birth control for cats?

Looking for some contraception for my female cats. Does anyone know the name of such drug or where I can order it online? please email me at: [email protected] if you can help

Originally Posted by scottie242

Looking for some contraception for my female cats. Does anyone know the name of such drug or where I can order it online? please email me at: [email protected] if you can help

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I don't think there is such a thing. The best and only preventive that I know of is spay/neuter.

I asked this same question out of idle curiosity on the Breeders Corner forum because I wondered how they coped with cats that seemed to stay in heat. There is no safe drug. There is a pill used to some extent in Europe but many breeders in Europe don't use it because of safety concerns. If you have a pet cat she should be spayed, it is much safer healthwise for her. Reputable breeders even spay their breeding cats at a fairly young age for their health.

The drug they use in Europe has to be readministered every six months in order to be effective. The only way to effectively stop cats from breeding is to spay and neuter early. There are studies now looking at other methods of birth control (for feral cats) but so far nothing is working.

Originally Posted by scottie242

Looking for some contraception for my female cats. Does anyone know the name of such drug or where I can order it online? please email me at: [email protected] if you can help

Click to expand...

Scottie...please get your females spayed. If you provide us your location, we can find you a low cost clinic.

Katie

Just for the record , there is a pill for dogs that I know about that is available in the USA- Mattie's (my Boxer) cardiologist told me about it. She recommends it for dogs who are too sick to be fixed and too sick to come into heat. She uses the 6 month med for one of her dogs who falls into that catagory (she is from Germany). My vet doesn't like it either, and Mattie ended up being healthy enough to be spayed . I would imagine there is something similar for cats, but I don't know if you can get it here, and if your pet is healthy, it is better for the cat's health to just go ahead and get her spayed .

There are birth control pills for cats here in Europe, the active substance is medroxiprogesterone. If you can get it in the US it's through a vet. It's NOT recommended since the side effects can be quite serious (mammary cancer, pyometra and diabetes mellitus).

When I collected Mosi the breeder told me his mum had been given an injection which would last 6 months and prevent her coming into heat as she wasn't ready for another litter yet. But I think any kind of contraception of that kind comes with risks and possible side effects so spaying is the best method.

Please get your cat spayed. This is the SAFEST birth control you could ask for.

More and more information is out there for those looking for a temporary method of controlling the legendary cat fertility.  What I have used on our indoor/outdoor barn cats is medroxyprogesterone 2.5 mg tablets cut into sixths with a razor blade,.given twice weekly for three to four months, then letting the queen cycle to pre-estrous and dosing again until October or so, then starting in late December-early January when she starts showing signs of heat again.  It is an imperfect, fiddly blunderbuss method but does work.  Even when it doesn't completely work, it reduces litter size.  I have used this for five years over several generations of cats.  Once the cat has passed on his or her genes, the animal gets neutered.  Cats can get 'morning sickness' or nausea on this regimen, and vomit.  Just be careful she didn't vomit the pil piece back up!

My wish list would be to get Peptech's deslorilin implants, but they are expensive and vets don't know what they are and are reluctant to order it.  The technology for controlling fertility--not eliminating it--in our pets has been invented for humans, but because there is not enough money in it (new drugs must be tested and approved, then marketed to a large enough body of  interested purchasers) it is largely unavailable.  Medroxyprogesterone, trade name Depro-Provera, has been around a long time, is cheap and readily available, and will work in cats.  I would not use it long-term because then the side effects will start showing up, and if and when the animal is not needed for breeding, neutering/spaying is the best.. 

Additional notes:  For our favorite cat, we used a combination of keeping her locked up during heat, artificial mating stimulation to buy us six weeks to two months of non-heat time, and medroxyprogesterone dosing. We were fine tuned to her moods and cycles because she hung out with us so much.  She had only one litter of three and died an intact cat at age 4.5 years of age due to coyote predation.  I have given it to tom cats throwing their weight around and bullying the other cats.  With the toms, it has to be given over a long period of time to get them to simmer down a little.  It does make them less able to complete the act of mating, and will reduce fertility that way also..  Progesterone is the pregnancy hormone, and like estrogen and testosterone, is a class of hormones called androgens that play their roles in mammalian reproduction.  It has also been called, "The Happy Hormone" because of its calming, placid effect on pregnant animals, and difficult males!  I speculate that giving a tom progesterone results in the progesterone competing for the same receptors tuned in to testosterone, thus supplanting one androgen for one with less aggressive effects.