Posted by PHCurious on January 25, 2003 at 10:18:53:
In Reply to: Re: Question about male bengals and their sexual maturity posted by kittensmom on January 11, 2003 at 16:27:02:
I'm so glad to hear your vet is on top of things! Excuse me for this digression, but heart disease and early speutering are an issue I take very seriously and personally. Please keep in mind that I am not a vet and everything I post is solely my personal opinion, and my opinion is not exactly trendy.
Although I advocate speutering as soon as possible for most kittens, I'm not a fan a very early spay/neutering. And heart problems are precisely the reason I'm not an advocate of mandatory very early speutering. One of my Bengals has a serious heart defect. If he had been neutered at a very early age, well, I'm not so sure he'd be with us today. We waited until after he was 6 months old and all went well. His vet seems to think that he needed that extra time for his heart and lungs to develop a bit more in order to survive the anesthesia without incident. It worked for us!
My opposition to mandatory very early speutering is that many cats who have heart problems don't show any symptoms at a very early age. Therefore, special precautions aren't taken during speutering surgery because it's assumed that the kitten is perfectly healthy and strong. When the vet is aware of increased risk with a particular kitten, special precautions can be taken and the surgery can be performed safely. I'm sure your kitten will be safely neutered shortly, but IMHO, it's better to be safe (and delay it a bit) than sorry.
Most murmurs are just murmurs and nothing more. In other words, most murmurs are NOT a symptom of more serious heart disease. Also, many young kittens who have murmurs outgrow them. It is most likely that your kitten will also grow out of his murmur and you won't ever have to think about it again. I'm VERY happy to hear, however, that your vet is chosing to err on the side of caution and put off the surgery a bit until you can be 100% certain that your kitten's murmur is benign. Sounds like you have a great vet who is going to take great care of your kitties.
Best of luck with both your kitties. Let's see some pictures of them! There's nothing cuter than baby Bengals. :)
PHCurious
Cat Chat Host
:Thanks everyone for your input! The vet said that it would be highly unlikely for the 4 month old bengal to get my 7 month old pregnant at this age. And she did not believe bengals mature any quicker then other breeds, although their development schedule is a little different. I did take my girl in to get spayed, as was the plan, and she seems to be recovering well. Dex, my little bengal however, has had a heart murmur so they do not want to neuter him until after he is big enough for an ultrasound on his heart and has a diagnosis. I will absolutely have this all taken care of as soon as possible since I would like to curb any spraying behavior!
