that it is difficult to find the right dose of anesthesia for a smaller cat, especially in a smaller practice, where the vet does not have an anesthetist at his disposal.
What was feared formerly in connection with early neutering was that the cat's development would stop too early, so that, among other things, it would get too narrow a urinary tract and thereby an increased risk of problems with bladder stones.
This fear has proven to be groundless, because growth and development actually does not stop after a neutering. The cat will grow a bit slower, in return growth will go on for a longer period than in an unneutered cat.
That is why it is possible for an early neutered cat to actually become larger than if it had been neutered at a later time.
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