Spaying

how old can a kitten be before you get it fixed?

Call around in your area ... might be that you can find a clinic that will do "early spay/neuter" on kittens as young as 8 to 12 weeks.

As gaye said you can have it done as early as 8 weeks but definately have it done BEFORE 6 months!

There's no fixed time limit on either too soon or too late. It depends on the cat and the vet. If you have a vet picked out you want to do the surgery, I'd ask him/her. It's best to do it before the first heat cycle.

You should see pediatric spays and neuters recover! They are right back to playing and climbing the kennel walls within 1/2 an hour of surgery. Littermates that are recovered together quickly start play wrestling afterwards. I am not kidding, they do REALLY well.

It is so funny to see a kitten after surgery ... it is like absolutely NOTHING is out of the ordinary. They come out of anesthesia, they yawn, they stretch, they blink blink and lick their lips then it's PLAYTIME!!! *grin* Their healing capabilities are amazing. Do you suppose it is because their metabolism is faster than ours that they can seem to heal so quickly, Dr. Doolittle? It is interesting to me to ponder.

~gf~

Cats that young have very little blood and nerve supply to their reproductive organs, the incisions are smaller and there is much less inflammation post-op. That is why they recover so much faster. 6 month old cats are a little slower to recover but it is still pretty fast. Older mature cats that have had some heat cycles/litters suffer a little more post-op. It is much more necessary to provide the older cats with post-op pain management than the little ones.
We also tend to only use gas anaesthesia on the kittens (there are benefits and drawbacks to this) which wears off a lot faster than most injectable drugs.

The kittens at our rescue are spayed/neutered at 7/8 weeks of age. You wouldn't even know they had been fixed except the girls have a spay scar....they jump and play as if nothing is different. Our adoptors love not having to make the spay/neuter appt.

Katie

But, since the kitten is so small, wouldn't the doctor be more proned to make a mistake, or wrong incision?

If they were- we wouldn't do them.

Isabelle definitely jumped back quicker than Annabelle did when she had her surgery. She was a little less than 4 months old and Annabelle was 6 months. I say do it early if you can.

As I posted elsewhere, it only took me a few phone calls to locate a vet who considered it appropriate to S/N a cat at 8 weeks as long as (a) it weighed 2 lbs and (b) it appeared to be of normal development.