Feral Cat Spaying

Question
I have a feral cat that has come around for 3 years now. She even comes in and out of my apartment for brief periods. She has a bed on my porch along with food and water. I recently moved and trapped her, I had her spayed one week ago. How long should I confine her before letting her out in her new surroundings??

Answer
Pam,

First of all, bravo to you for trapping and spaying her!  You just stopped one or maybe several litters of potentially unwanted, and definitely not needed, kittens.  Good for you.  Her health will be better off, and she will thank you for doing it--trust me!

It really depends on when you had her spayed.  Females take longer to heal because they have just had major surgery.  They've had the same thing done to them that a woman has when she has a TAH (total abdominal hysterectomy).  Ouch!!  That's a major surgery, as your abdomen is opened up, and the intestines have to be displaced out of the abdomen during the surgery in order to get to the reproductive organs.  Then, all the reproductive organs are cut out, and finally, the intestines are placed back into the abdominal cavity, and each layer of muscle and tissue is meticulously sewn up, and the outer layer of skin closed.  Women who have TAH's are usually in the hospital for 1-2 nites (those are national guidelines) and the reason most women don't go home in time is because they don't have adequate pain control.  

It is no different for a cat or kitten who's being spayed--the same exact thing is done to them.  So, just like humans, some cats will bounce back quickly from the surgery and be able to start playing and bouncing off walls right away.  Others may take a few days or even a wk or so.  

Therefore, it's hard to say when you could release her to her new surroundings.  If you've kept her confined for this time, have you considered trying to make her a part of your home inside?  If you can keep her confined in some way to pack her up, spay her, and now have her contained for recovery, she may be able to be trained to get used to being inside and loved.  But if not, you need to be able to really look at her and get a feel for how she's doing.  Does she act like she's in pain?  Is she quiet and reserved when normally she's rambunctious and boisterous?  Is she eating and drinking normally?  Does she cry out at all when she moves?  

If she appears to be well, and it's more than a 3 days since her spay, I'd say she's probably okay to be let out.  But you also need to look at the sutures she has.  Many vets now use strictly dissolving sutures in the incision, meaning that as the incision layers heal up, the sutures will just dissolve and be gone.  However, if there's a line of sutures holding the incision together, and the vet has instructed you to return for suture removal, then I would not release her until the sutures are out.  The reason is because cats will lick and lick and lick and bite, and chew at their wounds, and if they're not watched carefully, she could pull the sutures out and cause the incision to open, and then you could possibly have a problem called dehiscence, or when the internal organs start popping out through the incision line.  Then you've got a real problem, because she will likely get infection, she'll have to have the incision re-sutured, and will have to stay on bedrest to allow the incision to heal.

So, that is why I say it's important to know if she's got sutures or not--even staples.  A cat will still tug and pull at staples, and staples still need to be removed too.  But my understanding is that whenever spaying and neutering of feral cats is done, they do everything in a dissolving fashion as there really is no hope of keeping most feral cats inside and/or caged for several days or wks.  

My guess is that she doesn't have any visible sutures or staples, and is likely free to be released.  However, I would still use her behavior as a gauge to tell whether she's okay to be released outside.  If she's her usual self, then she should be okay to be released, but I'd keep an extra close eye on her over the next few days to make sure she's acting okay.  

Savannah